Titles of Early American Compositions

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BarryJ
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Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by BarryJ »

I gave a William Billings tune (West-Sudbury, 1796) some words from Isaac Watts that I thought were more appropriate, at least for some users.
The composition had already been entered using the first phrase of the words with which it was published in 1796, "Here is a song, that doth belong." So that's where I put my edition, being unwilling to go against the first person to enter the song. But it leaves me a little uneasy, because it's now cataloged under the wrong words. What should I have done?
There is a similar situation with "Rutland" by Billings, which is cited on CD's, YouTube, etc. as "Rutland," not "My flesh shall slumber in the ground."
It seems to me that songs such as this should be cataloged under the title given when it was first published, if there was one. If there was no title when it was published, or it was given an obviously generic title such as Song or Anthem, then the first phrase might be appropriate.
This situation also involves a problem with a composer setting the same text to different tunes, as Billings did repeatedly.
Thank you for your consideration.
Barry Johnston
Gunnison, U. S. A.
carlos
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by carlos »

I'm not very knowledgeable in this matter, but I tend to agree with you on that. If Rutland is the original title, then in my opinion it should also be the title of the page on CPDL.

Regarding a text that is set to different tunes, one solution would be to include the tune in the title, so as to disambiguate it:

"Title [or first words of text] (Tune) (Composer Name)"
CHGiffen
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by CHGiffen »

I had advocated putting the tune in square brackets in the title, for example: Let thy Blood in mercy poured [Rasmus] (Charles H. Giffen) ... but this wasn't a popular idea several years ago.

Maybe views now are different and it is time for a change?
Charles H. Giffen
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Richard Mix
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by Richard Mix »

The very widespread convention is to put the tune names in small caps: O Son of God, in Galilee (<s>LEWIS-TOWN</s>) (WIlliam Billings) is what's in the several hymnals to hand. If that markup is unfeasible in page titles, I'd still much rather see all-caps for tunes; square brackets strike me as an unnecessary novelty.
CHGiffen
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by CHGiffen »

I would like to see Caps&Smallcaps for tune names, too, but my preference for square brackets for the tune name is that it denotes something uniquely extra, as parentheses in titles really are supposed to enclose only the composer/arranger. Unfortunately, html and wiki markup, unlike Don Knuth's TeX fonts don't make allowance for combined caps/smallcaps (the small caps appear when one types lowercase, while typing in caps produces normal sized caps). The allcaps format for hymn tunes (whether in normal size or small size) is a modern cop-out. If you want some sort of "all" caps for hymn tunes, then I MUCH prefer something like "K<s>INGSFOLD</s>".

I've encountered this problem with inserting LORD into text underlays, too. The correct way is "L<s>ORD</s>" (assuming that <s>...</s> is available). Neither "LORD" nor "<s>LORD</s>" is acceptable.

It would all be so much easier if fonts were supplied with a caps/smallcaps version, so that "<sc>Tallis Canon</sc>" produced the desired "T<s>ALLIS</s> C<s>ANON</s>" ... sigh.

Note: Don't try this with <s>...</s>, though ... because that produces strikeout text (ie. a line through the text). You have to use <small>..</small> instead.

But I'm one who went through the development of TeX when people actually respected typesetting tradition. Most of you didn't.
Charles H. Giffen
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CHGiffen
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by CHGiffen »

Well, well, what do you know!! ChoralWiki already has a small caps template {{sc}}, so that, for example,

{{sc|Down Ampney}} produces: DOWN AMPNEY ... as desired.
Charles H. Giffen
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Richard Mix
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by Richard Mix »

Very neat! But neither option works in page names...

Btw, is it very important to eliminate parentheses for non-composer dabs like publication dates &c? I can at least see how "full score" is unnecessary in the following:

Messiah: No. 49-50 - Then shall be brought to pass (recit.) & O death (duet) (full score) (George Frideric Handel)
CHGiffen
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by CHGiffen »

To get formatting of a page name, one uses the "Magic Word" DISPLAYTITLE. For example,

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Come down, O Love divine [{{sc|Down Ampney}}] (Ralph Vaughan Williams)}} would make a page title read:

Come down, O Love divine [DOWN AMPNEY] (Ralph Vaughan Williams)

I prefer the above to something like, since the [...] would be idiomatic for tune names:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Come down, O Love divine (tune: {{sc|Down Ampney}}) (Ralph Vaughan Williams)}}, producing:

Come down, O Love divine (tune: DOWN AMPNEY) (Ralph Vaughan Williams)
Charles H. Giffen
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BarryJ
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by BarryJ »

Thank you for the discussion. (And in the 1980s-90s, I composed a lot of documents using TeX; now I know why this discussion seems familiar to me)
It sounds like you are approaching a suggested format for titles of music, when a title was not specified when originally published.
I think it would be good if tunes were recognizable by their type face, and caps-small caps sounds like a reasonable way to go.

My original question, however, had to do with the titles we give to songs. I would prefer to title songs as they were originally titled, to honor those who originally published them. And tune titles are already in common use, as I pointed out with Rutland.

But I can see that perhaps some consistency might be helpful.

I tried some of this out with William Billings' Asia. I don't know how to make the title not be italics, though. What would italics used for in your suggested format?
Barry Johnston
Gunnison, U. S. A.
EJG
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Re: Naming conventions for works pages

Post by EJG »

Thanks for starting this discussion, Barry. Re the names we give to pages, I'm much more in favour of using the form:

First line of text (Composer name)

where we are only aware of one setting of the text by the composer, and

First line of text (Disambiguation) (Composer)

where we know of more than one - the disambiguation could be a tune name (if the tune has a name), or, for example, a reference to the title of the collection in which this particular setting was published, the number of parts ('a 4' or 'a 8'), etc.

In respect of Billings' 'West-Sudbury' tune, that's the only setting by him of 'Here is a song, which doth belong' that I'm aware of, so that's why I called the page 'Here is a song, which doth belong (William Billings)' when I set it up. Because the tune name is given within the text of the page, anyone entering 'west sudbury billings' in the search box would get search results including this page, although we could additionally set up a redirect from 'West-Sudbury (William Billings)' to this page to make sure they got straight to it.
As regards other texts set to the same tune, I'd be in favour of putting these on separate pages, named for the text that is set (e.g. 'O God, my refuge, hear my cries (William Billings)'), again with the tune name used in the page name only if it's needed for disambiguation (so, for example, if we had a setting of Watts' Ps. 55 to another tune by Billings, we'd title this page 'O God, my refuge, hear my cries (West-Sudbury) (William Billings)' to distinguish it). We can cross-link between the pages in the 'Description' section of the page (for example 'For a setting of an alternative text (Isaac Watts' version of Ps. 55) to this tune, see [[O God, my refuge, hear my cries (William Billings)]]').

My main reason for favouring first lines of text over tune names as the basis of page naming is that almost all the editions we have on the site have texts (with the exception of a very few hymn tune harmonisations without text underlay), whereas only some have tune names. If we use 'first line of text' as the basis for page names, and tune names for disambiguation if needed, this means that automatic listings of pieces sorted alphabetically by page name have a uniform standard, whether or not the tunes have names. This is particularly relevant to:

1. The composer works categories (such as 'Category:William Billings compositions'), which tend to be referenced from pages using Template:WorksListBox in the cases of composers with so many works (at 108 works, Billing's page might have reached this point) that it is clearer to categorise them as anthems, hymn tunes, carols etc. on the composer page, and to rely on the composer works category for an alphabetical list of all works. Keeping to the practice of using first line of text as the basis for page title means that this category is sorted alphabetically by first line, rather than by a mixture of first lines and tune names.

2. The lyricist works categories (such as 'Category:Isaac Watts settings'), which are listed as standard on the corresponding lyricist page using Template:LyricistSettingsList. Keeping to using first line of text as the basis for page names means in this case that the list generated on the lyricist page comes out as an alphabetical list of settings of the lyricist's texts, sorted by the text which is actually set - using tune names where they exist would mean that the list came out as a mixture of tune names and first lines of texts, and in some cases there would be multiple settings of texts by the same composer which fell into both these groups (e.g. Billings tended to name psalm and hymn tunes but not anthems, while Thomas Clark named psalm and hymn tunes, and even some set-pieces (through-composed settings of metrical texts) in some of his books, but not in other books).
Richard Mix
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by Richard Mix »

Chuck,

I'm not sure I've understood your last post; my attempt to move Milton (William Billings) to {{DISPLAYTITLE:{{sc|Milton}} (William Billings)}} generates an error message, and I can't find any documentation under Template:DISPLAYPAGE:.

The problem of page naming is tangled up with the difficulty of deciding between splitting and merging: should all hymns using the standard harmonization of AURELIA be on different pages? Should "O little town of Bethlehem" have both ST LOUIS and FOREST GREEN?
CHGiffen
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by CHGiffen »

Edit: Oops, earlier I mistakenly put a semicolon after "sc" when it should have been a (template) pipe "|" ... I've fixed that now.

Hi Richard,

Don't move the page, just insert

Code: Select all

{{DISPLAYTITLE:{{sc|Milton}} (William Billings)}}
at the beginning of the page (actually it can be inserted anywhere on the page, but usually it is put at the top). DISPLAYTITLE is a "magic word" not a template, much like DEFAULTSORT is.

I think different hymns using AURELIA should be on separate works pages, and these pages should like to an AURELIA tune page. I also think "O little town of Bethlehem" set to ST LOUIS and set to FOREST GREEN should be on separate works pages, too, for they are indeed different works. It's the same with "Tantum ergo sacramentum" (or "Pange lingua gloriosi") set to different tunes, plainchant or metrical settings.

Edit: I do think that there is an advantage in including the tune name of a hymn in the title of the works page. Eg. "Come down, O love divine [Down Ampney] (Ralph Vaughan Williams)" with

Code: Select all

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Come down, O love divine [{{sc|Down Ampney}}] (Ralph Vaughan Williams)}
inserted (if we want to have caps/smallcaps tune titles). While one may do a search on a tune name title for a specific hymn text, it is much better to be able to search for the hymn text and then see the results return the name(s) of the tune(s) to which the text has been set.
Charles H. Giffen
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Richard Mix
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by Richard Mix »

Aha, thanks! Do we need a page Help:Magic words? If DISPLAYTITLE only affects the page itself then one can't spot non-tunenames in Category:Tune names (or tune names in other categories) nor can we disambiguate {{sc|The Call}} (Ralph Vaughan Williams) from The Call (Ralph Vaughan Williams) (currently The Call - Come my way (Ralph Vaughan Williams); maybe it should be The Call (Five Mystic Songs) (RVW)). I still think ordinary caps in tune titles is much preferable to the way things stand, if not quite ideal.
CHGiffen
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by CHGiffen »

Roughly 8 years ago or so, I advocated for putting tune names of hymns (that actually have a tune name) in square brackets, although not with all caps at the time. It fell on deaf ears with a couple of people active at CPDL who had their own opinions on hymns, hymn tunes & hymn setting, then (but these people have not been active at CPDL for at least 3 or 4 years). How about this proposal for titling a works page that is a hymn (text and tune)? ...

Hymn text incipit [HYMN TUNE NAME] (ComposerArranger Name)

For displaying the title of such a page, I have a template {{csc}} just about ready to roll out that will take any text (upper/lower case or mixed) and put it into caps-small caps format with just the first letter of each word in full caps, the rest of the letters in small caps. Then we could apply {{csc|HYMN TUNE NAME}} inside a {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} to get HYMN TUNE NAME as we would like it to look, and still have all caps for the display (in square brackets) of HYMN TUNE NAME.
Charles H. Giffen
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Admin at & Manager of ChoralWiki
EJG
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Re: Titles of Early American Compositions

Post by EJG »

For preference, I'd only include tune names in page titles if needed for disambiguation - I'm in favour of trying to keep to the shortest unambiguous page titles we can, and adding tune names when we only know of one setting of a text by the composer seems an unnecessary complication.
If we're looking to show tune names to identify the tunes used with a particular text, this can be done on the respective text page by listing the settings manually (as tends to be done for psalms etc. anyway) with this information (as, for example, voicings are often given), without needing to lengthen the page titles by adding it in there.

That said, if we did decide to include tune names in the page titles for all tunes that were given names at their first publication we can trace (bearing in mind that the tune name in the first publication is not necessarily the one used by subsequent publications), I'd prefer to keep to using ordinary capitalisation (i.e. capitals for initial letters only) for the tune names in page titles. We can still use small caps for the DISPLAYTITLE, and this would mean that the DISPLAYTITLE and page title were the same, just formatted differently, rather than being different strings as they would be if 'all caps' was used in page titles.

If we did decide to go down that route, a variant on the NoComp template would be useful (for example, on composer pages) with an additional field for tune name, which could be shown in small caps and included in the link generated by the template. It would also be useful to have a field in this template to optionally suppress the display of the tune name where required (for example, in tables listing the contents of a music publication, where tune name details are given in another column and only the first line of text is wanted for display, but with a link to the page title including the tune name).
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