IMSLP Forums

The recent batch of trio submissions mirrored from Sibley reminds me that imslp has started a somewhat peculiar trend of translating the complete original titles into english:
I refer to the "concertant" and "grand" in the original titles of many late 18th early - 19th century publications, used to better advertise these works. For lots of works there even exist several editons, some with, some without these adjectives.
Modern editions rarely include them. The original title including "grand" and "concertant" has its proper place in the "Alternate Title" field, except for those few works where these adjectives have become the way these works are known today.

Examples:
6 Grand Orchestra Trios, Op.1 (Stamitz, Johann) - As a quick google search will show, these are today known as "Orchestra Trios, Op.1", the imslp-entry is pretty unique.
The entire Rolla workpage: Essentially identical duos and trios are listed under "concertant", "grand" or even "grand concertant", in addition to "Duo/Trio" and "String Duo/Trio": quite confusing if someone is looking for a particular work by its opus or catalog number.

This brings up a related potential problem in that a lot of the chamber works have been tagged as concertants when that word is used adjectivally. If they were used as an advertising tool, and not as the composer's original intention, then both the titles and tags should be changed.

Yes, unfortunately this would be a lot of work
And it would also require a bit of research as to not change those titles that include grand and/or concertant as part of the usually used title. Maybe, this could be done slowly, whenever someone comes upon such a workpage. At least, some workpages are already correct, so you can find the Beethoven Septet under "S", not as "Grand Septuor" as in the first edition under "G .

This is where we run into an intersection between two general rules used for titles: 1) Generic titles (Trios, Quartets, Symphonies, Concertos, Sonatas, etc.) are to be translated into English (the base language of the site) to be automatically translated into their equivalents in other languages when the full translation matrix is operational; 2) Non-generic titles should be left in their original language unless it is a language which does not employ the Latin alphabet. So, how does one exactly classify something like Six grand sonates concertantes? I suspect the best course for this would be to use the generic title when a term like 'orchestral' or 'concertant' is employed as pure advertising while leaving it in the original language if a descriptive term is used to accurately indicate a feature such as a concertante work.