Create a new site for living composers

[thebradish]

I am a church choir director, and I frequently utilize CPDL for my sacred music needs. However, I have been noticing more and more postings by living composers who write in a contemporary style which I abhor. These postings are beginning to crowd out the listings of "classical" sacred music - which is what I am looking for. I do not believe these new compositions are fitting for CPDL, as they are qualitatively different from the core of music listed here. As more contemporary composers seek to promote their own work (for profit or not), it will be harder to find the music which most CPDL users want.

I would strongly encourage the creation of a separate wiki site for the express purpose of allowing living composers to feature their work and share with other musicians for free. Compositions by living composers should be transferred from CPDL to the new site in order to preserve what should be the true purpose of CPDL, and also to protect the ease of use for both websites.

[CHGiffen]

Here are the composers (with birth-death years) who have had works posted at ChoralWiki in the past 10 days (Sept 13-22):

José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830)
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
Richard Garbett (1789-????)
Jafet Brüno (1983- )
Nathaniel Giles (1558-1634)
Jan Van der Wielen (1645-1679)
František Tůma (1704-1774)
Tielman Susato (1500?-1564?)
Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)
Benedictus Appenzeller (1480?-1551?)
Melchior Franck (1580-1639)
Charles Gounod (1818-1893)
Cristóbal de Morales (1500-1553)
Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)
Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594)
Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650)
Kenji Yamamoto (1970- )
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Nicolle des Celliers de Hesdin (1500?-1538)
Petrus de Domarto (????-1462?)
Ludwig Senfl (1486-1542)
Francesco Soriano (1549-1621)
Giovanni Gabrielli (1552-1612)
Josquin des Prez (1450?-1521)
Nicolas Gombert (1495-1560)
Josef Ignaz Schnabel (1767-1831)

Of these 26, only two were born in the 20th century (and are indeed still living), and the remaining 24 all died before 1900.

According to the categorization of composers at CPDL by era, we have the following:

26 Medieval eracomposers
484 Renaissance era composers
262 Baroque era composers
165 Classical era composers20
445 Romantic era composers
160 Early 20th century era composers
368 Modern era composers
21 Composers of unknown era

When people distinguish only between "classical" music and "contemporary" music, this would only mean at most 368 composers out of more than 1700 composers might be classified as "contemporary". And many of those 368 Modern era composer, including myself, compose most of their works in a fairly traditional (ie. "classical") idiom.

As for actual compositions, we have the following breakdown by era:

331 Medieval era works
4702 Renaissance era works
1746 Baroque era works
731 Classical era works
2231 Romantic era works
462 Early 20th century era works
1190 Modern era works

Thus, Modern era works comprise about 10% of the CPDL collection or approximately 12000 works.

Not all of CPDL's music is sacred: there are roughly 8100 sacred works and 3900 secular works.

Charles H. Giffen

[bobnotts]

Hello "thebradish"

It's an interesting idea, but I must say straight off the bat that I think it should never be implemented. There are several reasons I hold this opinion:

1) By painting all music posted by living composers with the broad brush of being in a "contemporary style" and "qualitatively different" from the rest of the content available at CPDL, you fail to recognise that not everyone shares your point of view. Perhaps you could elaborate on how all music posted on CPDL by living composers is "qualitatively different from the core of music listed here". How have you determined that this music is not what "most CPDL users want"? Is this solely your opinion or have you also sought the opinion of other like-minded people? Should we separate out secular music onto a separate website too? What about distinguishing between Renaissance and Romantic music?

2) Where would the line be drawn between works by living composers and those by dead composers? A number of composers who posted their works on CPDL have died in the last 10 years. For example, Clifford Boyd, John Earwaker and Arie Fokkens to name a few. Would they be in the former or latter categories?

Similarly, what would be done with arrangements of folksongs etc? What level of creative involvement from a living person would be acceptable for the work to me admitted to CPDL proper?

3) Perhaps your issue is with self-publication of works? If it is, I would say your opinion is short-sighted. I need only draw the example of the Renaissance in England when Messrs Byrd and Tallis enjoyed a virtual monopoly over printed music. Now we are in an age when anyone can freely express themselves on the Internet. In principle, this must surely be a good thing. Why should CPDL not be part of this digital revolution rather than exclude modern composers to a separate website because their output is not deemed to conform?

As you may have noticed, I've taken a considerably different approach to this issue than you. It seems to me that the best way to allow users to find the content they want to find on CPDL is by organising and presenting the content in a better fashion. Users of CPDL can already sift through works using the Multi-Category Search and using the more conventional category system. Alternatively, if they already have in mind whose composer's music they wish to locate, they need simply type the name into the search box. I would welcome your suggestions for ways we can better present the wealth of content on CPDL to our users.

[vaarky]

It's nice to hear feedback about how various site users use the site and what their needs are. I have to say that I agree with the views expressed by Chuck and Rob about reasons why drawing a line at some place in the continuum of music is potentially problematic.

I'd like to hear more about the extent to which the Multi-Category search capability described above, or the ability to click on categories by particular era for the composer or the work itself, would solve the core need you are describing. For example, is it an issue of coming up with more information for users who might not have been aware of these options, or are the options themselves something that you're finding cumbersome to use? I'd be interested in your perspective...

[thebradish]

I would like to clarify my position.

I realize that there are a great many works by living composers which are of a high quality and not in the "contemporary" style about which I have complained. I value those works, and do not intend to categorize compositions by date alone. I also recognize that my opinions on this matter may not be shared by everyone.

My problem is with a growing number of works from composers whose work is either amateurish or stylistically representative of popular music from the last 40 years. For example, when I run a multi-category search for sacred music in the English language(limiting results to 2,000), 57 of those results are from a single living church composer who, in my opinion, writes rather poorly. (I do not wish to mention any names). That is a statistically substantial number. The number of results for some great composers in this search is comparable:

Stainer - 44
Vaughan Williams - 16
Handel - 81
Mendelssohn - 54
Bach - 18
Byrd - 54
Purcell - 23

Now, this particular living composer is perhaps the exception and not the rule. However, it seems to me that aspiring composers are finding a convenient way to promote work which is either unsuitable for publication or fundamentally different in style and quality from the core of material found on this site. The result is a growing amount of rubbish for a user like myself to sort through when browsing for music to perform.

[vaarky]

So if Multi-Category Search had a way to allow you to select for Musical Era multiple periods and exclude others (such as to select all periods other than Modern), would that be one way to essentially solve the need you are describing? I'm not sure how complicated that would be technically, but wanted to find out if it would address the issue in case it's doable.

[CHGiffen]

If one is well enough versed in DPL (dynamic page listing) techniques, one can pretty much do this for oneself, say on ones own talk page, by entering the necessary code and simply previewing the results (but not normally saving the page). I know that some of us do that (and even leave commented-out code so that it's readily available). The main directives are "category" & "categorymatch" to include categories versus "notcategory" and "notcategorymatch" to exclude categories.

There is even a template:MultiCatList which one can use. For example, to see all works in category:Sacred music and in category:SSAATTBB but not in category:Modern music, one simply types:

{{MultiCatList|Sacred music|SSAATTBB|not=Modern music}}

To see all works in category:Sacred music and category:SSAATTBB (with no exclusions), type:

{{MultiCatList|Sacred music|SSATTBB}}

(in other words, the use of the parameter not= is optional).

Chuck

[vaarky]

It may not occur to some site users to reach out to the admins to inquire. By inviting it, we'd get better data about what would make CPDL more useful to site users. So I've taken the liberty of updating MultiCat Search to add the following:

"If you need to search using more complex capabilities than this feature makes available, you can post to the CPDL user forums to request assistance."

[Cdalitz]

If I understand "thebradish" right, his problem is a too high noise/content response for his queries on CPDL. Concerning this problem of information retrieval, I do not see how banning all "modern music" helps: you already can easily filter this out by category. BTW: the problem of finding music one likes is a current (and complicated) research topic in information retrieval.

The other observation of a lack of quality in some submissions seems to be a much deeper issue. The usual way to ensure some level of quality (a peer review system) does not seem to be applicable on a volunteer operated Wiki system (imagine every submission to be sent to three reviewers who then accept, reject or demand changes ...).

Moreover, I think that your assumption that the high noise ratio for your queries is due to "modern composers" is simply false. Recently, many libraries have posted online facsimiles on their websites of a large fraction of their sheet music, and when you go there and search for something, the ratio of noise to useful results is much worse, despite all music being more than 100 years old. As an exercise, just go to the Bavarian State Library and seek for music appropriate for your choir at, say easter: be prepared to spend two days until you find anything usable.

This brings up another question: assume you are only looking for Renaissance music, what is with music written today in Period Style? I think this should be categorized as "Renaissance" style. In other words, the categorization of the composer as "modern" should be independent from the categorization of individual works, I think.

Chris

[Cdalitz]

My problem is with a growing number of works from composers whose work is either amateurish or stylistically representative of popular music from the last 40 years. For example, when I run a multi-category search for sacred music in the English language(limiting results to 2,000), 57 of those results are from a single living church composer who, in my opinion, writes rather poorly.

Thanks for the interesting programming exercise. Disclaimer: I took the trouble to check whom you meant out of curiosity whether you meant myself (though my music would hardly qualify for "pop music", but who knows...)

I must admit however that I agree with "bobnotts". My own taste of music might be as snobbish as yours, but it would never occur to me that music that I dislike should be banned. Moreover, have you noticed that the music you have in mind is heavily represented on YouTube? So I guess there was a point in posting it to CPDL, because there seem to be people who like it.

Chris

[carlos]

assume you are only looking for Renaissance music, what is with music written today in Period Style? I think this should be categorized as "Renaissance" style. In other words, the categorization of the composer as "modern" should be independent from the categorization of individual works, I think.

Chris, I agree with you on having a more liberal categorization of work styles. There are modern composers that write exclusively in Neo-Baroque; likewise, we could have categories for Neoclassical or Neo-Renaissance(?) works. Just an idea.

[CHGiffen]

My problem is with a growing number of works from composers whose work is either amateurish or stylistically representative of popular music from the last 40 years. For example, when I run a multi-category search for sacred music in the English language(limiting results to 2,000), 57 of those results are from a single living church composer who, in my opinion, writes rather poorly. (I do not wish to mention any names). That is a statistically substantial number.

It''s not surprising that Bach was only represented by 18 works in English: he didn't use English texts, so these must all be translated settings.

More to the point, I should point out that the CPDL collection is growing in practically every genre and era. There is no statistically different change in the representation of modern music over other music since the nearly 7-year old CPDL was ported to ChoralWiki in late 2005. If I'm not mistaken (and I won't mention names either), the living composer who seems so distasteful to "thebradish" has contributed very few (if any) English language works to CPDL in the past 5 years.

Yet another point. A friend of mine dislikes the music of Randall Thompson so much that he opted not to sing a concert in which we sang "The Peaceable Kingdom" - yet (except for this curious anomaly from my point of view) I value his musicianship and, no matter what, respect his opinion (even if I don't agree on Thompson). I also had a (nonmusic) teacher who was an outstanding musician and pianist that expressed great disappointment that I was singing arias from Handel oratorios: his opinion was that one should only sing Bach from that era!

I would hazard a guess that many people (perhaps including "thebradish") would find the early choral music of Penderecki abhorrent because of its particular kind of modernism (completely different from "pop" or "contemporary" styles), and these people might be disappointed that I value Penderecki's music greatly - too bad! One of the great orchestral works of the 20th century, Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", caused cat-calls, jeers, and riots at its first performance. Most of Anton Bruckner's symphonies were greeted with scorn when they were first performed.

Finally, 57 out of 2000 works is a small number, however statistically significant "thebradish" seems to think it is. I would have been more suprised (statistically speaking) if each living composer had been represented by fewer than 20 or 25 works: outliers are a fact of life in statistics. And we just have to deal with that, each of us, on our own terms.

Chuck

[vaarky]

I like the idea of additional categories for NeoRenaissance, NeoClassical etc.