Choral Public Domain Library

Hello all - I have just registered as new member, although I have been using scores from CPDL from many years.

My job as a Musical Director of a Choral Society is made so much easier because of the information and scores available in CPDL. The members of my choir really appreciate the variety of music I have been able to find, some of which would have been almost impossible to obtain and perform just a few years ago.

I use CPDL to find anniversaries of composers, to look up music for particular occasions and with particular attributes. I would find it even more useful if the search facilities were better, but I realise this depends completely on the correct categorisation of all scores and is therefore a huge job. My ideal would be to be able to do a search such as "show me all scores of sacred music suitable for Lent written in the 17th or 18th centuries set for SSATB" !

I also feel a more formal feedback mechanism for reporting errors found in scores would be better; a number of choir directors have told me that they have spotted errors in scores but have not fed back the information. This I think does help to encourage the common view that CPDL is a good resource for free scores but that you almost expect to find errors in them. Do others agree?

Neil Hawes

Hello Neil, welcome to the forum!

With respect to the search facilities, have you given the Multi-Category Search a try? It's the closest we got to what you're asking. For example, your query

neilvh wrote:"show me all scores of sacred music suitable for Lent written in the 17th or 18th centuries set for SSATB"

could be performed by selecting the following categories:

Genre: Sacred music
Liturgical season: Lent
Number of voices: 5
Voicing: SSATB
Musical era: Baroque/Classical music

and the result will be:
Media vita in morte sumus (Henri Dumont)

But, as you said, it depends on the correct categorisation of the works for obtaining accurate results.
Regards,

Hello Neil, and thank you for you kind words about CPDL.

Have you tried the Multi-Category Search yet? There is also a link to this on the Main Page at ChoralWiki. While one cannot specify dates (eg. 17th and 18th century), one can specify musical era, as well as other multiple categorizations.

I just did a M-C Search on Genre: Sacred music, Liturgical season: Lent, Number of voices: 5, Voicing: SSATB, Musical era: Baroque and obtained the single result: Media vita in morte sumus (Henri Dumont). Repeating the same search but with Musical era: Classical gives no results. Going from 5 voices SSATB to 4 voices SATB yields 9 Baroque era results and 4 Classical era results. Of course this only reports works that have been classified in all the mentioned categories for the search, and categorization is an ongoing process at CPDL.

Errors in scores are a big concern, no matter where you find them, and CPDL is no exception. We rely on input/feedback from those who use our scores to catch many of these errors - simply leaving a short note on a work's discussion page will result in an administrator posting the appropriate Score error flag (if a user does not feel confident enough to do it him/herself). I disagree that users "almost expect" to find errors in CPDL scores, certainly with more recent editions. On the other hand, I'm not surprised to find an error here and there. But then I've encountered numerous errors in commercial editions over the years, too, including errors reproduced by using sources that themselves contain errors.

Be assured, however, that CPDL is always striving to improve the quality of its editions.

Best wishes,

Chuck Giffen

Thanks for the feedback. Others have already mentioned the Multi-Category search. I wanted to focus on error reporting.

You wrote that people almost expect errors in CPDL scores, yet don't tend to report them. CPDL is a community site, and if users don't report errors, then an important feedback mechanism for finding and fixing errors is missing. So the question is whether the mechanism itself is too difficult to use, or whether there is some other factor at play (such as people being happy to comment on an error but not wanting to put time into taking the next step).

In my experience I have gotten amazingly prompt corrections to editions from every editor I've contacted directly such as by using the option to e-mail the user or posting a message to the user's talk page (in fairness, Handlo.com also very quickly sent me a corrected version on a score I purchased from them); and if an error is reported using either the Talk page for a score or using the ScoreError mechanism on the score page itself, then there is a public record where others can find it if they want to pencil a correction in. So input into this process does make a difference.

I also feel a more formal feedback mechanism for reporting errors found in scores would be better; a number of choir directors have told me that they have spotted errors in scores but have not fed back the information. This I think does help to encourage the common view that CPDL is a good resource for free scores but that you almost expect to find errors in them. Do others agree?

Do you really mean more formal? The ScoreError mechanism published the reported errors on the score's page for anyone to see. Do you instead mean there should be a mechanism that's easier to use? Can you say more?

Thanks to all those who replied about the Multi-Category search. I was aware of the facility, but I had obviously not investigated it fully enough; it is quite powerful. I would point out though that it is quite difficult to get to that Multi-Category search page, if you are below the main page: there is no link to it from the "Search results" page, and none anywhere else that I have found except the main page and the very bottom of the help screen.

On errors found in scores: there is nothing in the help pages on what to do if errors are found in a score. My experience as a non-registered user is that you cannot find email addresses of editors and as a registered user it is not much better, some editors just do not seem to publish any details about themselves. It is not obvious that you should post to a talk page, and it is not clear how you find the talk page for a particular edition or editor.

Among people I talk to, I'm sorry to say that CPDL does generally have a reputation for providing error-filled scores. My experience has also been of finding errors that are so obvious that you feel no-one could possibly have played the piece through before publishing it. This is a shame, because the majority of scores are pretty good.

By "more formal method" I suppose I was thinking of a button against each score link that would take the user to an error reporting facility, but I can see there are impracticalities with this. But something in the help pages would be useful.

Neil.

Thanks again for your comments, Neil.

I've just added a link to the Multi-category search page in the Navigation sidebar on the left of each Choralwiki page. This should have been there a long time ago ... ahhh hindsight!

Score errors (especially if there are several) are usually documented on the "discussion" (talk) page of the works page where the edition is listed (click on the discussion tab at the top of the page. They may be flagged (and will be so flagged by an administrator if not done by the contributor) by typing {{ScoreError}} in the Edition notes section of the edition information. I also think there needs to be a separate help page (and link from the main Help page) for reporting score errors (the currently linked page seems to have been intended for correcting errors of the textual or wiki markup variety).

Chuck

Subsequent Edit: I've added a How to report score errors page at ChoralWiki, together with a link to this page from the main Help page. I hope this will be of help.

That help page looks great, Chuck, well done. I also agree with including a link to the multi-category search on the sidebar. I wonder, though, how many people won't realise that "cat" is short for "category"? Wouldn't it be better using the full word for simplicity?

Agree, the new page will be of great help! Thanks also for already having changed the Sidebar to include the new link.

bobnotts wrote:That help page looks great, Chuck, well done. I also agree with including a link to the multi-category search on the sidebar. I wonder, though, how many people won't realise that "cat" is short for "category"? Wouldn't it be better using the full word for simplicity?

Thanks Rob and Carlos! I started out with "Multi-category search" at first, but it required two lines, so I shortened it to "Multi-cat search" ... maybe I'd better change it back?

Chuck

About error notifications: at Choralia I've created a specific form to this purpose (see http://www.choralia.net/contacts.htm, item named "Error notification form"). People spotting errors may not be familiar with the wiki context/syntax, so a form sent to a group of admins may be an alternative, more user-friendly way to gather such information. Would this be of interest for CPDL, too?

Max

This feedback is EXCELLENT, thank you Neil!

I would suggest instead of Multi-Category Search, just calling it Advanced Search -- more concise, possibly less inhibiting, and a general concept that may tap into the familiar from Google and other search mechanisms.

A form for reporting errors would be great. I would suggest creating a form to just, initially, mail the output of answers to specific fields to the addscore group of volunteers. This would give a sense of the volume, how substantive (versus spam) the messages are, etc. The volunteers initially can put the details of the error reported without the identity of the reporter. If the mechanism results in essentially only valid reports, perhaps the form can later be automated to append a message to the talk page without requiring the reporter to log in?

I'll take a look at Max's form and take a stab at drafting a set of questions we would like a reporter to answer to start discussion. I also love the idea of a form farm such as where Max has gathered them all into one place...

Items marked with asterisk below are required but will not be published (we may use them to contact you if we have questions).

Items not marked with an asterisk may be published on the CPDL web site.

* Name:
* Your e-mail address:
+ CPDL score #:
URL for the composition:
Composer name:
Title of work:
+ If you did not include the CPDL score #, indicate which edition if there are multiple editions:
Details about the potential error(s):
For each error, please include page number AND measure number, voice part, the nature of the problem and any suggestion you have about the specific correction needed,. Include any information you have about your basis for a correction if it's not obvious.

Example: page 3, measure 28, soprano E should be a D (this is how it is in other editions published by X, Y and Z).

(someone write a better example, pls?)

+[date to be affixed automatically]

+ indicates that the line was revised subsequently by Vaarky based on feedback here

I strongly agree with the idea of having a form to fill in. I am certain most CPDL users I talk to would not be able to cope with inputting the wiki code, no matter how clear the help page is. I think having a form of the type proposed would increase the number of corrections being submitted by a huge amount.
Inevitably there would be some "incorrect" corrections, and people using it for the wrong purpose, but I suspect the spam rate would be low.

I suggest a button leading to this form should be on every "Music files" page, i.e. any page that includes links to a score.
I also suggest adding the editor's name to the fields. A date of submission would also be useful, although this could presumably be generated automatically.
What about the CPDL score number? Using this either as well as, or instead of, the score URL would presumably get round the difficulty caused if a URL of a score changed (which it might if it is on an external site).

Neil

The date would be affixed automatically if it is mailed, or should be added automatically if it's appended to a Talk page.

Excellent idea to include CPDL score # (I should have thought of that) and Editor. I'll revise the post above to have the suggestions all together in one place.

As for where to make something like this available, I personally think having it on every score description page would be great.

vaarky wrote:I would suggest instead of Multi-Category Search, just calling it Advanced Search -- more concise, possibly less inhibiting

I like it too. The problem is that a page with such a name already exists:
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Help:Advanced_search

Of course the above page could be renamed so as to avoid such ambiguity (perhaps to "Help:Search tips"?)