IMSLP:Categorization/Proposed Tags

This page lists tags that you think should be added to the system once the project is 'finished' (i.e., when the rest of the extant work pages have been tagged). Tags suggested here would probably form groupings out of the assorted works we have in the Pieces category at the moment.

These are tags proposed on the basis that we have several, if not many, works with these names in the titles or subtitles.

Discussion points:

  • whether there are enough identifying characteristics to the proposed tag to make it sufficiently distinctive.
  • Initially, some discussion took place around whether a word in a title was adjectival. In other words, "fantasia" as opposed to "fantastique" or similar words. Currently, we have a lot of "characteristic pieces" and the word "characteristic" is an adjective, so these have been tagged pieces. Does the sheer quantity (still need to do a count of these) of a multi-word title indicate that the phrase should become a tag? Do all or most of the pieces with that title have similar characteristics?

Contents

Dances

  • Cakewalks (some are currently tagged under the generic "dances")
  • Quick-steps (or quicksteps)
  • Two-steps
  • Ronde (the round dance, not a rondo or rondeaux)

Dramatic or stage works

  • Monodrama (French = "Monodrame", not sure how many of these we have, e.g. Thiébaut's "Le juré")
  • Ballet-pantomime -- we seem to have a lot of these -- is it a distinct genre? As far as I can see they are tagged simply as ballets. There is one other sub-category of ballets already (ballet héroique).
  • Chamber opera, e.g. Vivian Fine, The Women in the Garden
  • Serenata - Enea in Caonia (Hasse, Johann Adolph)
  • Farce - L'eroismo ridicolo (Spontini, Gaspare)

translations -- might be a bit obvious, but should we add?

Cradle song = lullabies (e.g. Woodman's Prayer and Cradle Song), but currently tagged under songs, and lullabies vs berceuses (which seem to be defined as 3/4 time?).

vocal

  • Threnodies (songs of lamentation) -- one definition is dirge, but that's not really the right context?
  • Frottolas (example)
  • Weise -- used in collections of folk tunes, translates as "ways", but with a connotation of regional. Also translates as "airs" or "tunes". Generic songs might have to do, unless there is enough folk connotation to use folksongs.
  • Aria di chiesa (Anonymous, Pietà, Signore) -- should go under "sacred song"?

morceau de concours (competition pieces)

The vast majority of these come from the Paris Conservatoire and their tradition of having the graduating class play in a competition. The competitions go back to 1795, so there is no homogeneity of period style in the pieces, but there is an homogeneity in another sense. The vast majority of these are 6-10 minutes long, and have a slow section followed by a fast section, displaying all possible techniques in a relatively short time span. If this is considered sufficiently characteristic to warrant grouping together with a tag, then the next question is whether to use the tag as an additional tag for pieces that were known to be used for the competition, but not entitled morceau de concours. An example of this would be Debussy's Première Rhapsodie, which would then be "rhapsodies ; morceau de concours ; cl pf". The Comments field should give the year of the competition. One condition would need to be maintained, in all probability: the piece would have had to have been written specifically for that competition. Excluded would be pieces like Weber's Concertino, which was used in the mid-1800s in a year which, for whatever reason, there wasn't a piece specifically written for the competition. All of the instruments have had some years where pieces from the general repertoire have been used.

others (may require more discussion)

  • Solfeggio or Solfeggieto (pl. solfeggi or solfeggieti); apart from the fact that instrumental works with this title would probably be imitations of CPE Bach's more famous piece, the original meaning of the word was a vocal exercise, frequently used for warming up, though many of them are quite long. On the other hand, the instrumental solfeggietti are also good for warming up.
  • Idylls
  • Reveries -- and if we have idylls and reveries, then do we have to consider "poemes"?
  • Aquarelles
  • Novelettes
  • Characteristic pieces
  • Perpetuum mobiles
  • Bluette -- we actually have a few of these -- what are they? I found definitions like these: œuvre, chanson sans prétentions, amour, amourette, badinage, badinerie, bagatelle, bon mot, brandon, caprice, étincelle, fantaisie, flammèche, fleurette, flirt, galanterie, jeu d'esprit, mot d'esprit, passade, pointe, saynète, toquade. There are at least 5 taggable synonyms here -- is this too scattered to consider creating a tag for?
  • haiku (As time progresses many haiku pieces will be stepped into PD soon.)

voicing or instrumentation

  • mv and fv - for instances where a composer specifies gender (possibly also cv?) One example would be Buck's The Voyage of Columbus, specifies male soloists and male choir (already taken care of by mch).
  • Tag for cornett/cornetto/Zink (brasswind instrument used 15-18th centuries), several works for this instrument have been uploaded.

items with narrator

Not all are melodramas, but that is what we are supposed to use for items with narrator. Peter and the Wolf is tagged as a symphonic poem, which is a bit of a stretch, and perhaps not very appropriate.

writings, subcategories

  • orchestration (Rimsky-Korsakov, Berlioz, Forsyth)
  • composers catalogs (Jacobs-Bond, Saint-Saëns); currently under plain "catalogs". Where all items in a single catalog belong to a single composer/author, this new tag would designate it as such.
  • music aesthetics (Descartes, Musicae Compendium, and there are probably others)
  • music composition (Nivers, Traité de la composition de musque); is this sufficiently different from music theory?

items that could go under a different tag rather than use "pieces"

  • epithalamium = wedding music? An epithalamium is a song or poem to celebrate marriage.
  • I'd also like to propose that "Charakterstück" or "Character pieces" gets put under a different tag. They are very specific genres in that they express a certain mood: Wild Horseman, First Loss (Schumann), The Mill in the Black Forest (Richard Eilenberg), etc.
  • Tunes - not used often enough to really consider seriously, but a "tune" is a specific type of melody that could be considered, like in this work. One could argue to do something similar with all the sub-types of melody, but "tune" is really the only one that is used commonly enough. A case could be made for "themes", but they are usually prefixed with "variations", "capricio", "overture" or something similar, and of course the tag would be that.
  • Konzertstück - It is its own musical genre in Germany, and there are enough of them that we should probably have a tag.

Proposed additions

See hereP.davydov 04:33, 27 December 2013 (EST)