Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pieces of music)

I'm thinking of adding some fairly lengthy articles about specific pieces of classical music (long enough that they'd unbalance an article about the composer in question). Does anybody have any ideas how I might name them? For example, let's suppose I want to write about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Do I call it Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) or Beethoven's Symphony No. 5[?] or Beethoven's Symphony Number Five[?] or Beethoven's Symphony in C minor[?] or Symphony Number Five (Beethoven)[?] or what?

Normally I'd just pick a reasonable one and make redirects from the others, but there are so many reasonable alternatives here, that I'd like to establish a standard, if possible. --Camembert

That is a very good question that I've wondered about too. Some articles on pieces of music already exist as subpages of composer articles, but I'm not too keen on that. I think we should ask ourselves: what is the most natural title to use as a link in text? I'd favour Beethoven's Symphony No. 5[?] -- Tarquin

I listen to Classical music daily and almost always here Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. So I would say that form would be the best. --mav

I tend to agree, and that would work for his other symphonies, eg. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Does it work for other composers, eg. Prokofiev's First Symphony/Prokofiev's Classical Symphony? --Deb

In general, I think "Canon in D Major (Pachelbel)" would be best; it would make cross-linking to the artist's other works easier, doesn't have the awkward possessive, emphasizes that the article is about the work and not the composer, and is consistent with the cases where the composer's name can be dropped entirely because it's not ambiguous (e.g., "Fanfare for the Common Man"). In the specific case of Beethoven's fifth, though, it's such a well-known cultural reference that I'd also make "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" link to it. I do not have sufficient knowledge of musical scholarship to have an opinion on things like whether it should be "Symphony Five" or "Symphony No. 5". --LDC

To throw a little spanner in the works, what is the most common name for that piece of music mentioned above? Pachelbel's canon[?].

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Well, I've been thinking about this a bit more again recently, because I've been wanting to get cracking on some articles - I've decided that in general, if disambiguation is necessary, the form "Piece No. X (Composer)" is best, but there are ther complications we've not considered yet, and there's room for argument on just about everything. Here's some reasoning (or rambling), anyway:

Obviously, the article needs to include the name of the piece of music, since that's what it's about. If there is only one piece of music by that name, then that alone will be OK for the article title: so Finlandia (by Jean Sibelius) needs no further disambiguation; nor does War Requiem (by Benjamin Britten).

However, when one gets to names which are shared by more than one piece - such as Beethoven's 5th symphony, cited above - one needs to disambiguate. Obviously, including the composer's name somewhere in the article title is the obvious way of doing this. There are two basic ways to do this - one can put the composer before or after the work:

• "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" has the advantage of being relatively easy to link to, and being a common way the piece is referred to. The problem comes when one has pieces like "Haydn's One-Hundreth-and-Fourth Symphony", which doesn't sound at all natural. "Beethoven's Symphony No. 5" (and "Haydn's Symphony No. 104") is a way round this, though I would still share LDC's concerns above (in particular, the possessive makes me uneasy). So I prefer the other solution:
• "Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)". This also fits in with how we disambiguate things in general, so it's likely that people will title things this way even if they don't see the naming convention - in fact, this has already happened, with Violin Concerto (John Adams). This method also makes linking easy if one knows the pipe trick: [[Symphony No. 5 (Mahler)|]] comes out as Symphony No. 5 (note the pipe before the double brackets).

Another problem is whether to say "Number Five" or "No. 5" or whatever - I'd favour "No. 5" just because it seems to be the most common form in journals, encyclopaedias, and so on.

Another level of disambiguation is required when a composer has written two or more pieces with the same title. I'd would just say that we should disambiguate between them in the way most commonly used in the English language. This might take several forms:

• Beethoven wrote nine symphonies - they are usually distinguished by ordinal number. Hence: "Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)"
• Haydn wrote lots of string quartets - they are usually distinguished by opus number. Hence "String Quartet, Opus 76, No. 5 (Haydn)"
• Bach wrote a number of violin concertos - they are usually distinguished by key. Hence "Violin Concerto in A major (Bach)"
• Mozart wrote a number of piano sonatas - they are usually distinguished by Köchel number. Hence "Piano Sonata, K. 545 (Mozart)"

Probably in these cases, the parenthetical composers are not reuqired: just "Piano Sonata, K. 545" will do. I should probably say, by the way, that my impression is that Mozart's piano sonatas are most usually distinguished by K. number, but I might be wrong, it might be ordinal number. I'm no Mozart fan, but I expect somebody who was who wanted to write about these pieces would know what was most common.

In all cases, of course, where two methods of disambiguation are equally common, one can redirect to the other. Also, redirects should be made from common forms of piece names that don't fit in with the above: "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" should redirect to "Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)".

I just made Violin Concerto (Berg), by the way.

That's where my thought processes are at the moment. I'm signing off for Christmas now - hope you all have a good one (or have had a good one) if you celebrate that sort of thing (or if you celebrate something else, or nothing at all, for that matter). --Camembert 01:27 Dec 25, 2002 (UTC)

Great work on the Violin Concerto (Berg)! I wonder though whether the title of classical pieces should also give the opus number for clarity. Danny

Thanks Danny! Hopefully, I'll get round to padding it out a little more one day. As for including opus numbers - I don't think they should be given in the article title unless really necessary. As I say above, sometimes the opus number is essential to clarify exactly which piece you mean (in the case of Haydn string quartets, for example), but many pieces don't have opus numbers at all, or have opus numbers that are so rarely used that nobody knows them without looking them up (Dvorak's works, for example, have opus numbers which are virtually never used). Most pieces which do have them don't really need them to clarify exactly what piece is meant: "Beethoven's Symphony No. 5" is clear enough without adding "Opus 67". That said, opus numbers should be given in the article text where thy exist, just because we should give the reader as much info as possible (I'll add the opus number to the Berg Vn concerto now). Just my opinion, of course. --Camembert

Correction: I would add the opus number to Violin Concerto (Berg), but it's one of those pieces that doesn't have one - the early works of Berg have opus numbers, but they stop at Wozzeck (1922), which is opus 7. --Camembert

The following copied from Talk:Violin Concerto (Berg):

Would Berg's violin concerto[?] be a more appropriate title for this article? -- Zoe

Possibly - it's something up for debate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pieces of music). Personally, I prefer putting the composer in brackets, because it is more consistent with disambiguation like Vertigo (movie), the possessive apostrophe seems rather clumsy somehow, and it makes it easier to link to the composer and the piece of music together: for example, writing in some article "in [[Berg's Violin Concerto]]..." is fine to get a link to the piece, but if you also want to link to the composer, you have to write "in [[Alban Berg]]'s [[Berg's Violin Concerto|Violin Concerto]]...", which is a pain. If you use the current form, though, you can use the pipe trick and write "in [[Alban Berg]]'s [[Violin Concerto (Berg)|]]..." (the extra pipe at the end of the second link causes this to be rendered as "in Alban Berg's Violin Concerto"), which is a good deal easier. So I believe the current title is best, but I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise. (I'll copy this to the aforementioned naming convention page, btw) --Camembert

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OK, I've started doing some pages on individual pieces, so I'd like to get this convention operating now. I'm going to put my proposal below and leave it here for a week. If there are no objections in that time, I'll put it on the main page and treat it like any other convention. If there are objections or whatever, we can talk about it. --Camembert

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As a general rule, when naming articles about pieces of classical music, use the most common form of the name. Do not include nicknames except when the work is almost exclusively known by its nickname (for example, Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet[?]).

• If the name of the piece is unique to that one piece, then the title should be the name of the piece alone. For example, Enigma Variations, War Requiem, Piano Phase.
• If the name of the piece is shared by another piece or pieces, include the composer's surname in parentheses following the name of the piece. For example Concerto for Orchestra (Bartok), Concerto for Orchestra (Lutoslawski)[?]; Violin Concerto (Beethoven), Violin Concerto (Berg).
• An extra level of disambiguation may be required if one composer has written severl works with the same title (this is particularly true of works with generic titles like "Symphony" or "String Quartet"). The title should refer to the work in whatever way is most common in other publications. Normally, this will mean adding a cardinal number, but there are other possibilites, for example:
  • Cardinal number: Symphony No. 7 (Nielsen)[?], Symphony No. 40 (Mozart)[?], Symphony No. 1 (Mahler).
  • Catalogue number: Piano Sonata, D. 958 (Schubert)[?], Piano Sonata, K. 545 (Mozart)
  • Opus number: String Quartet, Opus 76, No. 5 (Haydn)[?]
  • Key: Violin Concerto in A major (Bach)[?]

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Things I'm not sure about:

• I'm pretty confident that "number" should be abbreviated to "No." (because that's what almost all reference works do), but should "Opus" be abbreviated to "Op."? My gut feeling is that it only saves one character and isn't worth it, but I'm not sure - a lot of books do abbreviate it.
• Maybe my example of a piece disambiguated by key isn't the best (Bach's violin concertos are often distinguished by BWV number as well as key), but I can't think of another one.

I realise the whole scheme goes against many people's preferred "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" format, but I do feel quite strongly that Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) is preferable for the reasons given earlier on this page.

Comments? --Camembert

Key example: Prelude in A (Chopin)[?] (he did 24 in all keys + 1 spare). Fifth Symphony (Beethoven)[?]? Are some pieces known as "nth thing" and some more as "thing no. n"? Otherwise, sounds good to me -- Tarquin 17:34 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

In spoken English, I think most pieces are referred to as "nth Thing", but in written English "Thing No. n" is more common as far as I can make out (especially in formal writing, and almost always in headers). In any case, I think consistency is a Good Thing here, so as to avoid having to decide whether something should be "nth" or "No. n" on a case by case basis, a decision that could be very tricky. Thanks for the key example - I'll use it when I put the convention up. --Camembert

Good point. I hereby say "wahey!" to this convention proposal :-) -- Tarquin 21:39 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

What's wrong with the naturally disambiguated title Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Beethoven's Symphony no. 5[?]? Parenthetical disambiguation is used to distinguish two or more things that share the same name. What is supposed to be placed in the parenthesis is a word indicating the type of subject or a year it was created. Extending the logic of Fifth Symphony (Beethoven)[?] gets us; Civil War (United States)[?] instead of American Civil War. Parenthetical titles should be avoided unless there is no valid alternative. I understand it may be a bit odd to use the natural title within the article on Beethoven, but this is no different than using American Civil War in an article whose context is already the the United States. Isn't there a well-accepted way to naturally disambiguate pieces of classical music? I always thought that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is how it is most often spoken but Beethoven's Symphony no. 5[?] is how it is most often written. I've never seen Fifth Symphony (Beethoven)[?] or Symphony no. 5 (Beethoven)[?] anywhere. --mav

Same reason we don't put "Charles Dickens' Hard Times". If there were two novels Hard Times, we'd likely write Hard Times (Dickens) and Hard TImes (Bonkowski) or something. If you really want the "well-accepted way to naturally disambiguate pieces of classical music" -- opus numbers! -- Tarquin 19:10 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Valid point. But while few people say "Charles Dickens' Hard Times" a great many do say "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" and even more write "Beethoven's Symphony no. 5". I think the real problem here is that "Symphony No. 5" isn't a real name - it is an ordinal and type (which is never complete without giving the context). --mav

Actually, mav, the top of sheet music usually gives just "Symphony" or "Sonata". My Mozart says "Sonata in {key}". If we were strict on titles, we'd have "Sonata (Beethoven Opus x)" for articles -- Tarquin 19:20 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not talking about what sheet music says - that is a specialized context. I'm talking about how English speakers refer to these pieces of music (both verbally and in written works about the music). --mav

Certianly it's more natural to write "Brahms' Violin Concerto" than "Violin Concerto (Brahms)", but the former seems rather clumsy for an article title to me. The possesive apostrophe doesn't help, and in any case the piece wasn't called by Brahms "Brahms' Violin Concerto", but just "Violin Concerto". It's as if instead of "Vertigo (movie)" we had "The film, Vertigo[?]" or "Hitchcock's Vertigo[?]", both of which look very peculiar (to me, at least).

There is another advantage to disambiguating parenthetically, as I've said above: thanks to the pipe trick, it makes linking much easier. In most cases, when referring to a piece, you'll want to link to the composer's article as well as the article for the piece. So that gives us the following options:

• "Another example is [[Johannes Brahms]]' ''[[Brhams' Violin Concerto|Violin Concerto]]''"
• "Another example is [[Johannes Brahms]]' ''[[Violin Concerto (Brahms)|]]''"

And within an article on Brahms himself, it would be:

• "When he began to write his [[Brahms' Violin Concerto|Violin Concerto]]
• "When he began to write his [[Violin Concerto (Brahms)|]]

I don't know about anybody else, but I much prefer the second option in both cases. I still think "Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)" is better, therefore (though of course as LDC says above, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can be a redirect). --Camembert

Well I seem to be the only one still complaining so I'll stop. It would be nice if following a redirect resulted in something not as ugly as we have now. --mav

To go back to your point about having "English Civil War" rather than "Civil War (England)" (I think it's a good point, and I want to address it) - I think the difference is that even within the context of an article about Cromwell, Charles I or even England, the first time the war gets mentioned it is likely to be called the "English Civil War", not just the "Civil War". This isn't the case with Brahms pieces in the context of an article about Brahms. The thing is called the "English Civil War" even when there's no chance of it being confused with other civil wars (that's my impression, anyway), but you'd just say "Symphony No. 4" unless you had to say "Brahms' Symphony No. 4" (and in that case, as I say, you'd probably want to link to Brahms as well, which makes the pipe trick useful). I think. --Camembert

I confess to feeling a little dissatisfied with the proposed convention, but all the other propositions have problems too (as several people have observed). Guess it's the least-worst option. Let's go with it. Tannin 02:08 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

It's the best I can come up with - there are problems inherent in the subject, I think, because there are thousands of things called "symphony" (which just isn't the case with books, films and so on). I'll put it up now. --Camembert

Actually, now that I see it written up all nice and neat and logical, it does read well. I'm warming to it. Tannin

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Titles in italics: although this is a naming convention, could it note somewhere titles of major pieces of music should be in italics, and minor pieces in quotes? This follows convention, just as record album titles are in italics and songs are in quotes, movie titles are in italics, short subject titles in quotes, TV series titles in italics, individual show titles in quotes, novel titles in italics, short story titles in quotes. that laid-back up tight guy, Ortolan88

I've added a mention. --Camembert

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I know I'm entering this debate a little late, but I do have a few comments. I do support putting the composer first since that is the most important piece of data in these entries. Thus my preference would be for the Beethoven Symphony No. 5[?] without the possessive since the name can be and often is used adjectively. The bracketed disambiguator seems awkward, and I prefer reserving the technique for when we are trying to distinguish the piece of music from something other than music as in Beethoven's Fifth (movie)[?]

The other thing that I noticed is the inconsistency is saying "Violin Concerto" but "Concerto for Orchestra". "Concerto for Violin" would encourage consistency. I agree that opus numbers in titles should be avoide unless absolutely necessary. Even though they are important in identifying Bach's works, nobody except the most ardent fans know them. ☮ Eclecticology 07:15 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Hmmm interesting. is extremely inconsistent on concerto naming anyway - it partly depends on whether you are trying to render faithfully a translation into English of what it was called in the original language, or what. Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra really was called that in English but lots of instrumental concerti had varying forms of name. Everybody talks about the Haydn Trumpet Concerto because that's what we call that type of piece of music in English - a trumpet concerto - but goodness knows exactly what it was called on the manuscript. Concerto for Trumpet would in this case sound unnatural and exaggeratedly formal. By the way Bach isn't a great example for opus numbers but I do agree with the idea that work numbering systems, be they opus, BWV, K D or whatever are bext kept out of article titles. :) Nevilley 08:25 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Inconsistency between "Concerto for X" and "X Concerto" is, I think, just one of those vaguely annoying things about the music world. I think we're better off sticking to whatever the most common name is than applying some consistent standard that nobody else uses. To talk of Haydn's "Concerto for Trumpet", as Nevilley says, would sound odd enough, but if I saw an article on Brahms' "Concerto for Violin and Cello" I'm not sure I'd even recognise that it was what we normally call his "Double Concerto" (of course, I might just be being unusually thick on that one).

The thing is, I don't think it's very likely that anyone would write "At his public debut, so-and-so played Josef Haydn's Concerto for Trumpet"? They're much more likely to write that "so-and-so played Josef Haydn's Trumpet Concerto", and I think the article title should reflect that. The same is true of "Bartok's Orchestra Concerto" (which I can't see anybody writing) and "Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra". These are judgement calls, of course, but I think in most cases they're fairly clear cut. Perhaps the convention should say that most of the time it should be "X Concerto" (and, for that matter, "X Sonata") but in the few cases where "Concerto for X" is more common (as in concertos for orchestra and maybe some double and triple concertos), the article title should reflect that.

Now, the tricky question of where to put the composer's name: "Beethoven Symphony No. 5" is interesting, but "Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven)" still seems better to me. The idea that the composer's name is the most important info in the article and therefore should go first in the title seems rather odd - it's an important piece of info, of course, but it's not what the article is about, per se. The parentheses looks a little "unnatural", I admit, but as I say, they make linking a lot easier, and to me at least, they seem most consistent with what we do elsewhere. I think that "Piano Sonata No. 4 (Beethoven)" is completely consistent with, for example, "Vertigo (movie)" ("Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 4", it seems to me, would be analogous with "Movie Vertigo", which we don't do). Given how we disambiguate other things, I think this is the most natural way to do pieces of music. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that, either - somebody who wasn't me made Violin Concerto (John Adams).

I think also that putting the composer in parentheses emphasises the fact that we don't really want his name in the article at all, that it's just there to avoid ambiguity. What I mean is that we have "War Requiem" and "Enigma Variations" rather than "Britten War Requiem" and "Elgar Enigma Varitaions".

Sorry, I seem to have gone on at some length there. I'm glad we all agree on opus and catalogue numbers, anyway :) --Camembert

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Capitalization: can I add another small worry here - capitalization of names of songs is done inconsistently all over the wiki. Some people capitalize every word, some just the Big Words (definition???), some do nothing:

• "Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry"
• "Crushed by the Wheels of Industry"
• "Crushed by the wheels of industry"

It is possible to add a song title to an article or list at various places and have it corrected to some other standard becase people are operating their own standards and I don't think a uniform one is documented anywhere. If it is I apologise, please point me at it. Some thoughts:

1. Maybe it doesn't matter and people should just do their own thing
2. Obviously some people think it does matter or they wouldn't correct to their own standard
3. I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for this question as it's mostly classical so far - but I suspect this issue can run across genre boundaries.
4. I don't think an external reference can easily be found for this. Everyone seems to have their own preference though in books I think I see a preference for Big Words Only capitalization.
5. "Go back to the original" does not work. Very often it is difficult to determine what the original was, and bands can be inconsistent from one release to another. Also you get design effects like it all being in capitals because it looks good on the album like that, or all in lower case, and we are most unlikely to want or be able to reproduce those faithfully, thus:

• "CRUSHED BY THE WHEELS OF INDUSTRY"
• "crushed by the wheels of industry"

I'd be interested to know what others think, and whether you think this article is the right place for this, and if not, what is. Nevilley 08:34 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Somtimes a band will come out with more than one album cover and hence different capitalization -- LittleDan

Agreed. See "Go back to the original" does not work above - I've tried it and it is quite unsatisfactory for that reason among others! One album I picked up the other day has a sleeve which cutely pretends to be the band's handwritten notes - you know the kind of thing - and it's ALL l/c of course - and then you find lots with all caps - hideous in an encyclopedia! Nevilley 00:26 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

My impression is that with English titles the first and last words are always capitalised, along with every other "Big Word" (which seems to mean everything apart from certain parts of speech like conjunctions, prepositions and articles (I think); hence "Crushed by the Wheels of Industry"). In German and French my impression is that no special rules apply - you just capitalise the song titles as you would if it was part of a normal sentence (in German, of course, this still means there are capitalised words). As far as I know there's no explicit Wikipedia convention on this (I might be missing it somewhere though). I suppose the right place to document this would be the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (since it's likely to affect article texts more than article titles). --Camembert

Yep I tried it in the MoS but it was not a successful discussion, hence this. I think agree, that "Crushed by the Wheels of Industry", as a standard, is probably the least worst. I wouldn't know precisely how to document it in terms of prepositions or adjectival noun clauses or whatever but I know it when I see it! In a perfect world I would probably go for minimal capitalization as I always feel that too many caps looks like a Victorian Concert Programme, but there is clearly a consensus against that so I think the above is probably the best we can agree on. :) Nevilley 00:26 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not really mad on all the capitals either - they don't so much remind me of a Victorian Concert Programme as a Winnie The Pooh story, which while perhaps No Bad Thing in itself, probably isn't the Sort Of Thing we want to resemble if we're going to come across as a Serious Encyclopaedia. But as you say, it's what people do, and it's what we should do as well. One day, when nobody's looking, we'll change all the song titles on the wikipedia and pretend they've always been like that ;) --Camembert

I think the easiest thing to do (for English) is to almost always make a, an, and the be lowercase, unless they are at the beginning (of course). Also, you can probably make them uppercase when you combine two titles (for instance, the Star Wars Episode 1 soundtrack has "Star Wars Main Title and The Arrival at Naboo" as the first track. Prepositions shorter than 4 characters are usually lower-case, though there are weird cases ("Get It on" vs "Get It On"). Longer than 4 are uppercase. Right at 4, and it's pretty much your discretion on words like into and from. —Mulad

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Whatever the outcome of all thses discussions I'd like to thank those involved for all the hard work that has gone into trying to sort this out. Nevilley 08:38 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)