# How do you organize your classical music electronically?



## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

So, I have about 750 classical albums in my iTunes, currently all under the genre "Classical."
(And an additional 2-3 thousand on an external hard drive).

I was thinking of splitting it into subgenres.

How do other do this? Results? Frustrations? Advice?

I was thinking of using these simple categories:

Ballet
Chamber
Choral
Concerti
Keyboard
Opera
Orchestral
Song
String


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I organize my collection alphabetically. Concerning discs having more than one composer, I go with the composer I most prefer.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I used to try categorizing but ran into trouble with genres like suites or incidental music. Are they orchestral, ballet, or sort of opera? Then I decided the number of instruments didn't matter to me and I switched to time periods. But that was problematic too. Is CPE Bach baroque or very early classical? Mendelssohn is clearly in the romantic era, but his string symphonies sound baroque to me and I listen to them when I'm in the mood for baroque. Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances are really early music re-orchestrated. Where do I place them? I think ultimately it's up to how you feel about the pieces. 

Now I just have two external hard drives and put all my "classical" on one and all my "non-classical" on the other. But even that can be a gray area. 

It would be great if mp3 tags could have more than one genre attribute and you could sort by genre to create play lists. One genre just doesn't describe much. Fortunately most of my listening is completely random so I may get abominable pairings like Goatsnake (Stoner rock) played just prior to a delicate Boccherini guitar quintet. I find this exhilarating.


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## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

I mainly use Spotify now and I just create a playlist for every album but i used to use iTunes more. When I did, I just used the iTunes search fields and they worked great. Just typed things like "classical", "string quartets", "Mozart". But i HATE HATE HATE the new iTunes version. I think it is a pathetic design and I still have problems navigating my music efficiently 8 or 9 months after upgrading. I won't name specific issues because the list is endless.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Composers' last names; alphabetical order. If a last name is repeated, I include the first letter of their first name. I've found this to be the most practical and efficient way of organizing my music.
Of course, this only works if an entire CD is devoted to one composer, otherwise I have a separate folder for 'Compilations'.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I organize my music on Itunes by composer/music artist.

I have playlist for each composer or music artists and put everything I have by them in that playlist and then I order it chronologically.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

Yeah... It recently started doing this thing organizing by "Album Artist" instead of "Artist." 

Since all the music was organized by composer, "Last Name, First Name" everything ended up in this clusterF*&$ of a mess. 

Oh well. I survived.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Composers' last names; alphabetical order. If a last name is repeated, I include the first letter of their first name. I've found this to be the most practical and efficient way of organizing my music.


Ya, this is how I do mine.


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

Composer's name & by century. I hardly ever mention the name of the interprete...


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

How? By not using iTunes.

My electronic files are stored on two external hard discs (the second one a back-up), sorted in folders named for the last name of the (main) composer. If there are 3 or more composers, I use a folder "ZZ misc" in order to get them at the end.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

This is what my Itunes looks like


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

lol - retracted. I didn't register the "electronicallly" in the OP.

I don't


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I take a lot of care getting the labels the way I want them, but then I just use the search function when I want to find them. 

I used to create playlists by composers and performers, but the problem is that I'm a perfectionist and I wind up making a jillion little playlists, and then something goes wrong with iTunes (or they update it and destroy my formatting) and a lot of work is lost. At this point I have 122 days of music on my iTunes (I haven't even started to upload the Brilliant boxes of Mozart or Brahms, and I've left off most of the Sony Beethoven box as well but I'll get to it when I have time) so rebuilding it all is at least a year's work. (Incidentally, Apple, your **** program ought to build nested folders of playlists on request, and automatically reorganizing them if we change composer data or something.) Now one of my goals is to have things labeled "robustly" in the sense that it'll be harder for iTunes to ruin my library with an update, and that I can recreate my library without too much work. 

In the absence of those playlists, I've learned to settle for using the search function. 

For me the problem is being able to choose something to listen to easily. Of course I listen to whatever I want to, but lots of times I don't really want anything in particular. 

So, I enjoy organizing my library by something like "priority":

I make a playlist for each "album" (this can take some creativity with the odds and ends of box sets and recordings that have been released multiple times with various pairings) and then I put that playlist in a folder representing its priority to me. I let myself put about a day (24 hours) of music in the top priority folder, and increasingly more in the lower priority folders. 

Within each of those priority folders I have folders labeled "0," "1," and so on representing how many times I've listened to those albums (since the last time my library crashed). That's where I keep the album-playlists most of the time. 

Whenever I don't have anything particular on my mind to listen to, I start "shopping" in the "1" folder, and if nothing catches my fancy, I move down. When I'm actively listening to something, I move that playlist to a folder labeled "__now playing" (the underscores keep it at the top of the list of folders), and when I'm finished, I move it to a lower priority folder. Every so often (about 1-2 times a week) I browse through a folder or two and move some stuff up. 

I also keep a playlist folder called "playcounts" with playlists labeled "0," "1," and so on. About once a week I move the things to wherever they should be. The point of this is that I want to listen to music approximately according to the "80/20 principle." So I figure that the list of things I've listened to X number of times should be about four times as long as the list of things I've listened to X+1 number of times. If it gets too out of whack, I figure I either need to listen to some stuff that I don't listen to as often, or pay more attention to the things that I do. 

All this is crazy, I know. But it's fun, too. For me, anyway. 

BTW, my iTunes last crashed in February. (I don't know what happened; the library file just became unusable for some reason.) That's why I've been listening to so much music along the lines of Karajan's Beethoven, Klemperer's Brahms, Richter's Bach, Pollini's Schubert, etc... (As I've been reporting in the "current listening" thread.) I've been going through the jazz and classic rock equivalents as well. As those playcounts get built up, I'll listen to more and more unusual stuff as well.


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## Guest (Mar 30, 2014)

I haven't done this yet with classical music (it's all just "Classical" now), but I organize my rock, metal, etc. into subgenres in their genre tag, but then use a smart playlist so that things tagged "Alternative" or "New Wave" still go into a bigger "Rock" playlist. 

As for ambiguities, just funnel those into the more general subgenres. I see no problem with tagging incidental music with "orchestral", as that's exactly what it is. It isn't ballet, but there's no need to get bogged down in too many subgenres. Just tag what you can, and then put whatever's left over into "orchestral", "chamber", etc.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Do so by composer,greatest hits & the best series.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I generally use iTunes. My basic unit of organization is the "album", which is composer, work, and artist, abbrev. short enough to be easily read on an iPod and organized into nesting folders.

Example: Beetho Piano Cto 4 (Curzon), a playlist found in folder Beethoven/Concertos.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

I simply use VLC Player to listen to music. I make lossless audio copies of all my music and store them in an external hard drive. I don't make play lists.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

In my iPod, which travels with me to work and abroad, I try to group by composer. But I also have a few other folders: Chamber music I, chamber music II, chamber music III, Orchestral shorts, String Orchestra, guitar, piano, violin. And a few countries or regions are folders on the ipod for composers who don't get their own folder because I only have a few pieces of their oeuvre. 

At home, I just put on CDs, so I don't need to organize electronically.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I use iTunes and merge tracks by work and put the composer's name in the title. That makes it easy to search by any criteria and to shuffle play without getting random movements.


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## JakeBloch (Mar 27, 2014)

I have a large collection, and although I have to use iTunes to listen in my iPod, I only have a smallish folder of copies that I have fully tagged.

I use *MP3tag Universal Tag Editor* for getting music ready for iTunes/iPod. It works really well, but like everything, takes some practice.

I love *VLC media player* for listening from my PC.

The files are organized by time-period and then alphabetical. Except for a few exceptions, all music was ripped at 320kps from CDs. I have lost a fair amount of info by making the filename describe the music - no space for "Allegretto vivace, con moto..." in the filename.

I have my favorite versions or ties for favorites under the type of music per composer, and the other recording all stored under a "-- Alternates" folder.

All CDs (almost) have been scanned-in and the JPG files stored under another folder, "-- Scans". So some day when I get a tablet PC, I can sit-back, read the booklet and hear the music altogether.

When new CDs arrive, here is the process to get them in the collections:
1. Listen - if not liked, chuck.
2. Rip.
3. Scan
4. Put the mp3 and jpg files in a temp, specifically named folder
5. Do this for all new arrivals, over time
6. When I have time, open the images and rename the mp3 files according to the music that each is.
7. When I have time, then move over the renamed files and the images to the collection. This might entail moving a performance to the "-- Alternate" bin, or to renaming the sub-files, to keep each folder from getting too big.

Here are some screenshots of how it is set-up.


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## Gilberto (Sep 12, 2013)

I don't understand organizing "by composer". Don't you have any albums by artists who cover multiple composers on a disc? Classical is one genre I don't even both trying to organize logically. It looks pretty seeing a whole string of J.S. Bach but sprinkled through my list will be Bach under G, because I want all of my Gould together. And some organ disc of Bach and Franck is under....ummm, maybe B or F or the performer's name. Sometimes I like to keep all of a certain conductor together. But the nature of the discs issued in this genre makes it impossible to be obsessive about it without going bonkers. Don't worry about it.


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

This is a nice discussion. 
For iTunes/iPod/iWhatever users, I think the the first question before naming mp3 files is:
I usually search my library by Composer or by Artist/Conductor/Orchestra?
If you get a clear answer for the question above, everything runs smooth. If not, then you probably get a hard time to organize in a optimal way.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Composer > Subgenre > Work > Performances


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Gilberto said:


> But the nature of the discs issued in this genre makes it impossible to be obsessive about it without going bonkers. Don't worry about it.


If you go with the flow, it's very easy. Gracenote comes up with the tagging scheme I use 80 or 90% of the time. I only have to do minor touchups to the tags as I rip. I can search Gergiev and get all of his recordings. I can search Mendelssohn and get all the Mendelssohn works. I can search Three Places in New England and get that specific work. When I click on the title column header, it lines everything up by composer. When I click on the artist header column, it sorts by conductor.

It's important to not have too idiosyncratic a tagging scheme. If you follow what most people do, it's a lot less work.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

In the folders, I organize by composer as well. 

For albums that have more than one composer, I choose one (especially if more works on the album are by that composer). For compilations with many composers, I may just go by title of compilation rather than composer, but it still works for the whole alphabetical thing.

In iTunes, I have playlists of works organized by composer's last name. P > Paganini > Violin Concerto No. 1 (rather than by album, since sometimes it takes three CDs just for one work, like Sleeping Beauty). All files have album artwork so I can easily tell which album it comes from. I rip CDs into lossless m4a files that I keep on an external hard drive.


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## julianoq (Jan 29, 2013)

I upload all my mp3/flac to Google Music so I can stream from the browser or my phone, and also I am subscribed to the All Access service (pretty similar to Spotify).

For tagging on classical music I only tag Classical as the genre. I put the artist info in the album name,for example: String Quartet No.1 (Emerson String Quartet) with the composer/artist/album artist all being the composer name. May look a little messy, but I found to be the most simple way to organize it, since I add many albums daily and don't have the time to organize it better.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

Anyone else having the problem where iTunes arbitrarily changes the sorting from "Artist" to "Album Artist" and ruining your timely and neurotic organization?

I've been all over the iTunes forums and have yet to get a satisfactory solution.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Doesn't album artist always take priority over artist?


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

It's on a hard-drive. Arranged alphabetically in folders as per composer. If 2 composers, the first composer takes precedence. If 3 composers it goes in the Various folder.
Then I have just completed a lovely catalogue, which specifies where everything is.
Then I converted it into a pdf document. Uploaded it into my Cloudreader on my iphone.

Now I know what I own at a touch of a button.
No more accidental duplications.


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

bigshot said:


> I use iTunes and merge tracks by work and put the composer's name in the title.


How do you merge aac files that are already in the disk? I understand that one can do it quite easily when ripping but if you buy something from the apple store, how can you merge the separated aac files?


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I'm afraid I don't buy at the Apple store. I buy CDs at Amazon and join as I rip. I wish it was possible to join files, but it isn't easy. The only way to do it is to create a CD disk image using Toast or similar burning app. Then mount the image, join tracks, and rip in iiTunes. It double encodes it, but if you encode to the same setting the iTunes Store uses (AAC 256 VBR) there won't be any loss in quality.


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

I-tunes: I edit each work to give it a unique _album_ name, then play randomly by _album.
_
Simple!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

bigshot said:


> I'm afraid I don't buy at the Apple store. I buy CDs at Amazon and join as I rip. I wish it was possible to join files, but it isn't easy. The only way to do it is to create a CD disk image using Toast or similar burning app. Then mount the image, join tracks, and rip in iiTunes. It double encodes it, but if you encode to the same setting the iTunes Store uses (AAC 256 VBR) there won't be any loss in quality.


Most programs can join tracks, including iTunes.


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Most programs can join tracks, including iTunes.


Do you mind to explain how can you join tracks in iTunes?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

shadowdancer said:


> Do you mind to explain how can you join tracks in iTunes?


When you are ripping a disc, sort the CD by track number. Highlight multiple tracks and click the options button in the upper right corner. The option to join the tracks will be listed.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The page break has messed up the context here... Shadowdancer was asking how to join tracks on AAC files bought at the iTunes store. The only way to do that is to create a CD disk image and reimport it into iTunes.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

bigshot said:


> The page break has messed up the context here... Shadowdancer was asking how to join tracks on AAC files bought at the iTunes store. The only way to do that is to create a CD disk image and reimport it into iTunes.


Ah, I understand now. Yes, iTunes doesn't normally allow that.


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Ah, I understand now. Yes, iTunes doesn't normally allow that.


Yep. Bigshot got it right. 
The big deal is:
How can we merge Itunes Store's tracks in order to keep a sane organization of the library?


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Doesn't album artist always take priority over artist?


So I have discovered; this has been a very frustrating weekend of electronic media literacy for me.

So, my story:

I use CDex to rip 320 bit rate mp3s from personal CDs.

I title them in all the same way:

Artist: "Composers Last Name, Composers First Name" 
Album: "The Work(s) [Soloist, Conductor, Orchestra]
Songs: "The Work, Op No., - Movement. Specifications."

for example:

Schönberg, Arnold

Violin Concerto, Op. 36 [Hilary Hahn, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra]

Violin Concerto, Op. 36 - I. Pogo allegro
Violin Concerto, Op. 36 - II. Andante grazioso
Violin Concerto, Op. 36 - III. Finale. Allegro

All music gets split by composer, if the disk has multiple composers they get split and categorized like that, with track numbers changed; multi disks also get track numbers extended to make it a single album in the playlist.

This happened naturally because CDex populates "Artist" (iTunes) or "Contributing Artist" (Windows) and not "Album Artist" (Windows/iTunes), when I add the artist.

So ALL of my music is like this: less than 1k albums added, 2-3k external. Way too much to go and change it all.

Then iTunes went crazy changing all the Artist to Album Artist. I would fix it, then, within a few hours, it would revert back to crazy. Then I went crazy.

Solution: It was Windows' fault. There is a feature in Windows Media Player that will search the internet and populate unspecified information in you mp3s if not turned off. Windows was changing my files and iTunes was reading the changed files. When I would fix it in iTunes it would be temporary, because it would just read the file again eventually. When I would fix it in Windows, it would revert back, because of that feature I was unaware of.

Ohmylord this was my weekend.

Long story short:

iTunes, let me have preferences for sorting/prioritizing! This should not be such a big deal, easy fix.

Windows Media Player - buh bye. You have been uninstalled for causing me serious aggravation.

End of story.


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## connor (Feb 8, 2014)

I think Audacity can merge m4a tracks.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

connor said:


> I think Audacity can merge m4a tracks.


Might be a bit careful with Audacity and similar editors. If you're working with compressed files (MP3s, etc.) Audacity will decode the files first, and then when you're done will re-encode them. So you get double compression, with inevitable loss in quality.

There are shareware programs for the PC at least that will split and merge MP3s without any loss.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Mitchell, using that tagging scheme is going to be like swimming up stream. It's completely different than the standards that Gracenote and other auto taggers use. If you're committed to that sort of organization, you're going to want to disconnect from the internet tag helpers, and maybe use a different player than iTunes.

iTunes is designed so you don't need to ever access the folders your music is held in. It presents a database front end to you to work with. Gracenote will suggest tags and get you 90% there if you follow the conventions other people use. But if you absolutely want to tag your own way and control the folders your music resides in, you won't be happy with iTunes or Gracenote at all. It will be a constant battle.

I'm Mac based, so I can't suggest an alternate player, but I know there are dozens to choose from.


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

KenOC said:


> There are shareware programs for the PC at least that will split and merge MP3s without any loss.


Talking about it, do you or any other TC's have/had experience with Fission from RogueAmoeba:
http://rogueamoeba.com/fission/

Edit: They claim that the software '... works without the quality loss caused by others...'


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Mitchell, using that tagging scheme is going to be like swimming up stream. It's completely different than the standards that Gracenote and other auto taggers use. If you're committed to that sort of organization, you're going to want to disconnect from the internet tag helpers, and maybe use a different player than iTunes.
> 
> iTunes is designed so you don't need to ever access the folders your music is held in. It presents a database front end to you to work with. Gracenote will suggest tags and get you 90% there if you follow the conventions other people use. But if you absolutely want to tag your own way and control the folders your music resides in, you won't be happy with iTunes or Gracenote at all. It will be a constant battle.
> 
> I'm Mac based, so I can't suggest an alternate player, but I know there are dozens to choose from.


That's discouraging. Are you referring specifically to populating both "Artist" and "Album Artist"?

If you really think this will be a long term problem I'd rather fix it now than do it when I have another so-and-so thousand albums to fiddle with.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

shadowdancer said:


> Talking about it, do you or any other TC's have/had experience with Fission from RogueAmoeba:
> http://rogueamoeba.com/fission/
> 
> Edit: They claim that the software '... works without the quality loss caused by others...'


Looks good from the homepage. It even does fades, in native compressed format. Note that it's Mac only, and the free crippleware version is only useful to check it out.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Mitchell said:


> That's discouraging. Are you referring specifically to populating both "Artist" and "Album Artist"?


There's no perfect way to do things because iTunes and most other media players were made for pop music on the artist/album/song, and everyone has been jury-rigging it for classical music with a gajillion little differences in preferences. So no matter what you do, you're swimming upstream to a degree and you might as well suit yourself.

I use the artist field for the performers and including the work's information in the "song title" field. Here is my scheme, using the disk you mentioned:

Album: Schoenberg, Sibelius: Violin Concertos [Hahn 2007]

Artist: Hilary Hahn; Esa-Pekka Salonen: Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra

"Songs": 
Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, op. 36: 1. Poco allegro
Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, op. 36: 2. Andante grazioso
Schoenberg: Violin Concerto, op. 36: 3. Finale: Allegro
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47: 1. Allegro moderato
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47: 2. Adagio di molto
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47: 3. Allegro, ma non tanto

On most of my playlists I don't display album or artist information, since I can usually remember it (pretty well) with a glance at the album cover.

Let me try to post a screenshot of it:

View attachment 38490


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Mitchell said:


> That's discouraging. Are you referring specifically to populating both "Artist" and "Album Artist"?


No, the problem is using Artist for composer. The standard way of tagging is like this...

Name: Composer: Work - Movement
Artist: Soloist, Orchestra, Conductor
Album: Album Title
Album Artist: Album Artist
Composer: Composer

So, like this...

Name: Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Artist: Tonhalle Orchestra, David Zinman
Album: Beethoven: Complete Overtures [Disc 1]
Album Artist: David Zinman, Tonhalle Orchestra
Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven [1770-1827]

With this sort of organization, if you click on the header to sort by "Name" it will line up everything alphabetically by composer then work. Artists will sort into groups by soloist, then orchestra, then conductor. Album Artist will allow you to have an overall artist without individual soloists or different orchestras. Searches will cover all fields, so searching "Zinman Beethoven Coriolan" will bring this up.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

You can see that bigshot and I screw up iTunes for each other. I like "composer: work: movement" but he likes "composer: work - movement." I use, "Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827)" but he uses, "Ludwig Van Beethoven [1770-1827]." I strongly prefer "op." not capitalized, but he capitalizes it. And so we will never stop having to edit what Gracenote gives us (though I think he's winning the battle there: This Is Gracenote's Idea Of How A Title Should Be Capitalized, Op. 10).


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I really don't care about punctuation or the rest of that. As long as the search works and everything is in the right bucket, I'm fine.


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## Guest (Apr 2, 2014)

I try to put good data in for each track, and then keep my collection organized by smart playlists. 

Some quirks -

I never put composer names in the track names. Composer names go in the composer field - last name, first name. For single composer albums, I also put the composer name in the album title - e.g. "Beethoven: Symphony No. 7". For recital albums I put the artist in the title - e.g. "Argerich - Music for Two Pianos".

I put the year of composition in the year field. This in my opinion is well worth the time and effort.

I use the Grouping field to specify what kind of classical music it is - e.g. Piano Concerto, String Quartet, Cello Sonata, Opera, etc. I have about 50 or so groupings that work for my collection.

I use comments for tags which can drive smart playlists. For example I might add the word "Czech" to the comments and later have a smart playlist of all Czech music. 

Some examples of smart playlists:

All Classical
Recent Adds
Recently Played
Neglected
Bach, JS
1820s
2009 // i.e. year added to my collection
Brazilian

These are organized by folders: By Album, By Composer, etc. Album playlists are basic rather than smart.

When looking for something, I go to my all classical playlist with three filter columns at the top - Composer, Grouping, and Album. I can filter first on "Bloch, Ernest" then "Violin Sonata", then pick the album if appropriate. I very rarely use the search feature.

I also keep a basic playlist called "Now Playing" where I manage my listening queue. I don't use the built-in "Up Next" feature.

Finally, I pray every night that Apple doesn't try to improve the interface ever again. The iTunes 11 update just about killed me.


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

BPS said:


> Finally, I pray every night that Apple doesn't try to improve the interface ever again. The iTunes 11 update just about killed me.


Oh man, how I agree with that. I used both iTunes and iPod a lot. 
It is quite hard to find a tag scheme that makes life easy for both.

I started few months ago buying online from iTunes store and got the first issue: I always merge the parts from the same movement. And on Mac there is no way to merge the files without some tricks. For while I stick with Fission. It is working quite well by the way.

For classical music, I really don`t care about album content. Prefer to have the search oder: Genre -> Composer -> Work. In this way, each work is a separate album. The only thing that connects classical albums for me is the cover art.


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## jtbell (Oct 4, 2012)

I use iTunes, usually streaming to an Apple TV that is hooked into my audio/video system.

I've re-purposed the "Genre" field to contain the album info (label, catalog code and a very brief description), an "Album" is a single work (e.g. symphony), and the "Artist" is usually the composer. I append the main performer name to the "Album" title, so as to distinguish between multiple performances of the same work.

Genre: Sony xxxxx Beethoven symphonies
Artist: Beethoven, Ludwig van
Album: Symphony No. 5, Op. 67 (1808) [Szell]
Track name: 1. Allegro con brio

For a performer-oriented collection of various short pieces by different composers, I make the performer the "Artist", put everything into a single "Album", and pre-pend the composer's last name to the track title, something like this (made up):

Album: Sony xxxxx Horowitz encores
Artist: Horowitz, Vladimir (piano)
Album: Horowitz Encores
Track name: Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumble-Bee

I don't use the "Composer" field at all. The main reason for this is that the Apple TV displays only the track name, artist and album while playing, along with the album artwork.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Does it drive anyone else nuts when the catalog numbers and chronology of a composer's works are seriously out of sync?


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

Well. Yesterday I finished the great re-organization. I kind of felt like the main character from High Fidelity re-organizing his vinyl collection as a way to cope with his girlfriend leaving him.

I did not go to my external hard drive with thousands of albums, but re-tagged the 705 classical albums I keep active in iTunes. I made the "contributing artist," "album artist," and "composer" identical, so they will never get discombobulated or automatically populated, as well as adding life spans.

eg: Janáček, Leoš [1854-1928]

iTunes and Windows will not foil me again! I feel very organized and content. !!!

ps it took my 5 hours and my hand was cramped.

pps it was so worth it. My life makes sense again.


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