music classification
Dec. 22nd, 2006 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacFrom a query from a friend, here's how I shelve my CDs.
Most of them are in a large bookcase with with CD-sized shelves, with some additional storage units on top and a wall-mounted unit above the stereo, taking up most of one wall in my home office. (In the closet opposite are some sturdy metal storage shelves with my LPs.) Oversized box sets are on top. On a bookshelf in the kitchen are some of the folk CDs, along with most of B's musical theatre CDs and a few filk. These are there so that she can conveniently listen to them while doing the dishes.
Ignoring the oversize and remote storage anomalies, then, here's the intellectual arrangement. About 2/3rds of my collection is classical; half of the rest are folk, or more accurately what I call folk for my own purposes.
My special interest in classical collecting is symphonies, and I've found it convenient to separate out the CDs with symphonies on them from the other classical CDs. So the first two sections are:
1. Symphonies
2. Other classical
Each category is subdivided by period (Medieval/Renaissance; Baroque (1600-1750) [no symphonies in the first two]; Classical (1750-1825); Romantic (1825-circa 1900); Modern (circa 1900-circa 1960); Postmodern). Within each period, it's arranged by country, on a winding path through Europe, followed by the rest of the world, that I find satisfying. Ignoring some of the smaller countries that fit in between, it runs Britain-France-Spain-Italy-Germany (with Austria), then Eastern Europe north to south, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, US-Canada-Latin America, then Australia and anything in Asia or Africa.
Within country it's alphabetical by composer. When you have as many classical CDs as I do, this kind of subdivision is worthwhile. Some composers are associated with more than one country (what about Busoni, for instance?) or overlap periods, but I assign all their works to the one where I think they best fit.
Although I consider opera to be a separate genre from classical music, I don't intellectually segregate my opera for the simple reason that almost all of it is two oversize boxes, one of Gilbert and Sullivan and the other of Wagner's Ring, so it's on the top shelf anyway. B. has some operas on CD, but she keeps those in her office.
The rest of the categories are smaller but perhaps more challenging.
3. Tolkien. A special collecting interest needing to be kept together. Except for classical music inspired by Tolkien (there's a fair amount of that too), all my Tolkien-inspired albums go here, from Howard Shore's film music to settings of Tolkien poetry in Italian to an orc-rock album a friend gave me as a joke. Spoken-word recordings of Tolkien go here too. Alphabetical by performer.
4. Folk music. For my collection, I define folk as including anything that I like because it resembles folk music. So electric folk (Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span), "Celtic pop" (Enya, the Riverdance music), and most acoustic or semi-acoustic singer-songwriters (the Roches, Suzanne Vega, and Christine Lavin are the biggest occupants) go here too. Divided into four parts: English, Celtic, North American (including American incarnations of the others), and a tiny section of everything else (mostly Scandinavian).
5. Dance music. Probably not what you mean by dance music. A very small section with my copies of the Friends of the English Regency dance-session CDs and a couple albums of Playford dance tunes. None of this seems to fit anywhere else.
6. Rock music. About half of this section is my (almost) complete collection of the Beatles. (That includes the big variants Anthology and one compilation album each of post-Beatles songs by Lennon and by McCartney.) The only other performers I have more than two albums by are the 70s art-rock band Renaissance, and Tori Amos (though a singer-songwriter, she just doesn't sound like folk to me).
7. Film music. Another very small section. A few movie soundtracks and two albums of incidental music from The Prisoner.
8. Musical theatre. Most of our holdings in this area are B's in the kitchen, but I still have a few back here, including a couple of "And then I wrote" musically-illustrated talks by theatrical lyricists.
9. Comedy music. Mostly Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman. My childhood heroes! If B's filk CDs were shelved in my office I'd put them here rather than in folk.
10. Miscellaneous music. Three or four jazz/new age albums. One or two each of klezmer music, children's music, a re-creation of sounds heard on the Lewis and Clark expedition. And the truly unclassifiable: Anne Dudley, Amy X Neuburg, the Penguin Café Orchestra.
11. Spoken word. Only a few of these.
12. CD-ROM computer discs. Gotta keep them somewhere.
Most of them are in a large bookcase with with CD-sized shelves, with some additional storage units on top and a wall-mounted unit above the stereo, taking up most of one wall in my home office. (In the closet opposite are some sturdy metal storage shelves with my LPs.) Oversized box sets are on top. On a bookshelf in the kitchen are some of the folk CDs, along with most of B's musical theatre CDs and a few filk. These are there so that she can conveniently listen to them while doing the dishes.
Ignoring the oversize and remote storage anomalies, then, here's the intellectual arrangement. About 2/3rds of my collection is classical; half of the rest are folk, or more accurately what I call folk for my own purposes.
My special interest in classical collecting is symphonies, and I've found it convenient to separate out the CDs with symphonies on them from the other classical CDs. So the first two sections are:
1. Symphonies
2. Other classical
Each category is subdivided by period (Medieval/Renaissance; Baroque (1600-1750) [no symphonies in the first two]; Classical (1750-1825); Romantic (1825-circa 1900); Modern (circa 1900-circa 1960); Postmodern). Within each period, it's arranged by country, on a winding path through Europe, followed by the rest of the world, that I find satisfying. Ignoring some of the smaller countries that fit in between, it runs Britain-France-Spain-Italy-Germany (with Austria), then Eastern Europe north to south, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, US-Canada-Latin America, then Australia and anything in Asia or Africa.
Within country it's alphabetical by composer. When you have as many classical CDs as I do, this kind of subdivision is worthwhile. Some composers are associated with more than one country (what about Busoni, for instance?) or overlap periods, but I assign all their works to the one where I think they best fit.
Although I consider opera to be a separate genre from classical music, I don't intellectually segregate my opera for the simple reason that almost all of it is two oversize boxes, one of Gilbert and Sullivan and the other of Wagner's Ring, so it's on the top shelf anyway. B. has some operas on CD, but she keeps those in her office.
The rest of the categories are smaller but perhaps more challenging.
3. Tolkien. A special collecting interest needing to be kept together. Except for classical music inspired by Tolkien (there's a fair amount of that too), all my Tolkien-inspired albums go here, from Howard Shore's film music to settings of Tolkien poetry in Italian to an orc-rock album a friend gave me as a joke. Spoken-word recordings of Tolkien go here too. Alphabetical by performer.
4. Folk music. For my collection, I define folk as including anything that I like because it resembles folk music. So electric folk (Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span), "Celtic pop" (Enya, the Riverdance music), and most acoustic or semi-acoustic singer-songwriters (the Roches, Suzanne Vega, and Christine Lavin are the biggest occupants) go here too. Divided into four parts: English, Celtic, North American (including American incarnations of the others), and a tiny section of everything else (mostly Scandinavian).
5. Dance music. Probably not what you mean by dance music. A very small section with my copies of the Friends of the English Regency dance-session CDs and a couple albums of Playford dance tunes. None of this seems to fit anywhere else.
6. Rock music. About half of this section is my (almost) complete collection of the Beatles. (That includes the big variants Anthology and one compilation album each of post-Beatles songs by Lennon and by McCartney.) The only other performers I have more than two albums by are the 70s art-rock band Renaissance, and Tori Amos (though a singer-songwriter, she just doesn't sound like folk to me).
7. Film music. Another very small section. A few movie soundtracks and two albums of incidental music from The Prisoner.
8. Musical theatre. Most of our holdings in this area are B's in the kitchen, but I still have a few back here, including a couple of "And then I wrote" musically-illustrated talks by theatrical lyricists.
9. Comedy music. Mostly Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman. My childhood heroes! If B's filk CDs were shelved in my office I'd put them here rather than in folk.
10. Miscellaneous music. Three or four jazz/new age albums. One or two each of klezmer music, children's music, a re-creation of sounds heard on the Lewis and Clark expedition. And the truly unclassifiable: Anne Dudley, Amy X Neuburg, the Penguin Café Orchestra.
11. Spoken word. Only a few of these.
12. CD-ROM computer discs. Gotta keep them somewhere.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 10:36 pm (UTC)By the way, there's an extensive essay on the group's website about Jeffes that I hadn't seen before. http://www.penguincafe.com/simon.htm
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 02:22 am (UTC)But the PCO itself is not classical music. It doesn't sound even like experimental modern music, and not just because it's too good. And, I've seen the sheet music for "Music for a Found Harmonium," and it's a song crib sheet, not a score.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 02:25 am (UTC)As I have no CSL music, it's a moot question. I do have a rare album of songs by the composer who wrote the music for plays by the third Inkling, Charles Williams, but it's not his Williams music, and I shelve it by period in the classical section.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 08:09 am (UTC)No. If it's just two or three composers, I put it under one of them, usually the first. If it's multiple names but they, or most of them, share a period, I put it at the start of that period. More scattered ones go at the beginning. If just one work on the disc is a symphony, I put it under that composer.