[lightning_bug]

Just listening through some of my iTunes library, and I noticed something that has bothered me on occasion, but never enough to take action...

Until now.

How do you categorize your classical/symphony music, if you have any in your library? I have tracks that have the artist as the song's performer (i.e. the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue), and I have tracks where the artist is the song's composer (i.e. an entire album: Masters of Classical Music - Beethoven). The inconsistency is maddening, but I honestly have no idea what the proper treatment should be for classical/symphony music WRT proper tagging, categorizing, etc.

Anyways...how do you keep track of your classical and symphonic tracks in iTunes?

[Dorian Gray]

My solution is to not agonise over this. It's near-impossible to be utterly consistent, due to the varied nature of classical music, and the fact that iTunes' fields are not ideal for classical stuff. Generally I do it like this. But as long as all the information you want is recorded, you can generally use iTunes' search function to find the music you want.

I use Name for the movement, Artist for performer, Composer for composer, Album for the work title (so one CD usually has multiple Album names; I use the Track # and Disc # fields to identify what was on each CD).

I use the "Classical" Genre rather loosely: everything from Baroque to Romantic goes in there. Sub-dividing into multiple genres caused more hassle than it was worth. I put the year of recording, rather than the year of release, into the Year field. The Comment field is used to record the label and the SPARS code. In this instance, ADD tells me that analogue tape was used for the recording, followed by digital tape for mixing/editing and mastering.

[lightning_bug]

The idea of using Album as a means of separating movements/work titles is intriguing.

However, your suggestion to not agonize over my music's categorization might be the best option in the end...most of my classical collection comes from bargain basement CDs, some of which never bother to mention the performer of whatever piece I'm listening to, and so the composer becomes the artist. I guess you get what you pay for.

I think I'll just have to create some playlists and go about my organization that way - maybe clean up my titles where the composer is referenced as well, as that doesn't quite look right.