# Organizing multi-composer recordings



## RockyIII (Jan 21, 2019)

I'm . . . er . . . uh . . . well, some call it being OCD or ****-retentive, but I prefer to call it being well organized. 

I much prefer to buy single composer recordings for a couple of reasons. If I have a Mendelssohn and Sibelius CD, I have it filed under Mendelssohn. When I listen to Mendelssohn I may not want to listen to Sibelius right after, but then when I am looking through my Sibelius CDs, I don't want to have to think about one being filed elsewhere. However, sometimes in order to get a good recording, I have no choice but to buy a CD with two or more composers. 

I've read posts here and elsewhere about organizing a CD collection alphabetically by composer and then type of work, and that is what I do. Even though I don't have a huge CD collection, I sometimes forget about second, third, etc. composers on a multi-composer recording. What I finally did was create a printed cross reference list to keep track of those CDs.

How do others keep track of multi-composer CDs?


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

I file my CDs by label and keep a Word doc that tells what works are on each CD. That being said, over the past year or so I've been transitioning to a more digital collection.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

RockyIII said:


> I'm . . . er . . . uh . . . well, some call it being OCD or ****-retentive, but I prefer to call it being well organized.
> 
> I much prefer to buy single composer recordings for a couple of reasons. If I have a Mendelssohn and Sibelius CD, I have it filed under Mendelssohn. When I listen to Mendelssohn I may not want to listen to Sibelius right after, but then when I am looking through my Sibelius CDs, I don't want to have to think about one being filed elsewhere. However, sometimes in order to get a good recording, I have no choice but to buy a CD with two or more composers.
> 
> ...


I make lossless digital copies of my CDs and organize multi-composer ones as 'compilations'. It's much easier to peruse a digital collection than it is a traditional one.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I have an online catalogue of my CD's, which corresponds to the physical locations alphabetical per composer. Discs with 2-3 composers are filed (and stored) at the composer of my choice, the others are cross-referenced. Discs with 4 or more composers have their own entry (cross-referenced) and their own spot in the storage (under Various).

An example:

*Bridge, Frank
*

Orchestral works (BBCNOW, Hickox, Chandos, CD 1/6)
Orchestral works (BBCNOW, Hickox, Chandos, CD 2/6)
Orchestral works (BBCNOW, Hickox, Chandos, CD 3/6)
Orchestral works (BBCNOW, Hickox, Chandos, CD 46)
Orchestral works (BBCNOW, Hickox, Chandos, CD 5/6)
Orchestral works (BBCNOW, Hickox, Chandos, CD 6/6)
Piano quintet, String quartet 4, Three idylls (Goldner SQ, Lane, Hyperion)
Piano quintet [with Scott (C) - Piano quintet] (Various, BMS)

_Archived under other composers:
- Suite for strings [see Ireland, A Downland suite etc]

Archived under compilation CD's:
- Suite The sea [see Orchestral, Bax et al, On the sea-shore etc]
- Lament [see Orchestral, Bridge et al, English string festival]
- Three idylls [see Chamber, Bridge et al, String quartets]
- Pensiero, Allegro appassionato [see Chamber, Various, English music for viola]
- Adoration, Graceful swaying wattle [see Vocal, Various, The flowering of English song]
- Go not happy day [see Vocal, Various, Favourite English songs]

_


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## RockyIII (Jan 21, 2019)

Because of my dislike of multi-composer recordings, I actually don't have all that many, so for now the cross reference list I made seems to work. Don't laugh, I haven't done this, but I've thought about printing duplicate CD covers and putting empty jewel cases on the shelves for the additional composers.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Living in the dark ages, I keep a 3x5 card file with cross-referencing.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I'm afraid that the only sensible thing to do is to buy multiple copies of multi-composer disks and put them in all of the requisite spots.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Funny you ask. Until moments ago (literally) I've been using iTunes, and have been for 15 years. Most of my music is in Apple lossless files ripped from CDs. With iTunes, it doesn't matter how CDs are compiled or organized, as you can view your music by composer, by performer, by category, by album, by playlist, or by track. But as my third and final iPod classic is beginning to stagger, I just bought a Sony player. It won't have iTunes, so we'll see what happens. Fortunately, it is compatible with Apple lossless, and high resolution formats as well. Better yet, though it only comes with 16 GB of built-in storage, you can add up to 256 GB more.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My "Catalog" is simply the organization of my music files on a hard drive. I have a folder for each composer, and subfolders for their various genres if necessary. I sometimes break up compilations and file each track in the folder belonging to its composer. But usually I'm too lazy and just put them in a compilations folder.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Blancrocher said:


> I'm afraid that the only sensible thing to do is to buy multiple copies of multi-composer disks and put them in all of the requisite spots.


Hilarious.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

KenOC said:


> My "Catalog" is simply the organization of my music files on a hard drive. I have a folder for each composer, and subfolders for their various genres if necessary. I usually break up compilations and file each track in the folder belonging to its composer.


This is how I handle it as well. I rip all of my CD's to FLAC and the works are tagged and organized in folders on my hard drive by composer. I never listen to entire albums, just individual works. The physical CDs go into storage without any particular organization. It is very rare for me ever to touch the CD's again after I rip them.

There was a time when I tried to organize my CD's, but I quickly realized it was going to be a huge project and decided it wasn't really worth the effort.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

SuperTonic said:


> This is how I handle it as well. I rip all of my CD's to FLAC and the works are tagged and organized in folders on my hard drive by composer. I never listen to entire albums, just individual works. The physical CDs go into storage without any particular organization. It is very rare for me ever to touch the CD's again after I rip them.
> 
> There was a time when I tried to organize my CD's, but I quickly realized it was going to be a huge project and decided it wasn't really worth the effort.


Why won't you listen to a full album? I don't favor multi-composer recordings but if it all flows well together, I'll listen. Further, I don't purchase recordings that don't 'work'.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

I don't have anything against listening to entire albums, it just doesn't occur to me to do based on how my collection is organized. I don't really feel I'm missing out on too much.

The exception is when I buy a new CD. I usually will listen to the whole thing through the first time. So I guess it isn't true that I never listen to the whole album.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Since most of my collecting occurred before the digital age, I filed my records alphabetically by composer within categories (opera, symphony, concerto, vocal, non-symphonic orchestral, piano, chamber . . .) Some multi-composer recordings were filed under "collections," after Z in each category. Some such records I obtained for a specific piece, under which name/composer I filed it -- and just remenbered what else was on it.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_How do others keep track of multi-composer CDs?_

I file it under the composition & composer I listen to most. For example I filed this under Schuman


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Multi composer CDs can be divided and segregated into playlists under the name of each composer, at least when using iTunes. That way you're only hearing the composer that you want at the time. If it’s a compilation CD of many composers, I usually don’t divide it up but still post it as a playlist that’s easy to use a Search on.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

My cd collection isn't huge, about 500. It is organized alphabetically. When I have a cd with two composers I usually file it under the name of the first composer on the cd, the top billing. There are a couple of exceptions. At the end of my alphabet I have another section of classical music for CDs in which there are three or more composers on one cd, and the recital CDs where the performer is the top billing. It's not full proof. But I know my collection well, I can usually find what I want within a few seconds.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

If there are two composers on the disc I file under the work I like best and tend to remember all of my CDs (1000s) so I remember what else is on the disc if I want it. If there are many composers I file as a recital under the performer's name. This works for me.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

For a multi-composer collection such as this (John Harbison, Martin Herman, Stephen Jaffe, Robert Kyr, & 4 more ), I file it according to who is the best composer, in this case Harbison.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Enthusiast said:


> If there are two composers on the disc I file under the work I like best and tend to remember all of my CDs (1000s) so I remember what else is on the disc if I want it. If there are many composers I file as a recital under the performer's name. This works for me.


Same here. I do forget about certain recordings on some discs though. I am getting older, sadly.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

As others have noted, organizing your collection digitially pretty much makes this a non-issue. I simply title the album with the "headline" work first; or if both works deserve equal billing, I arbitrarily pick one. Something like this:

Beethoven: Violin Concerto; Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto

But a simple search in my iTunes will reveal every single album that any particular composer appears on. There are simply too many excellent multi-composer recordings to let this deter you!


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

Merl said:


> Same here. I do forget about certain recordings on some discs though. I am getting older, sadly.


I resemble that remark - what was it again?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

That is a problem.
I remain with the assemblage here who alphabetizes by either first listed composer (on spine) or, in other cases, with the better known composer, or, in several cases, with my preferred composer. Of course, I keep a cross-indexed catalog of my holdings. It was on notecards for many many years (yellow cards for symphonies, salmon red for piano concertos, green for cello concertos, blue for violin concertos, white for generally everything else), but now I'm utilizing a computerized index, and I'm nearly finished cataloguing everything by way of Discogs, to which I've actually added well over a thousand discs.

Sometimes a multiple artist disc will have a title which will allow for better alphabetization. But in some cases, things are going to get confusing and sometimes you will just not have an easy time finding what you're looking for. Still, scouring through stacks of LPs (and CDs) remains a pleasurable chore.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

I have very few multi-composer CDs, and I've ripped most of them to digital, which has been my favoured format for nearly two decades. My digital multi-composer albums are filed by the composer of what I consider the most important work (e.g. I've got several compilation albums listed as "Tallis - Spem in Alium") or, if I can't decide, the longest piece on the album (or the majority of pieces, if the works are of approximately equal length). 

For recordings full of "bitty" pieces by loads of different and/or anonymous composers, but the same artist(s), I file them under the performers' names ("Savall" or "Sequentia" for example) followed by the album name itself.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I'll add a clarification to my own cataloging practice …. If I happen to purchase a disc for one composer over another (say I wanted the Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 and it appears on a disc with the Shostakovich Concerto), even if my preferred composer is second listed on the spine, I'll tend to catalog the disc for the work I purchased it for (in my example case, Prokofiev). Sometimes the preferred work is by a major composer, sometimes by a lesser known composer, so exceptions will occur. There is a bit of fun in the very process of deciding where to put a disc, at times. It takes thought. And thinking is a good thing.

Perhaps if you have a specific problematical disc, one with multiple composers, works, whatever, that you're having trouble finding a filing for, you might mention it here for suggestions. Chances are such problems occur only when one has a substantial collection.

_______________

I happen to have currently on hand a couple thousand CDs shelved. I just went to my "B" shelf to see what kind of problematical disc I might find there and after perusing about a foot or so of "B" discs, in the middle of the Samuel Barber collection I found the Telarc release titled _Rainbow Body_.















For a moment I was perplexed as to what it was doing there, but upon taking it off the shelf I immediately saw on the front sleeve that it features, among its four works, one by Samuel Barber, the Symphony No. 1. The title of the disc itself derives from a work by Christopher Theofanidis, who is listed fourth on the front sleeve but first on the back sleeve. Barber is listed first on the front sleeve and second on the back sleeve. The disc also features Jennifer Higdon's _Blue Cathedral _and Copland's _App Spring_ Suite. None of the composers is listed on the spine, which is what I see when I look on my CD shelf for a disc. The spine lists the title, _Rainbow Body_, and the conductor's last name, Spano, and the orchestra as well as Label name and number. Nothing there helpful to me for my catalog system. (Those who catalog by Label will put this with the Telarc discs in numerical order.)

I realize I shelved this where I did because I had purchased the disc for the Barber Symphony, which I can never get enough of, even though the other works are good ones, too, and at the time of purchase two of the works were unfamiliar to me. I suppose that it might be logical to some to file this under Theofanidis, and if that works for you go for it. I will likely have more of a hankering to sometime hear the Barber Symphony and after extracting this disc may even turn to the Theofanidis work, or that by Jennifer Higdon, a still relatively unfamiliar work to me since I have not played it into my memory, yet.

So, this is one way to deal with a problematical disc. Whatever works for you is good!


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## RockyIII (Jan 21, 2019)

SONNET CLV said:


> I'll add a clarification to my own cataloging practice …. If I happen to purchase a disc for one composer over another (say I wanted the Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 and it appears on a disc with the Shostakovich Concerto), even if my preferred composer is second listed on the spine, I'll tend to catalog the disc for the work I purchased it for (in my example case, Prokofiev). Sometimes the preferred work is by a major composer, sometimes by a lesser known composer, so exceptions will occur. There is a bit of fun in the very process of deciding where to put a disc, at times. It takes thought. And thinking is a good thing.


I do that too. For example, I have an all Mendelssohn album with James Ehnes that includes Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. I also have a Hilary Hahn album with the same Mendelssohn concerto listed first, but I mainly bought it for the second work on the album, Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1. I file the CD under Shostakovich.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I haven't got too many - I usually buy them for plugging a gap of a particular composer's output. As regards storage, I file under the composer whose work takes up most of the disc space, irrespective of what it says on the spine. If the works are more evenly split then I file under whose name comes first alphabetically.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Multi-composer records are a major pain in my otherwise peaceful life. I avoid them whenever possible. The brain pain of sorting them is just too much. One could sort them by who's mentioned first... but what if you bought the CD for a major work of composer X, and composer Y is just represented by a short piece you don't really care about, but Y is mentioned first?? You could also organize them by ignoring the order of names, instead going for which work or composer you prefer in the combo, but this yields confusing and inconsistent results, your CD collection will look like a mess. ARGH!

Just avoid them. But some are too good... the pain! the pain! the pain!!!


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Portamento said:


> I file my CDs by label and keep a Word doc that tells what works are on each CD. That being said, over the past year or so I've been transitioning to a more digital collection.


Wow. That is what I do. I use a program which is out of print but still works in Windows 10: Classicat.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I had a friend who did this. This is similar to what Woodduck does.

He had cards that were slightly wider than CD's. I think they were 4 x 6 index cards. If he had a recording like the Rainbow Body he would make three cards that listed all of the works on the CD. He would file the CD under Barber and the three cards under Copeland, Higdon and Theofanidis. This may work for some.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

fluteman said:


> Funny you ask. Until moments ago (literally) I've been using iTunes, and have been for 15 years. Most of my music is in Apple lossless files ripped from CDs. With iTunes, it doesn't matter how CDs are compiled or organized, as you can view your music by composer, by performer, by category, by album, by playlist, or by track. But as my third and final iPod classic is beginning to stagger, I just bought a Sony player. It won't have iTunes, so we'll see what happens. Fortunately, it is compatible with Apple lossless, and high resolution formats as well. Better yet, though it only comes with 16 GB of built-in storage, you can add up to 256 GB more.


And it turns out that Sony has an app called Music Center for PC that is pretty much the same as iTunes. It took some time and there were a few minor glitches, but I was able to transfer all of my music on my laptop from iTunes to Music Center, and from there to the Sony Walkman player. In the end, it was Apple's decision not to support high-resolution formats, not to mention their decision to discontinue the iPod classic, that did them in. The Walkman can play FLAC and DSD files capable of better than CD resolution, as well as WAV and ALAC, and, of course, lower resolution mp3. And everything is automatically organized in Music Center as it was in iTunes.



millionrainbows said:


> For a multi-composer collection such as this (John Harbison, Martin Herman, Stephen Jaffe, Robert Kyr, & 4 more ), I file it according to who is the best composer, in this case Harbison.


I could never do it that way, because some day I would want the Stephen Jaffe piece and have no idea where it was. For vinyl LPs, and I still have many of those, multiple composer albums must be filed by performer. Do you have the LaSalle Quartet's Zemlinsky LP box? If so, notice that a quartet by Hans Erich Apostel is slipped in on side 6, no doubt because the Zemlinsky quartets needed only 5 sides. I listened to it the other night, but I doubt you would ever have found it with your system.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

I deal with multi-composer recordings by being incompetent.
CDs are shelved first by broad genre (solo piano, chamber, orchestral, opera/songs, jazz - I know it's a polyphyletic taxonomy, but it fits the shelving), then by composer within each genre. Multi-composer works are EITHER shelved by the composer whose work I am most likely to want to find (so a compilation of Shostakovich and Johann Strauss would be shelved under Shostakovich) OR if I can't make that decision, into a motley selection at the end of the genre. As a consequence, I have a chunk of [orchestral, Barber] but know perfectly well that there is a superb performance of his Adagio for Strings on an old BBC Music magazine freebie CD hiding somewhere in the also-rans. Can I readily find that performance? No.


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