# In search of a universal classification/tagging system for classical music



## Morwen (Mar 4, 2015)

Hello there,
this is my first posting in this forum, so I hope you forgive me if this has been asked or done before.

I have quite a large collection of cds and lps, live recordings from the radio, thematical radio programs and so on, and being a biologist I like to put everything in neat boxes or put meaningful lables on it. My main focus is on early music, renaissance and (early) baroque, but ultimately I listen to every- and anything that tickles my fancy.

When I started cataloging my cd collection (with CATraxx) and sorting my mp3s I somehow came up with a very basic system which I still use, but which is of course quite limited. So every cd or file that comes along is thrown into (at least) one of the following categories/folders:

medieval
- sacred vocal
- secular vocal
- instrumental
renaissance
- sacred vocal
- secular vocal
- instrumental
baroque
- sacred vocal
- secular vocal
- instrumental
etc etc

This is system is very rough and limited and needs to be supplemented but I still use it when I have to put a mp3 somewhere. In my database I have over time added other fields to tag things more precisely:

period
- medieval
- renaissance
- baroque
- early baroque
- middle baroque
- late baroque
- early classical (Vorklassik)
etc etc

When in doubt items (composers, works) can be labled with more than one period tag.

Another field is one for genre (in the broadest sense) and instrument information:
- mass setiing
- passion
- oratory
- consort music
- chamber music
- lute
- recorder
- lute song
- orchestra music
- symphony
etc etc

This obviously is a very fuzzy field, which in a way is quite handy but not very satisfying from a "theoretical" point as it mixes all kinds of categories.

Then I discovered another system used by the early music radio station hoasm (http://www.hoasm.org/Periods.html). It defines a number of research periods with each having several "topics", eg

I. Gregorian Chant
...
II. Central Middle Ages
- A. Troubadours, Trouvères and Minnesingers
- B. Music of the Minstrels
- C. Early Polyphony before 1300
- D. The Ars Nova in France

III. Early Renaissance
IV. High Renaissance
...
VII. Western Europe from 1650 to 1760
VIII. The Italian Settecento
IX. Works of JS Bach
etc

This system is very interesting and there is a lot of additional information to be found on the website. It is far more flexible than the simple medieval/renaissance/baroque/... system and it nicely identifies "hotspots" of classical music, but again it is a mixed system which is kind of unsatisfactory (eg. Bach and Handel get their own top level category whereas the other categories are of temporal nature).

So my problem is: I have not one classification/tagging system but several which have grown over time and which are sometimes overlapping. What I dream of is a single, comprehensive, multi-level system which covers everything from early medieval chant to contemporary music. As I said I like the research period system but I would like to expand it to more recent periods (where I have only scant knowledge). Another question would be whether single composers deserve their own top level category (and if yes which are those titans of music).

Anybody interested to add his or her comments, ideas, criticism?

Morwen


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## Guest (Apr 11, 2015)

Morwen said:


> Hello there,
> this is my first posting in this forum, so I hope you forgive me if this has been asked or done before.
> 
> I have quite a large collection of cds and lps, live recordings from the radio, thematical radio programs and so on, and being a biologist I like to put everything in neat boxes or put meaningful lables on it. My main focus is on early music, renaissance and (early) baroque, but ultimately I listen to every- and anything that tickles my fancy.
> ...


Only thing I can think to add is "style" once you get to the late 19th century. All in the same period you'll find post-romanticism, impressionism, expressionism, neo-classicism... take it all the way to the contemporary era and you'll find spectralism, post-serialism, minimalism, indeterminacy, lower-case, etc...


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I hope you find a workable solution.

This is a huge problem for me too. I've never settled on a logical system. My own system is admittedly highly illogical, but it works for my brain and now it would be too late to re-categorize my entire library unless I get really bored one day.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Morwen said:


> Hello there,
> this is my first posting in this forum, so I hope you forgive me if this has been asked or done before.
> 
> I have quite a large collection of cds and lps, live recordings from the radio, thematical radio programs and so on, and being a biologist I like to put everything in neat boxes or put meaningful lables on it. My main focus is on early music, renaissance and (early) baroque, but ultimately I listen to every- and anything that tickles my fancy.
> ...


Good luck!

It's a fractal phenomenon. The classical music Planck length is the work; above that, any given level of detail can be broken down into sub-levels. To make it worse for all our schemes, artists intentionally flaunt them all the time: where are you going to classify a Boccherini cello concerto arranged in a romantic style by Grutzmacher? Or Vivaldi's Four Seasons "recomposed" by Richter?

I like to keep my collection arranged as albums, but the corporate jokers just don't cooperate with me, nonsensically violating all taxonomies and periodization schemes with the abandon of a gambling addict that just won the lottery.

We read in ancient books that Adam and Eve had a perfectly well-organized classical music collection in the primordial paradise, but a yellow serpent came along offering the fairer partner a recording of Sviatoslav Richter playing a major early romantic work for solo piano (not a sonata) and a somewhat obscure late romantic concerto, assuring her that these recordings were too good not to include in their collection. She promptly placed it in the early romantic piano works (non-sonata) folder. When she showed it to her earthly lord, he pointed out that the concerto was first on both the album cover and the track listing, and that they already had an unremastered version of that particular recording of the early romantic piano work (non-sonata) in the early romantic piano works (non-sonata) folder. They considered their options until they realized that organizing their collection by performer might be more logical. The Almighty happened by on his postprandial constitutional just at a point when, with piles of recordings strewn across several hedges, they were trying to figure out what to do with a recording featuring works by Satie and Tanguy and completely different performers. Withdrawing Himself in disgust, He kicked them out of his belvedere, leaving them to the mess they'd created, realizing that all future generations would inherit the mess and that no ordinary sacrifice would be sufficient to put things back in perfect order.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

science said:


> Good luck!
> 
> It's a fractal phenomenon. The classical music Planck length is the work; above that, any given level of detail can be broken down into sub-levels. To make it worse for all our schemes, artists intentionally flaunt them all the time: where are you going to classify a Boccherini cello concerto arranged in a romantic style by Grutzmacher? Or Vivaldi's Four Seasons "recomposed" by Richter?
> 
> ...


Was the Richter recording complete, or did it only have excerpts?
For the OP, this topic has been raised many times, on different threads. When someone comes up with a truly useful system for tagging Classical Music recordings (all current systems are oriented for pop), they ought to be given a Nobel Prize.


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## Muse Wanderer (Feb 16, 2014)

Composer name works well for me. I also include interpreter or boxset names if more than one composer is included. 

I tried so many other options but once I reached 6 terabytes of music I was going insane!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Triplets said:


> Was the Richter recording complete, or did it only have excerpts?


Complete, it appears, but where the writ is silent, be I silent. I hadst better wait till I canst find some guidance!


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## Muse Wanderer (Feb 16, 2014)

Sviatoslav Richter merits inclusion into the primary classification as THE interpreter to listen to before disregarding a work being it by Schumann, Beethoven or Bach.
Much better than meddling with eras or style. His Prague live recordings are simply sublime.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Question for those who have a library of ripped music on a server. If you are ripping e.g. a five-disc set of Beethoven Symphonies with the XYZ orchestra conducted by ABC, do you treat the set as (i) 1 album (titled e.g. XYZ Beethoven Cycle) with discs 1-5 or (ii) 5 albums (titled e.g. XYZ Beethoven Symphonies 1 & 2, XYZ Beethoven Symphonies 3 & 4 . . . )?

If the former, have you ever had an issue with server and/or controller software playing Sym. 1 first movement, Sym. 3 first movement, Sym. 5 first movement . . . i.e. not recognizing the disc number field?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

I used to have a relational database back when I had 2,500 LPs and I found that the more _granular_ I tried to get with categories and classifications, the more releases I found that didn't fit the available slots.

After thinking about it for about 20 years, I realized I never sat down to listen to a playlist of "early Baroque sacred vocal music." I sat down to listen to Praetorius.

In other words the excessive splitting of hairs (or hares) was amusing but ultimately not worth my time.

Nowadays filing my CDs is done strictly by name (composer/artist/film/instrument, whatever I'll remember it by). It's easier, more efficient, and there are fewer arguments inside my head.


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