Elephant in the room

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cjshawcj
Posts: 76
Joined: 04 Jan 2011 00:21
Location: Bath, England

Elephant in the room

Post by cjshawcj »

Quite a lot of work has been done already on integrating a recent contribution: Hark! The herald angels sing (Charles Wesley, Jr) CPDL #63219 I am loth to start correcting further, since I am uncertain that I would cover all the redirects needed.
The elephant in the room is that the piece is not by Charles Wesley , Jnr. The text is by Charles Wesley, plain or Snr. (although one web site claims it for Mahalia Jackson!) The tune is by Felix Mendelssohn, and there is already a work page in his name.
CHGiffen
Site Admin
Posts: 1781
Joined: 16 Sep 2005 21:22
Location: Hudson, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Elephant in the room

Post by CHGiffen »

I already noticed the wrong attributions earlier this morning and have made changes. The page, being a substantial(?) arrangement, has been moved with the arranger-name as the composer/arranger. Indeed, I was struck by the attributions to Charles Wesley, Jr. - who had nothing at all to do with the famous carol penned by the elder Charles.

It is debatable, whether a substantial arrangement should be posted under the original composer name or under the arranger name.
Charles H. Giffen
CPDL Board of Directors Chair
Admin at & Manager of ChoralWiki
BarryJ
Posts: 176
Joined: 03 May 2014 03:33
Location: Gunnison, Colorado, USA

Re: Elephant in the room

Post by BarryJ »

Thanks to several editors for their hard work!
There are several "substantial" arrangements already on the page Hark! the herald angels sing (Felix Mendelssohn), so I would like to merge Hark! The herald angels sing (Joseph Knapicius) with it.
Charles Giffen wrote:It is debatable, whether a substantial arrangement should be posted under the original composer name or under the arranger name.
You are correct; it has been done both ways on CPDL. A few years ago, it was explained to me that it depends on how famous the arranger is (was?) compared with the composer. For example, Thomas Ravenscroft or William Walker vs. Anonymous. In these cases, it doesn't matter much as long as both composer and arranger get credited.
In other cases, where the composer is known, I would prefer the work be listed on composer's page as a composition, and on the arranger's page as an arrangement (Examples here and here). That would require that the work appear on its own page. Putting multi-composer masses and J. S. Bach's larger works on a single page often submerges the composer or arranger (or lyricist) – that still remains a problem.
Barry Johnston
Gunnison, U. S. A.
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