Cui works -- neutralizing of titles

[Lyle Neff]

Not sure which forum to bring this up in:

Please refer to the list of works by Cui (although someone might have done this with other composers as well): http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Cui%2C_C ... Antonovich

Someone has gone and changed the main titles for several works -- particularly song collections -- to remove the most distinctive part of the title, in this case usually the name of the poet. There was no good reason to do this. These opus numbers are more easily distinguished from each other by including the name of the poets, ESPECIALLY given that those names appear in the title as the composer published them.

Granted, there are collections of Cui's songs that are as generic as can be and have no such distinction other than, perhaps the French word "mélodies" rather than "romances" -- but unless one knows what makes "21 Poems" (or Op. 62) different from "25 Poems" (or Op. 57) (Nekrasov vs. Pushkin, respectively), this kind of change does a great disservice to the user.

I see that the same thing has been done in the list of Cui's works: http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_compositi ... %A9sar_Cui
Putting the poet's name in the "Notes" column is no good substitute.
For example, Op. 44 is not

• "20 Poems" ---------------------------------------------------------Note: "after Jean Richepin".

It's

• "20 Poèmes de Jean Richepin."

The whole concept of the opus is removed by chopping off a significant element of the PRINTED TITLE. And doing this kind of thing to the overall work-list changes the whole impression of the composer's output -- especially given that Cui highly valued the poets whose verse he set to music.

All these works so affected should be reverted to their useful main-entry points. Leave the process of creating generic access points to the categories and so on.

Would the person(s) who made these changes kindly unchange them?

[pml]

The same logic would change the title of Fauré’s Op. 11 to “Canticle” rather than “Cantique de Jean Racine”. The standard titles for many works throw away or distort information in this way, and there is usually no better reason than, “this is the way someone has done this before”.

The Bowlderising change to the works list is disappointing, though — it should not matter in the slightest if the target and appearance of a Wiki link do not match.

My $0.02, usual caveats apply...

[Carolus]

Not sure what p.davydov's rationale was here besides applying a generic title rule - which I didn't think applied fully to songs, particularly where there is a set of songs all to words of one author (like Nekrasov in Cui's Op.62). As I understand it, the generic title rule is mainly intended for common forms or genres like sonatas, concertos, symphonies and the like. It can apply to songs when there is no particular unifying factor about a given set of songs. I personally think a case like Cui's Op.62 should mention the author in the title as it was certainly a unifying factor employed by the composer in that particular grouping of songs. In other words, a classic case of an exception to the generic title rule.