Telemann, Der getreuer Musicmeister

[steltz]

I want to see what the general IMSLP community thinks about splitting this page up. My initial concern was in the tagging: if I tag the 6 pieces that are there, when someone adds another one, it won't pop up as an untagged work. New additions can go seemingly tagged, but in fact untagged.

Kenneth Gill pointed out Rarus' argument for keeping the works together -- that if the entire publication (one of the music world's first journals, actually) is ever uploaded, it will be very difficult to split it into the separate works. Some of the sonatas apparently had one movement in one volume, and another movement in the next volume! (Kind of like a Mark Twain serialized novel?)

On the other hand, the more I research this, the more I think we need to separate these (simple now, since very few of them are here), and use the unifying list at the bottom of the page like we have for Beethoven string quartets, etc. Two reasons: 1) the sheer number of pieces (some references I found said over 60, another said 80) involved means the page will eventually be way too long to navigate effectively, especially if we complete the set, and 2) it turns out that Telemann didn't just stick to his own works. Though most of them were his, Grove says "he also included works by J.S. Bach, Zelenka, Pisendel, Weiss and other leading musicians." These can't go on Telemann's page anyway.

Or is there a third way I'm not seeing right now?

[Edit]: Can the individual pieces go on separate pages, and if the original is ever uploaded, have its own page with cross-references to the various composers? I'm pretty sure someone looking for quartets to play isn't going to want to download from 3 different journal volumes to get the whole thing -- the journal itself might be of academic interest only.

[pml]

Perhaps a solution might be to have Der getreuer Musicmeister as a special kind of publication page, and farm out the actual pieces to separate pages. If all of the material turns up the page would likely be very long, but perhaps the material should be restricted to links to works pages, and only include scores that are facsimiles of the original publication on the Telemann work page?

Regards, PML

[Carolus]

I think the best solution for a case like this - where the collection was issued during the composer's lifetime with his approval - would be to have a page for the collection plus pages for the individual items from the collection, or perhaps groupings of items. This way, you can tag the individual items with the correct instrumentation tags so things will be listed in the proper instrumental section by our category walker while leaving a page under the collection title for those who are more familiar with the name.

[steltz]

That sounds like a good idea. Next thing, though -- I don't have the skills to split these, so I would like to ask someone when they have some time (not urgent) to do this. Thanks in advance!

[KGill]

Done, although I'm not entirely sure that this is the absolute prettiest solution. Carolus, did you mean that the publication page would stay under Telemann, be moved to Various, or something else?

[Carolus]

Since Telemann is the one who put the collection together and the collection's primary contributor, it should probably go under his name. It is also most widely known as a work by Telemann. The few items that are by other composers could go under their respective names. Your page looks quite fine to me, KGill.

[steltz]

Looks great to me too, and I'll tag them next week, and then "Other (no more than 8 performers)" will be DONE.

I also think the full list should be under Telemann's name. The works by Bach, etc. can be listed with links to their own pages, but the journal itself (either the world's first, or one of the very first) is historically linked to Telemann because it was such a major breakthrough it music publishing.

Thanks for the help.