"Works & Movement" tags not displaying correctly.

Question

Level 1

14 points

"Works & Movement" tags not displaying correctly.

I have been tagging my classical music to use the "works" and "movements" fields so the music is displayed more clearly in iTunes and also on my iPad, but I find this feature not working totally consistently.

First problem is that in some albums the "movements" do not sit under the correct "work" header despite being perfectly tagged, and I cannot figure out why:

Below is an album with various works, by various composers, showing the tags for "work" & "movement":

Below is the same album in the "Artist" view. I have circled in red two movements which are under a heading of four, but these two movements shoulder not be under this heading, as they are infact two separate works entirely different composers, as you see the above shot!:

The second problem is in iOS; some albums, that display "work" and "movement" perfectly in iTunes, display the normal song names the iOS. I don't understand why some albums do & some don't in-spite of their setting in iTunes.

Posted on Jun 3, 2017 3:33 PM

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Answer 1

the fiend

Level 7

23,472 points

Jun 4, 2017 5:17 AM in response to nurgis

But the Artist is the performer, not the composer. Therefore your view will show works by different composers on that album providing they were all performed by the same artist.

In iTunes, have you tried displaying by composer? You may need to edit your preferences to show Composers.

Using the screenshot above, over your mouse anywhere on the line where it has "Library". The word Edit will appear on the right hand side as shown below. Move the mouse over to and click on the Edit text.

Select the Composers tick box and click on Done.

And here is the Composers view (the quality may be a bit low, I have reduced the size of this picture).

Not sure I understand what is happening on your iPod, perhaps you just need to change the view there as well. If using the Composers view on the iPod isn't good enough, you could create a Smart Playlist with the rule "Movement Name / contains / <specific text you want to select>" and then use the Playlists both in iTunes and on your iPod.

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Answer 2

nurgis Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 7, 2017 8:12 AM in response to the fiend

I know that the artist view will show different composers, that's not the issue at all.

I am talking about how iTunes displays tracks when using the "work" & "movement" tags as opposed to the "song" title tag. I am not sure if you understand, but you can switch this by right clicking on a any track & choosing "Get Info" and click "song" then change it to"work name" and fill in the fields, like this:

Using this means tracks will show a "movement" title under a "work" header, helping to brake up the often long titles used in classical music.

Look again at my screenshot:

The blue and green boxes highlight the "work" headers with the composer & artist labels underneath. The tracks of the album sit below the these headers & make up the movements of the works noted in the headers. The first four tracks are all displayed correctly, but the last two tracks, which I have underlined in red, sit under the green header, when they should in fact each have their own header as they are each entirely different works by separate composers. All you see of these tracks is the movement names, no work title no composer title. It's impossible to tell what they are.

This is a bizarre inconsistency when using this feature. The only work around I have found for it is to turn off the "work" and "movement" tags for those specific tracks & also enable the "show composer in all views" option under "Get Info", Which gets this:

The orange boxes show the important tags that are not displayed in the previous shot.

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Answer 3

the fiend

Level 7

23,472 points

Jun 7, 2017 10:55 AM in response to nurgis

Hhhmmm!

I suspect the problem is going to be an inconsistency in one field (for example the composer field; that the detail on one track is slightly different to another track) or that the information you see is not from the field you thought it would be. (See below.)

I also suspect that when iTunes was originally designed no one thought too much about classical music and the complexities of its naming conventions. That's not a criticism - I think it's just one of those things. Imagine when iTunes and iPods were conceived; pop and rock music fans would design a player that suits them. How many of them are classical music fans as well? Subsequently however, iTunes and iPods have become so popular that classical music fans want in on them too and this has revealed a shortcoming of the original design. I say this as a pop and rock music fan who happens to like some classical music, but one who doesn't fully utilise the complexity of the naming system. I have however, seen many posts in these discussions from classical music fans who found that iTunes didn't have the facilities they want.

But this has changed with the introduction of the Work Name field. I confess that I have not used this up to now, but I've tested it in light of your post.

Looking at this piece, where I have just filled the Work and Movement fields, I noticed that even though I was copying from the Name field and pasting into the Work Name field, there is now a discrepancy:

Can you see it? The Song Name field omits the word Concerto, despite the fact that I copied from the Song and pasted into the Work Name. Up until my experiment for this discussion, I would have expected the Name field (2. shown below) and the Song (3. in the shot below) to be identical.

As you can see, they are not identical.

If I now look at the album in the Artists view, I see another strange thing:

First, notice the composer for Brandenburg #4 is バッハ, but in Get Info that is only for the first track. The following tracks use Bach, J.S. By now, you may well have spotted another problem: BWV 1050a. Allegro is part of Brandenburg Concerto #5, but here it is listed under Concerto #4. In Get Info it looks correct.

I can correct the composer name easily (and have done so), but I have yet to figure out why the piece from Concerto #5 is listed under Concerto #4. I'm working on it.

So how do you move forward?

Well, hopefully, someone else with in depth knowledge of classical music will contribute to this discussion and between you you may get somewhere. If one of those contributors has access to Apple's bug reporting, perhaps he or she will be able to submit a bug report and eventually the problem might get corrected.

None of my ageing iPods can handle the Work Name or Movement fields, which is probably why I haven't noticed this feature until now.

Finally, I copied the Song field from the piece above and pasted it into the Work Name field, so the only thing that changed was the removal of the word Concerto. But now, when I look in the Album view, Brandenburg #4 has gone too.

It's all above my intelligence level.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Jun 7, 2017 1:13 PM in response to the fiend

For classical music I prefer to use the composer as artist, since this is usually more important to me, and relegate the performer details to the comments section. Here is a stab at using the work and movement features on Vivaldi's Four Seasons. As ever I'm sure consistency is the key to making it work. I've organized to so that I see pretty much the same information whether or not Work & Movement is enabled.

A side issue is that Apple have reused the mp3 field that previously stored Grouping for Work, so anyone who used that for their own purposes may find the Work field filled in unexpectedly.

<Update> Just found I have some values in Work in a few AIFF files that I cannot edit or delete. 😮

tt2

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Jun 7, 2017 5:22 PM in response to nurgis

Ah, thanks. I'd not noticed that issue. Yes single track works are handled better without the work and movement flag, but you may still need to tweak the regular names to fit in with the overall scheme.

Here's the second half of Bernstein's Mass before and after:

Ideally it would be the same for say those last four tracks whether or not work and movement was active.

tt2

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Answer 6

nurgis Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 7, 2017 1:40 PM in response to the fiend

@ the fiend:

--On your first question:

Confusingly the "Name" field changes depending on whether you have set the specific track to use the "Song" field or the "Work" & "Movement" fields. For example, in your first shots you have...

Work Name: "Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G Maj"

Movement name: "BWV 1049 Presto"

So the normal "Name" field will now combine "Work Name" & "Movement Name" using a colon like this...

"Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G Maj: BWV 1049 Presto"

--Your second question:

Yes, you see iTunes does not seem to give headers to works that have only one track, or movement.

For example, in your fourth shot, if you went to track 2 "BWV 1049. Andante" and Get Info, I assume it has a "Work Name" set as "Brandenburg #4 In G Maj", the same as track one. Well if you were to change that field just in track 2, say by deleting the "j" at the end & hit ok, you should now notice the "Brandenburg #4 In G Maj" header in Artist view is gone altogether. This is because now, no two tracks share that as "work name" anymore, and iTunes won't give a header unless there is at least two tracks with the same "work name". This is why "BWV 1050a. Allegro" sits under the others with no header, because it doesn't share a "Work Name" with any other tracks.

So the only solution here really is to only enable the "work" and "movement" fields on tracks that will share work names, so you get a header & other tracks should just use the "song" field as normal.

Also, on side note, the "BWV." numbers are catalog numbers for Bach's works and technically should go in the "work name" field.

Hope this was clear!

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Answer 7

nurgis Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 7, 2017 2:14 PM in response to nurgis

@turingtest2:

It works nicely when their are multiple tracks for each work.

If you want to do a little test to see the problem I've noticed:

In Artist or Album view go to your "Four Seasons" album. Right click on track 3 & click "Get Info". In the "work name" field I imagine it says "Spring" just add a "3" to that field & hit "OK". In your Album or Artist view nothing should change, even though you've just changed the work name it still sits under the "Spring" work. Now do the same with track 2 except add a "2" to "work name" field and hit "OK". Now you should notice a problem. The header for "Spring" will be gone, with just the tracks displaying their movement names. You can change it back by deleting the numbers you added.

So this problem is awkward for albums that have an entire works on one track, because all you see is the movement with no work header, no composer label. The only solution is to turn off "work" and "movement" for tracks that don't have more than one movement.

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