Classical Music Support

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Muso is one of the few musical management solutions which has dedicated support for classical music. Specialized behavior for classical music is turned on via the Classical tab under Options - this forces the Composer tag to be used in preference to Artist, and also allows separate Classical & Non-Classical modes via buttons on the toolbar.

Track attributes for composer, orchestra (ensemble), conductor and performer make it easy to distinguish multiple versions of the same work. In order to get the most out of muso, some effort may be required in getting the embedded tags right before importing into muso, or by editing these attributes within the muso database, since few CD ripping packages set all the tags properly.

You should in particular try to standardise the names of composers, but if editing the database in muso, it can help with this since it contains a large roster of known composer names, for use in the Edit Tracks window. You can edit this composer roster and add any names that are missing, along with their birth, death, and homeland. This allows you to filter and browse hierarchically by classical period (it matches their "productive" years - 20 to death - to an editable list of periods) and their homeland (country of birth). So for example it's quick & easy to find albums with music by Czech composers, then limit those to the late Romantic period.

You can also edit which genres you want to be assumed as classical. Whether or not the album is classified as classical or not depends upon whether the main genre for the album is in this classical genres list. The main genre is the one listed first in the album's genres, and is deduced as the one that appears most often across all the tracks. If there is a tie (eg. you have "Piano; Classical" for every track) it takes whatever genre it has encountered first as the main genre, so Piano in this case (i.e. will classify this as non-classical). This gives you an element of control whether multi-genre albums are deduced as classical or not.

To provide support for a work and it's consituent parts and movements, Muso uses the GroupHeader field as follows:

 GroupHeader = Work
 Track Title = Movement

To add parts we use the GroupHeader :: separator:

 GroupHeader = Work :: Part
 Track Title = Movement

For example:


LMS players only display the track title currently, so Muso supports these being combined into the title as well (as a prefix), so we might have:

 GroupHeader = Work
 Track Title = Work : Movement

or:

 GroupHeader = Work :: Part
 Track Title = Work :: Part : Movement

or:

 GroupHeader = Work :: Part
 Track Title = Part : Movement

Muso will still display work & parts as headers & sub-headers, and just the movement in the track detail in album views.

WIKI PAGE TO BE COMPLETED