Palestrina complete works.

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ctesibius
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Palestrina complete works.

Post by ctesibius »

Hi all,
I planned to upload the complete works of Palestrina, published by Breitkopf and Haertel (1862-1907)
The Opera Omnia consist of 33 volumes as i drafter here: http://imslp.org/wiki/Haberl_edition for a total of 6172 pages
I have some doubts how to organize the material
1. single entry per work
2. group per genre
3. group using the historical collection number (e.g. first book of Motets, etc)
4. create a special page for the Opera Omnia

Case
1. this will generate a page with ca 700 entries (104 masses + 375 motets + magnificat, lamentations + 133 madrigals + 68 offertoria)
2. a bit better, but a sub page with ca 400 motets is also not readable

options 1 & 2 also have problems because motets start sometimes in the middle of the page
(also I would have to edit a large amount of pages... honestly I am not so sure I ll be happy :--)))

3. this is good, but if the user is not familiar with the contents will make difficult the search. The size of the files will be 100-200MB
4. for this i would like your opinion.
a) Masses as single items + the rest in historical books
b) all in historical books
c) upload the music as it is in the Haberl edition (33 volumes)

Thanks for feedbacks
Ctesibius
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by vinteuil »

Single Entry per Work is always my thing (unless there's some well-known organizer (like a standardized "Madrigals, Book 1")). Don't worry about the Gesamtausgabe page.
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by pml »

Hi Ctesibius, Perlnerd DCLXVI,

I would agree in principle that "Single Entry per Work" is desirable, but it involves a lot of work of subdivision and so on, and Palestrina wrote in excess of 800 individual works (even when considering amalgamation of some pieces into collections, e.g. sets of lamentations).

Cue the eternal debate of "lumpers and splitters"...

Some splitting is desirable, I don't like downloading 100 MB files, though I have done on occasion... (e.g. a 396 MB single file of the 107 Haydn symphonies!) The maximum size should be something comfortable for non-broadband downloaders - I would consider 10 MB to be a reasonable size (currently any filesize over 20 MB flags as a "red" download).

For some of the recent uploads of medieval and renaissance period vocal music, uploading a single file for the collection is beneficial: would you really want to split up the file for Dufay's hymn settings into 21 separate pages and 29 or 30 files? (Especially when the individual pages sometimes span two hymns, or parts thereof.) The problem is more with arbitrary collections, for example, the page for Josquin Desprez, "4 Motets" - as soon as someone uploaded another setting say, of Josquin's "Praeter rerum seriem" (like the one I edited for CPDL!) then you would have the same work (albeit not necessarily the same edition) represented on two different pages; or, if the independent setting of "Praeter" is moved to the "4 Motets" page, it immediately becomes "invisible" at the Category page level - someone looking at the Josquin Desprez category page is given no indication of where the motet is actually to be found.

I wonder whether there might be a better solution to this, which might be better considered by others besides just the three of us...

1. Keep the score located on a work page as is, e.g. 4 Motets, and make sure all of the categorisations (e.g. multiple composers, or multiple work types) are added to the page;
2. Create redirect pages for each of the individual works, pointing to the (combined) work page, each of which also has [[Category:]] tag to insert it into the composer's work list, and optionally to the correct period/genres/types; (assuming this method works?)

(Can a redirect work for a page that has the basic fte:imslppage template, thus with composer, genre info on it, but no actual works submitted?)

I might do a little wiki experimenting with this idea - as this is only going to be an initial test, I will confine it solely to the four motets under consideration in Das Chorwerk 18 (IMSLP47975/PMLP101638): Ecce tu pulchra es 4vv; Ave Christe, immolate 4vv; Veni, Sancte Spiritus 6vv (attr. to Forestier); and Praeter rerum seriem 6vv.

Regards, PML
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ctesibius
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by ctesibius »

Pml, Perlned,
thanks for your replies.
You really described the point clearly.
Splitters or Lumpers.
Personally I prefer to keep all pieces together because what I normally search is an edition not a piece of music (like when you buy a book you ask for Henle edition of Beethoven sonatas more than Sonata 32...) But I this is very personal.
The redirection is a good idea. I already raised something similar in the past for the collection you mentioned viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2867.

I think we can opt for an heterogeneous solution considering the follow
1. masses are easy to split into single entries
2. litanies/madrigals can stay grouped
2. motets and other works cannot be split easily

For Masses we will have to decide if grouping is good or not.

=Missarum liber primus, Roma 1554
=== Missa Ecce sacerdos magnus (4 voices)
===Missa O Regem coeli (4 voices)
===Missa Virtute magna (4 voices)
===Missa Gabriel archangelus (4 voices)
===Missa Ad cenam Agni providi (5 voices)

The infomation added is not really essential. Probably we can list all in the same page
eg.
simply
= Missa Ecce sacerdos magnus
=Missa O Regem coeli
=Missa Virtute magna
=Missa Gabriel archangelus
=Missa Ad cenam Agni providi
=...
=108th mass

Litanies, Magnificats, Offertoria can be grouped as they were originally.
= Primo libro di Madrigali
= Secondo librao di Madrigali
= Lamentationum Hieremiae Prophetae Liber primus
=..
= Lamentationum Hieremiae Prophetae Liber quartus

For Motets and Hymns as you said, the main problem is they not always begin from a new page and secondly the high number

Motets are quite popular and people normally search them by title. Also the original collections (libri) were intended to be used during th whole liturgical year. Several motets are not part of any Book.

We can use your idea of redirecting pages to few files (keeping an eye on their size)

Five voices Motets:

= 01. O admirabile commercium
= 02. Stella quam viderant magi
= 03. O Antoni eremita
= 04. Senex puerum portabat / Hodie beata virgo Maria
= 05. Suscipe verbum virgo Maria / Paries quidem filium
= 06. Alleluja! tulerunt Dominum
= 07. Crucem sanctam subiit - O beata et gloriosa trinitas
= 08. O verra summa sempiterna trinitas
= 09. Ego sum panis vivus / Panis quem ego dabo
= 10. Puer qui natus est
= 11. Beatae Mariae Magdalenae
= 12. Sancte Paule apostole
= 13. Beatus Laurentius orabat
= 14. Hodie nata est beata virgo
= 15. O beatum virum
= 16. Venit Michael archangelus
= 17. O beatum pontificem
= 18. Deus qui dedisti legem
= 19. Lapidabant StephanumH
= 20. Hic est discipulus ille
= 21. Sicut lilium inter spinas
= 22. Quam pulchri sunt gressus
= 23. Unus ex duobus
= 24. Cum pervenisset beatus Andreas

Six voices Motets:

= 25. Viri Galilaei quid statis / Ascendit Deus in jubilatione
= 26. Dum complerentur dies pentecostes / Dum ergo essent in unum discipuli
= 27. Pulchra es, o Maria virgo
= 28. Solve jubente Deo / Quodcunque ligaveris
= 29. Vidi turbam magnam / Et omnes angeli stabant
= 30. O magnum mysterium / Quem vidistis pastores
= 31. O Domine Jesu Christe

Seven voices Motets:

= 32. Tu es Petrus
= 33. Virbo prudentissima / Maria virgo

33 Motets pointing to the same physical file Motettorum liber primus. 167 pages at 300 dpi should be 40-60MB

I can also count how many pages contain multiple pieces. If few we can also split the pieces.

In any case we need to create some groupping. I believe 400 entries in a wiki page is difficult to read.
What about alphabetical per letter
A --> all motets with title starting with A
B -->
C -->

Ctesibius
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by pml »

Hi ctesibius,

I agree, as the page limit on composer categories is 200 items to a page, and it's something of a nuisance to have to negotiate two pages of works, let alone four, if we gave each of Palestrina's works an individual page.

Curiously, the last idea you raised - of having a page for "Motets A", "Motets B", and so on - is one I had considered as being fairly practical for the end-user, but something of a nuisance for the uploader who has to break the files apart and recombine as needed. However, this task doesn't have to be done by you - the reorganisation of the motets/madrigals/masses can be done by any of us after the body of work has been uploaded.

The four most numerous types of composition are the motets (300+, plus offertories), followed by madrigals (~140), masses (~100), and hymns (72), so this technique would work for each of those - looking at the 108 titles of masses, these would generate 21 pages of "Masses A", ..., "Masses V" (no sobriquets start with K, or WXYZ), so that something like 600 individual works would be aggregated to about 80 or so relatively easily searchable pages. Very likely the Palestrina category would end up as two pages, but that's still an improvement over four pages.

I was originally thinking for the masses to have individual pages for all of them - but this could be the cause of considerable confusion for a significant proportion of works - e.g. some of the sixteen paraphrase masses have the same "title" and voicing, and differ only in the particular plainsong that's being paraphrased. I think initially it might be better to confine the works associated with a particular collection to one page - for example, those published in the collections "Missarum liber primus", "secundus", "tertius", and so on up to "duodecimus"; and there's a further collection of the eight-voice masses "Missæ quatuor" from Venice, 1601 - then put all the rest under "Unpublished masses", and we can find a better way to split them. Even at that stage you may want to split the masses apart owing to file size, but keep them on the same page.

Lastly, some (not all) of the offertories are essentially "special" motet texts, and as they are numerous (68) some of these may benefit from being aggregated in the motet pages - but this would be better considered later.

Regards, Philip
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by mbase1235 »

Hello Ctesibius,

Did you ever complete this upload? Looking forward to hearing about this.
ctesibius wrote:Hi all,
I planned to upload the complete works of Palestrina, published by Breitkopf and Haertel (1862-1907)
The Opera Omnia consist of 33 volumes as i drafter here: http://imslp.org/wiki/Haberl_edition for a total of 6172 pages
I have some doubts how to organize the material
1. single entry per work
2. group per genre
3. group using the historical collection number (e.g. first book of Motets, etc)
4. create a special page for the Opera Omnia
Ctesibius
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by QED »

Hi there - this thread really interested me, regarding the B&H edition of Palestrina's complete works. I had two questions really 1) Do B&H still publish/sell hard copy editions of the complete works? And 2) is this an edition which is deemed reasonable (from a performer standpoint rather than an academic standpoint ie is it reasonably accurate in notation and likely ficta etc. as opposed to "I'd like to heavily edit it because I've looked at other sources and think I know better". Apologies in advance to any musicologist reading this!
:shock:
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Re: Palestrina complete works.

Post by vinteuil »

QED wrote:Hi there - this thread really interested me, regarding the B&H edition of Palestrina's complete works. I had two questions really 1) Do B&H still publish/sell hard copy editions of the complete works?
Judging from their catalogue, not this one (Brahms and Reger are still in print among the out-of-copyright complete works editions).
QED wrote:And 2) is this an edition which is deemed reasonable (from a performer standpoint rather than an academic standpoint ie is it reasonably accurate in notation and likely ficta etc. as opposed to "I'd like to heavily edit it because I've looked at other sources and think I know better". Apologies in advance to any musicologist reading this!
:shock:
For a 19th century edition, this one really isn't bad at all! The ficta are pretty conservative (this is a good thing by the most recent standards), the textual additions are sensible, the clefs are original, and I think the rhythmic values aren't even reduced. I do remember some additions like slurs across notes on the same syllable (I could be wrong, it's been a while).
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