# Classical music in iTunes



## pastafarian (Mar 13, 2011)

I've read countless articles about the best way to use the various fields in iTunes to best organise a classical music collection, and I'm reasonably happy with where I've got to, but there are still a couple of questions...

Should each Opus be treated as a separate album? I definitely want each Album to represent a piece or collection, rather than the physical CD, but going with this approach leads to two oddities: 
First, when several Opuses logically belong together in one album - e.g. The Well-Tempered Klavier. Makes no sense for each BWV to belong in a separate album.
Second, when this leads to extremely short albums - e.g. Chopin's Polonaise in A flat minor.

I think what I'm asking is whether or not there's a cleaner way to group pieces into albums, and whether anyone has had similar problems to me. And yes I know I've very obsessive-compulsive!

The other thing I was wondering about is the best way to fill the Title field. At the moment I go with 
Title - Opus - [Nickname] - Movement #/Name

I know it's entirely up to me, but might this be too clunky? Because the vast majority of my library consists of rock music, I'm more accustomed to being able to identify each song from just the Title field (so 'I. Allegro' doesn't feel natural as a song title at the moment).

All help much appreciated - thanks in advance.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

I group my music the following way:
Example: Symphony No. 2 by Brahms, first movement

Title:
Symphony No. 2 in D major Op. 73, I. Allegro non troppo

Artist:
Brahms, Johannes (composer)

Album Artist:
Radio Filharmonisch Orkest Holland/Jaap van Zweden (performer)

Album:
Symphonies: Symphonic Cycles of Great Composers Disc 65 


I don't see why you'd need to group different opus numbers into different 'albums,' especially for large groups of shorter pieces. If you include the opus numbers in the title, it should be easy enough to organize.


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## mueske (Jan 14, 2009)

I'd stop using iTunes altogether, but that's just me. I gave every piece a different album, but still group peludes and such together, unless it really is a stand-alone piece.


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

I gave up with iTunes, not enough attributes for classical. No decent classical album display or flexible ways to view/sort/filter them either.


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## karenpat (Jan 16, 2009)

I use iTunes almost exclusively and buy most of my classical music there - I don't know if it's just me, but I don't see why the making of playlists should be an issue at all. I deal with classical playlists just the same way as all the other playlists. I have a playlist folder for all the classical playlists with several subfolders, and in it I have everything from separate albums to "best of" playlist for a specific singer or composer, and top 25 lists of arias. It works for me. Sometimes I have so many playlists I get confused, however my iPod doesn't automatically sync all of them, so I can pick and choose from day to day if I want.
As long as everyone finds a way to play and organize their music that suits them, why should there be any "rules"?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Personally, I use custom Album titles in the format:

[Composer]: [Work/Group of Works] _e.g._
Bach: Goldberg Variations
Brahms: Symphonies

And give the tracks names according to:

[Title] (Nickname) - [Movement #]. Name

Personally, to avoid the extra confusion, I do away with opus numbers, and instead keep track of the chronology of a composer's output by inserting the composition/publish date in the Year field, instead of the year of the Album recording (so, for example, listing a recording of a Brahms Piano Sonata as 1853, rather than 2008 or whatever the date of a recording might be).


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## pastafarian (Mar 13, 2011)

Cheers all. I'm happy with iTunes in itself (even if I rarely use the store), but appreciate it's not ideal for classical. 

Sounds like my method isn't far off what Polednice uses, except for Albums consisting of many more works (which I might well switch to to get around the issue of 6 minute albums). I'm still too new to CM to know exactly how to do this - e.g., my recording of Chopin's preludes includes the Polonaise in Ab major, but in the absence of having any other Polonaises by Chopin, it has to stand alone for now. But makes sense to eventually have an album called Chopin: Polonaises.

Totally agree on the year being the year of composition or first performance, rather than the year in which the recording was made. And I switch the Artist and Composer fields around for easier searching.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I don't organize my music. With the search feature, as long as you have the composer/opus number in there somewhere, you can find it.


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## Marios (Nov 3, 2011)

Hallo everyone.

I found iTunes very helpful. I also fancy using Smart Playlists. 
So its easy to copy to your mp3s comments a number (i.e. 1-5) depends on the mood of the music and then make 5 differend lists to enjoy it. I also can find anything I want in Radio Stations. I'm preaty sure that almost all of the stations are working...


Have a nice classical-day!


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## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

Using Ravellian's example work I use the following format:

Example: Symphony No. 2 by Brahms, first movement

Title:
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 In D Major, Op. 73 - I. Allegro Non Troppo

Artist:
Jaap Van Zweden: Radio Filharmonisch Orkest Holland

Album:
Brahms: Symphonies [Disc 1]

Composer:
Brahms, Johannes

I group the Album tracks as they would appear on their source CD rather than make custom albums - my reason for this is that I like to break my listening into "sessions" and the average length of a CD just happens to be a good amount of time for each session.
I like to browse my collection by using the Album Cover too just like searching for a CD or Box-set its easy to find the Music I want.
When I search for Music I use the Composer field for Classical and Artist for other types of music.
I can see the sense in grouping by Opus numbers or making Custom albums but Im happy using my current system and it works pretty well


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Again, my nephew takes care of all that for me...I still like popping in discs.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I just make a playlist for each composer


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## Evelina (Sep 30, 2011)

I use iTunes a lot. The main thing I have to play with is the name of the artist, as my music links to sites that keep track of what I listen to and I'd rather see lots of plays for Mozart rather than the London Symphony Orchestra (which naturally plays the works of other composers as well, it gets confusing). In that case, Ravellian's way of organizing composer and performer makes sense.

I don't worry about the titles of the pieces so much. But forgetting that I have a playlist on shuffle gets frustrating when a symphony skips from the first movement to the fourth.



Polednice said:


> Personally, to avoid the extra confusion, I do away with opus numbers, and instead keep track of the chronology of a composer's output by inserting the composition/publish date in the Year field, instead of the year of the Album recording (so, for example, listing a recording of a Brahms Piano Sonata as 1853, rather than 2008 or whatever the date of a recording might be).


Great, I'm going to steal this idea!


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2011)

Putting in the year of composition is a great idea - I've done that for all 8000 or so tracks I have in iTunes. ArchivMusic is a great source for years, but sometimes you gotta dig deeper, and sometimes you just have to guess.

I also use the Grouping field to divide works into various genres - Baroque, Cello Concerto, Cello Sonata, Choral, Early, etc. I've got 47 groupings at the moment, and some are a bit silly - e.g. Bassoon Sonata. But in general I find this subcategorization very useful.

For themes that cut across my groupings, I make playlists - e.g. Russian music.

You can also reset all your play counts to zero if you want to try to listen to your entire collection.

Re. dividing albums into works - this is a judgement call with no easy answers. Sometimes I'll create super-albums like Sibelius: Symphonies; sometimes I like to preserve the wholeness of the original albums. One good idea though is to create an album or two (for me zXtc and zOpera) for the odds and ends that don't merit their own album.

Finally in my case I use a lot of playlists both manual and automatic when I listen via my ipod plugged into my car stereo.

Hope this helps.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

violadude said:


> I just make a playlist for each composer


I adopted the violadude method recently as well.


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2011)

*Huh?*

I accidentally posted the same thing twice. Please delete.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

the best way to organize my music is by *folder structure*, since no tagging standard is necessary when viewing your music by directory. a filter function (instantaneous search) is also extremely useful.

ps. i hate itunes


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

I did this for years and then they discontinued Front Row...

http://www.talkclassical.com/15728-my-music-server.html


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Prior to beating up my last computer, I was doing a nested playlist system, with a playlist folder for each composer, and inside that a folder for each work, and then a playlist for each recording of that work.

On my new computer, I will get around to that eventually but for now I'm still just getting the names fixed. I do:

The album field like this:

Composer: Work [Performer Date]
Bach: Cantata #82 Ich habe genug [Hotter 1950]
Beethoven: Symphony #7 in A, op. 92 [Kleiber 1975]
Saint-Saëns: Symphony #3 "Organ" in C minor [Munch 1959]

The song field I use only for basic stuff, though I always include the movement number in case it's broken (as in variations) like: 
1. Aria (bass): "Ich habe genug"
1. Poco sostenuto - Vivace 
1a. Adagio - Allegro moderato 
1b. Poco adagio

I do the composer field: Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)

Eventually I want to change the dates to the date of composition, but for now I use them as the date of recording.

I make exceptions to this practice for some recital albums, which I don't always want to break up.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Also, I'm fairly **** about nomenclature, with brevity being the soul of wit and ease on the eyes the full glory of God. Thus: 

# - and not - No. 
op. - and not - Op. 
Ich habe genug - and not - Ich Habe Genug 
Karajan - and not - Herbert Von Karajan 
Strauss, R.: - and not - Strauss, (R): 

etc...


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