Genre categories. Your views wanted!

[Notenschreiber]

Another point: In the genre Instrumental(chamber) we have the subgenres duet, trio, quartet, quintet,sextet,
septet, octet and other(no more than 8 performers). What other natural numbers one can find between 2 and 8 ????

[Deinonychus]

Are you not aware of the sonata for two and a half violins by Xavier Exelsior de la Plaza (1732-1798)?

[steltz]

I haven't posted my list yet, but I'm coming up with more questions -- for instance, please post your opinions on this:

In some cases, a piece for one soloist and orchestra that is not entitled "concerto" is under the concerto genre. In other cases, it is under the "symphonic piece with soloists" category.

Apart from the fact that there should be consistency here, making a decision on which way to go will need some consensus.

Concerto: although a very narrow view would dictate that only those works with the title "concerto" should be in this category, there is a certain connotation of a solo (virtuoso?) part that can apply even if the title is, for example "Romance".

Symphonic piece with soloists: First, the plural definitely doesn't apply to a work for one soloist, so possibly this should change to "soloist(s)", but there is also a slightly different genre for works where the soloists aren't engaging with their parts in the same way as a concerto. For instance, my immediate reaction to this genre is to put symphonies with vocal soloists here. Perhaps even Harold in Italy should be here, but Saint-Saens Romance for violin and orchestra?

(I'm the one who changed the Saint-Saens piece to "symphonic piece with soloists", because it was listed as "single instrument with piano", which was not original and only applicable to the arrangement. However, Berlioz' Revere et Caprice is currently listed as a concerto, despite its title. I think I prefer this latter approach.)

Opinions?

[Davydov]

Hi Steltz. You're right that there are many works which could be placed into either of the "Concerto" or "Symphonic Piece with Soloist" categories. I can see that if we confined the "Concerto" genre to works with the word "Concerto" in the title, then this might seem unnecessary (as the clue is in the title!). But there are a lot of works for solo instrument and orchestra that are concertos in all but name (e.g. Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini), so do we need some overall category that can encompass this group of works?

The overall problem seems to be that many of the existing genre headings are unsuitable. So the question is: if we start over with a completely new list of genres, what would people like to see on the list?

Is it helpful to classify works according to their instrumentation (e.g. string quartets, unaccompanied choral works, etc.), or by style (symphonies, concertos, waltzes, nocturnes, lieder)?

[Lyle Neff]

[...] Is it helpful to classify works according to their instrumentation (e.g. string quartets, unaccompanied choral works, etc.), or by style (symphonies, concertos, waltzes, nocturnes, lieder)?

The types of pieces in that latter group are examples of genre, not "style."

Style, genre, and instrumentation are each different ways of categorizing pieces of music, and should not be thought of as interchangeable. Waltzes (a genre), for instance, come in different styles and instrumentations.

[steltz]

I'm trying to get my head around all of this. In this particular case, the instrumentation doesn't really help, and since there are places for both pieces of info in the info box, both will be visible anyway.

(thinking aloud . . . .)
I think the problem here is that if I want to browse concertos for violin, I would like the Romance to come up. I'm not sure I would want to have to remember that I must also browse Symphonic piece with soloists, and I would definitely not want to wade through the symphonies with vocal soloists in order to get to it. So I think I would want it to be under concertos, though we have to take the genre "concerto" to mean any work, regardless of title, where there is an "out front" virtuoso soloist element to the piece.

Does anyone have any objections (supported by some sort of logic) to this?

[Davydov]

Style, genre, and instrumentation are each different ways of categorizing pieces of music, and should not be thought of as interchangeable. Waltzes (a genre), for instance, come in different styles and instrumentations.

At the moment they are being used interchangeably, so this is an opportunity to come up with somethng better. There's no point having genre categories unless people find them useful, and Steltz has helpfully indicated that he'ld like to be able to search for works with solo violin with orchestra. Any other suggestions?

[steltz]

I've been looking up definitions of the word concerto, and most of them say something like 'a work for soloist and orchestra'. Under this definition, the work doesn't have to be entitled 'concerto'. Even Grove's says 'An instrumental work that maintains contrast between an orchestral ensemble and a smaller group or a solo instrument, or among various groups of an undivided orchestra.' Again, the title can be anything else.

So Concerto as a genre should be able to include works such as Saint-Saens' Romance, and I think this is an argument for not putting them under 'Symphonic piece with soloists'.

Rebuttals?

[KGill]

Not from me. However, most people probably wouldn't think of that piece as a 'concerto', so maybe there should also be some kind of explanation displayed on the page for whatever you're hovering over (or something). Or maybe an alternate designation (less entrenched in the common idea of the word) would be preferable.

[Lyle Neff]

Not from me. However, most people probably wouldn't think of that piece as a 'concerto', so maybe there should also be some kind of explanation displayed on the page for whatever you're hovering over (or something). Or maybe an alternate designation (less entrenched in the common idea of the word) would be preferable.

"Concerted work"

[steltz]

Is it possible to put explanations in brackets and assume that people will know not to include the bracketed stuff in the heading? E.G. "concerted work (concerto, sinfonia concertante, piece for soloist(s) and orchestra)".

Obviously, only "concerted work" goes on the work page.

[Davydov]

I don't think we should go so far as to invent new musical terms where there are existing ones that already do the job (i.e. "Concertante Pieces"). But if the objective is to be able to find, say, all works written for violin soloist with orchestra, then why not have a category for that, e.g. "Concertante Pieces (violin)", along with "Concertante Pieces (piano)", "Concertante Pieces (cello)", and so on for the most popular solo instruments, with the more obscure remaing simply as "Concertante Pieces".

[KGill]

That's a good realization of this- but that would require a much more specific 'instrumentation' category mechanism (i.e. in place of the non-categorized text field). Which would also theoretically require quite a lot of cleanup work...

[Davydov]

That's a good realization of this- but that would require a much more specific 'instrumentation' category mechanism (i.e. in place of the non-categorized text field). Which would also theoretically require quite a lot of cleanup work...

Perhaps not as much as one might think (there are ways of speeding up the process). So if people come up with a 'wish list' of new categories, we'll see what's possible...

[steltz]

Here's a new topic for discussion.

Songs for 1 singer and piano are currently being uploaded, in a fair quantity, as "duets". While part of me sees that this is a duet, I also know that as a searchable category, it is better to keep duets as instrumental, and voice + piano as lieder, chanson, art song, whatever. The reason is that singers won't want to search through gallons of violin duets to find songs, and violinists won't want to wade through songs to get to duets that include them.

They could be re-categorized as lieder, but some are Spanish. How narrow do we want to be with the definition of lieder, or art song, or chanson? Or does anyone disagree that classifying them as duets will confuse searchability generally?

Opinions, please?