Talk:Erano i capei d'or a 5 (Giovanni Maria Nanino)

Possibly merge four other pages here

This is a setting of the three-part Petrarca poem. The three-voice 1597 version appears as four other pages (Erano i capei d'or - 3v, Erano i capei d'or, Non era l'andar suo and Uno spirto celeste). At best this is confusing (it is to me anyway). I propose to merge them all here. On the other hand, I feel that Artifex mirus should be a separate page, as it is Sacred music in a different language, with different text and title. — Barry Johnston (talk) 14:56, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I currently feel that the question of merging the three and five-voice versions onto one page comes down to whether they are different arrangements of the same work, ie. do they use the same compositional materials? If so, then I support merging them. I certainly support merging the three parts of the three-voice version, regardless, since they are three movements of the same work, not three separate works.

Regarding the sacred contrafacts, of which there are now two listed for this madrigal, I go back and forth on how I feel about making them separate pages. Lately, I have been listing sacred contrafacts on the original work's page, in order to preserve the publication history on one page and to suggest that parody is just another form of re-arrangement, but perhaps the Sacred/Secular division is more significant than I am prepared to admit. Certainly it is odd to see the same work sorted into both Sacred and Secular sections on a composer's page. - GeoffG (talk) 00:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate what you said about merging the three-voice and five-voice versions. I will proceed to merge all the three-voice pages into one, and abandon the total merger for now; maybe someone else has a better understanding of the relationship between the versions.

About where to put sacred contrafacts, I agree with your discussion. But I would add the strangeness of this page appearing in Category:Sacred music, where the title is obviously a secular Italian Madrigal – making it unlikely that someone looking for music to use in a sacred service would even bother to open the page. Similar story with Category:Works in Latin; also, what do you do with subgenres? Actually the same situation occurs with many translations, where the language difference may be more culturally significant than it is with Latin. — Barry Johnston (talk) 03:00, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I had not thought it controversial to keep translations of the same work on the same page; however, I have been discounting the confusion it might present to a casual user who is searching for a Work in English and gets a hit for a work with an Italian title, for example, or who searches for Sacred Works and finds a work with a secular title. My worry has been the proliferation of pages representing versions of the same work--one for every language there is, potentially--and the attendant need to maintain linked descriptive text on each of them describing their connection to the original. Perhaps the seeming simplicity of the keep-it-all-on-one-page approach is not worth the potential confusion of users, though.

This comes down to a problem of categorization, I suppose. I cannot bring myself to call a translation a different work any more than I can call a new arrangement a different work. How many people, do you suppose, are confused to find 'O Come All Ye Faithful' on the same page as 'Adeste fideles'? I note that page is not categorized as a 'Work in English'. It keeps the language field simply to the original language, as many other pages keep the Voicing field to the original ranges, no matter what transpositions editors might upload. Is that the best solution? To only list the original language? Would that increase or decrease user confusion? - GeoffG (talk) 03:31, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying, you make some good points. Now we have two pages, one for the 5-voice and one for the 3-voice. For me, I'll leave the rest the way it is. Thanks! — Barry Johnston (talk) 21:08, 13 April 2023 (UTC)