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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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