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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer Apps
Many listeners of classical music like to organize and browse their music library by composer, rather than artist or performer. Unfortunately, iTunes only allows browsing by artist, album and genre. Here is my workaround: swap the contents of the Genre and Composer fields, and enable 'Show genre when browsing' in iTunes' preferences.

Run this AppleScript on all tracks of your iTunes library, and from then on, run it systematically on all newly added music. (It is assumed that you do not use the BPM (beats per minute) field. Note that this script was inspired by one found at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one...]
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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: shavenyak on Aug 01, '06 07:43:20AM

This will be a problem for you unless you ONLY have classical music in your library.

Putting wrong metadata into your song files is generally inadvisable. A better option for most users would be to add Composer to the columns shown in the Library view and click it to sort, or set up smart playlists by composer. Or just use the Search to find Bach.



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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: hamarkus on Aug 01, '06 03:43:58PM

In principle I agree about not messing with metadata, but then genre is pretty useless for me. I use it only to find my classical music. All other genres are much too loosely defined that I would be able to predict in which genre a certain song would fall or that I could predict which sort of music to find under one genre.
Browsing by genre is a nice amusing yourself by getting surprised what all has been classified under a certain genre.



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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: dhvu on Aug 03, '06 07:08:05AM

I didn't think this hint would be useful for those people that only manage a small portion of "classical" music in their libraries. I mean, if you think setting up a smart playlist for each composer would be a feasible approach, or even browsing through the entire library sorted on composer, then probably this hint is not for you.

Then also, almost everybody (look at the comments of others below) uses an information field for something it was not intended for. Why wouldn't I use the otherwise rather unuseful genre field in order to put an iTunes feature to good use? The "corruption" is, by the way, quickly undone - as you can conclude from the AppleScript.



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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: brycesutherland on Aug 01, '06 09:08:04AM

I agree with the first response: using the genre field for composer information is a terrible idea. There many other ways to do what is intended without violating the integrity of the ID3 fields.



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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: Anonymous on Aug 01, '06 10:10:35AM

This is a hint? Sheesh. Makes you wonder...

Set up a smart playlist for "Genre is classical".

As playlists have individual settings for columns, you can customise this view on your music as you see fit. For myself, I have the columns ordered like this:

"Name | Composer | Album (name of the work) | Artist (performer) | Comments (lead artists) | Year (performed)"

If I were concerned about the period of the music, I'd use "Grouping".

But then, I also go to the effort of encoding each of my classical works as a single bookmarked file with bookmarks for each movement. In other words, I've thunk about this...



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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: gidds on Aug 01, '06 02:34:11PM
I have a lot of classical music -- well, I have a lot of music, full stop. But here's what works for me in iTunes, in case it helps anyone else out too.

I split them into different genres: I keep the plain 'Classical' one for Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and similar. I also have 'Classical: Mediaeval', 'Classical: Renaissance', 'Classical: Baroque', 'Classical: Romantic', and 'Classical: Modern' for those styles. (I tend to categorise by style rather than strict chronology. I have loads of early music, so I'm considering splitting Baroque into early (Monteverdi, Charpentier, Schütz) and late (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann) for manageability.) That lets me browse perfectly well, using the Genre field as designed.

I use the Artist field for whomever the music is most closely associated with, so while that's the usual band or artist for rock/pop/etc., for the classical I put the composer there as well as in the Composer field. I list the performers in the Comments field instead. (That lets me mention the soloists, ensembles, etc. in enough detail, much as I do for the vocalists, drummer, bassist, or whoever in modern music.)

In the track name I squeeze both the work and the movement/section, for example:

Double Violin Concerto in Dm (BWV1043): 1 Vivace
That has enough detail to be fully identifiable (catalogue number, movement number) but still relatively short ('Double Violin Concerto' instead of 'Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra', '#' instead of 'No. ', and keys as 'D' and 'Dm' rather than 'D major' and 'D minor'). It's a bit bulky, and not ideal, but it seems to work best given iTunes' choice of fields: sorting on track name does the right thing, and it shows all the important info in the panel and on my iPod.

I also have a separate category called 'Classical: Reinterpreted' to cover Sky, Jacques Loussier's interpretations, electronic versions by Tomita and William Orbit, and anything else where the performer's made the piece their own. For those, I put the performer in the Artist field.

And I misuse the Grouping field, using it to store the source of the track. In most cases it's 'CD', meaning I ripped it from my own CD, but some have 'radio' indicating I recorded it myself, a URL, the name of the friend or relation I borrowed the CD from, or similar. It's surprising how often that comes in handy.

Everyone's music collection's different, and how you use it reflects your own interests, listening pattern, etc. Find out what works for you; hopefully I've given some ideas.

---
Andy/

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A script to enable iTunes library browsing by composer
Authored by: dhvu on Aug 03, '06 07:17:59AM
Set up a smart playlist for "Genre is classical". As playlists have individual settings for columns, you can customise this view on your music as you see fit.
okay, this is a workable approach if you have a small quantity of "classical" music to manage. otherwise it is a pain - been there, done that.
If I were concerned about the period of the music, I'd use "Grouping". But then, I also go to the effort of encoding each of my classical works as a single bookmarked file with bookmarks for each movement. In other words, I've thunk about this...
the "grouping" field is one of those scarce provisions in iTunes for classical music listeners, and even then you use it for something else? strange. you're having a lot of work each time you rip a CD or buy something from iTMS.

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