IMSLP Forums

Hi all,
i got an error while trying to upload some scores by Josquin Desprez.

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Composer page does not exist. Please use the 'add composer' link on the composer category page to create a composer page first.

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it looks like the category is wrong. In the field composer the name is "Josquin+Desprez" with a plus sign. I not sure this is correct.
Thanks in advance for helping

Ctesibius

Hello Ctesibius,

If there isn't already a page for the composition then you can create one by going to the composer page for Josquin Desprez at:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Josquin_Desprez

... and clicking on the link that says "Add a piece to this composer page" (near the top), and then following the instructions.

Once the work page exists, use the link on it that says "Add a file to this page" to upload your files.

Could you try this and let us know what happens?

I think the problem is the lack of comma, and thus it substitutes a Plus sign for the space.

Hmm. That raises the question of how the other nine works for this composer were uploaded...

Some of them were uploaded with the composer as "Prez, Josquin des", and then renamed, while the others were done (somehow) with the current composer name of "Josquin Desprez". Strange!

Anyway, if in the upload process you change the composer name so that the surname reads "Desprez" and forename "Josquin" (actually almost anything would work), you should be able to upload the file, and afterwards rename the page so that it ends with "... (Josquin Desprez)". There's probably a more elegant solution, which I'll leave to someone else

Shouldn't the composer page itself be renamed to 'Desprez, Josquin'? After all, it sorts under J now...is that really acceptable? (I realize that he is also known by just 'Josquin', but is that actually justification?)

Looking at the "preferred forms" of the composer's names on http://www.viaf.org chosen by various national libraries, we have:

• Josquin des Prez, c. 1440-1521 ?[va]
  Deprès, Josquin, 1450-1521? ?[pt]
  Des Prés, Josquin ca. 1440-1521 ?[es]
  Josquin Desprez 1440-1521 ?[de]
  Josquin Des Prés 1440?-1521? ? [fr]
  Josquin, des Prez, d. 1521 ?[au, nz]

Overall, it looks like the composer's main name was "Josquin", with "des pres" being an optional qualifier (like "Peter the Great"), so maybe we should try to keep him under "J" in the alphabetical listing?

All right, I agree. However, that will apparently continue to cause annoying file submission errors...it's interesting to me that it would matter to the code whether or not a comma is included in the composer name.

Davydov wrote: Overall, it looks like the composer's main name was "Josquin", with "des pres" being an optional qualifier (like "Peter the Great"), so maybe we should try to keep him under "J" in the alphabetical listing?

Josquin (a hypocoristic form of Joseph) was his first name. His surname or family name was Lebloitte. "Des Prez" (= Van de Velde, from the fields) is a nickname that was already given to his father. He was mainly known as Josquin.

If you think of a contemporary musician who is known by a single name that is not their surname... then that's how famous Josquin was in his lifetime. Most Renaissance sources will ascribe a work to "Josquin" rather than to "des Prez", so that is the rationale behind sorting him under J using his name, rather than D or P for a nickname; and as Jean-Séb points out, his actual surname appears in a one source of the Condé archives as being Lebloitte, rather than Desprez (the acrostic form it takes in the motet Illibata Dei Virgo nutrix) or D'Ascanio (in the case of two frottolas published while he was in the service of Cardinal Ascanio).

Regards, Philip

Thanks all for the interesting discussion and the ideas.
Back to the original problem, I uploaded the pieces, but I had to change manually the Composer field from

Josquin+Desprez
to
Josquin_Desprez

I think it should be fixed. It can create some other troubles in the future

Ctesibius

Fixed. The page will be corrected when the cache is cleared, within 3 days.