Artist/Songname/Album/Tracknum/Genre metadata doesn't fit classical music AT ALL.

glennmagusharvey

Unfortunately, most music player programs and devices will just show you this much.  Nothing for "composer" vs. "performer".  Trying to display album for singleton pieces that don't even fit into any publication opus number grouping.  And no attempt at all to differentiate between various subclassifications of classical music.

The tagging system seems to be very CD-age-centric.  Also, it completely neglects composers (unless the singer happens to also be the songwriter) and backup performers (unless these performers are part of the billing artist band name).

How people tag classical works seems to vary.  The closest to consensus that I've seen seems to be to use the performer (such as "Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra") as the "artist", while the composer somehow gets smashed into the songname (such as "Dvorak: Symphony #9 'From the New World'").  If there's a catalog number, it's part of the songname.  Album usually goes with the CD-age-centric approach -- the title of the CD release -- though sometimes for multi-movement works it's the whole work's name.  But movement titles/tempos sometimes just get smashed into the songname too.  And there's little consistency between recordings.  Track number is usually track number on the CD, and year is usually the year it was recorded.

I usually tag classical music quite differently:

artist: Composer, Lyricist (if applicable), Performer 1, Performer 2, Performer 3, etc. (e.g. Joseph Haydn, Vladimir Horowitz)

songname for movements: Romannumeralmovtnum. Tempo (e.g. III. Allegro molto)

songname for singleton works: Title (e.g. L'isle joyeuse)

songname for works in a collection that's not a multi-movement piece: Title (or Formname in Key) (e.g. Variations on a Theme by Chopin, Die Erlkönig, Mazurka in B-flat major)

album for multi-movement works: whole work name, catalog number (e.g. Sonata in A minor, K. 310)

album for singleton works: (e.g. Op. 23) (sometimes this may be rolled into the song name and left blank)

album for collections: typical collection name, catalog number (e.g. Preludes, Op. 32)

tracknum for multi-movement works: index number in work (e.g. 1 for the 1st movement of a symphony)

tracknum for singleton works: blank

tracknum for collection works: index number in collection (e.g. 5 for Prelude Op. 32 #5)

year: I go with completion date (if possible) or publication date, for the specific work (if possible except for multi-movement works usually) or the whole work/collection.

 

Whole example: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concero #1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, performed by Van Cliburn (pianist), RCA Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin (conductor)

Artist: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Van Cliburn, RCA Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin

Album: Piano Concerto #1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23

Track 1: I. Andante non troppo e molto maestoso - Allegro con spirito

Track 2: II. Andantino semplice

Track 3: III. Allegro con fuoco

Year: 1875 (year of composition, not performance)

 

Note that this prioritizes the composer and the work, above the performer.  This is a conscious choice, partly for cataloguing ease.  And yes, I would LOVE to say that "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is by "George Harrison", rather than "The Beatles", and that "Shining Days" is by "Masaaki Iizuka" rather than "Minami Kuribayashi", but this is just more work than I'm willing to put in into simply cataloguing stuff.

 

That leaves me with genre.  I would REALLY like to separate out the different genres.  "Trio sonata" is one of two specific Baroque-period forms and is quite different from the German/Austrian art song "lied" (plural "lieder"), which in turn is very different from Chopin's salon-pieces (much of his piano repertoire), as are Prokofiev's film scores.  But genre is already a clusterfuck for non-classical genres.  So I typically just leave it at "classical" and be done with it.