Talk:BWV
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[edit] Schmieder numbers
Difficult to find (the remark I saw was in a letter in the magazine Musical Times of London) but will look for evidence elsewhere – I believe Schmieder explicitly did not want his name used (no S or Schmieder numbers) in place of, as a shorthand for, the BWV prefix. Schissel | Sound the Note! 17:26, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
- I've definitely read that somewhere - I've only ever seen S. prefixes used from recordings in the 1950s or around that time, when people were clearly just getting used to the BWV. Clavecin 12:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Suggestions for creation of articles on individual Bach compositions
Every Bach composition should have its own article, though it is sensible to begin with that collections go in one article - e.g. French suites, English suites, well-tempered clavier, clavier-ubung 3, and so on. Every cantata should have its own article.
The title format for each article should be its name followed by BWV number in most cases - e.g. Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 531 - this makes it clear it is by Bach and also exactly which composition it refers to, in the commonly denoted way. In multiple-title names, it should be e.g. Partitas, BWV 825-830 - properly with a long-dash in the middle. For very well-known titles, such as 'well-tempered clavier' (and when Bach is clearly the only one to have written a piece with the title), the BWV numbers can be omitted. I've used (J. S. Bach) as a modifier for 'harpsichord concertos' because they are not continuous in BWV numbers and are not a unified set - so these naming rules can be modified where it is sensible to do so.
In each case, the BWV number should also be made as a redirect to the article in question: e.g. BWV 531 would redirect to Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 531. This makes linking to Bach compositions extremely easy - just use the BWV number - when otherwise confusion might arise about what the exact title was. It also makes it easier to find the article direct through a search.
In the case of multiple articles, each BWV number should be linked in a similar way to the title - so for Brandenburg Concertos, I've linked BWV 1046 and BWV 1047 and so on up to BWV 1051, all to the article. Only when the multiple articles get too long should there be an article about each piece in a unified set - and we are nowhere near this stage yet on any of the collections.
In writing articles on individual compositions, the use of pictures of musical examples, especially of themes, etc., should ideally be included - see Sonata on the 94th Psalm for an example of how I've done this. As the music is public domain in most editions, this can be easy to capture with picture editing software or a camera. A good source of imformation for writing articles on the cantatas will be http://www.bach-cantatas.com/ Clavecin 12:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Thematical?
Hi everyone! Could it be possible that the article confuses "thematically" with "ordered by genre"? It is true that the BWV is a thematical catalogue, but this refers to the fact that all compositions have a musical incipit, meaning the first couple of bars of each composition are given in musical notation. So, saying that the BWV is a thematical catalogue is not the same thing as saying it is ordered by genre, which it is of course. The BWV is definitly not ordered "thematically." This would mean that the compositions were ordered by some kind of musical qualities of the themes, i.e. all themes that start with repeated notes come first, then all themes that start with leaps of fourths etc... Could somebody clearify this situation, please? Matthias Röder 10:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
