Music Presentation Format: Toward a Cataloging Babel?

Abstract

This case study on cataloging notated music focuses on music presentation format, and the use of controlled vocabularies in a multilingual context, when concepts do not have corresponding terms in one or more languages, and when common language terms are mixed with technical terms in a specialized context. Issues concern the terminological correspondence among different languages, and the consequent risks if only one language is taken into account or the meaning of one word is arbitrarily altered; English linguistic pragmatism may lead to wrong conceptual results when it points directly to the result of a process, while other languages focus on the process needed to obtain that result. Considerations on the use of codes in MARC formats and on how music presentation is treated in Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) are included, and numerous illustrated examples, understandable even by non-music experts, support the article.

KEYWORDS:

• bibliographic data
• interoperability
• cataloging
• music
• case studies
• controlled vocabularies

Notes

Jean Effel La création de l’homme (Paris: Édition Cercle d’art, 1959), [19].

6JSC/IAML/1, August 7, 2012. http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/6JSC-IAML-1.pdf; for responses see http://www.rda-jsc.org/working2.html#community-iaml-1 (accessed September 2, 2014).

All 35 figures and their captions can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639374. 2014.968274.

This is certainly true since the eighteenth century; earlier it was also common to find tablatures, or, for keyboard multipart canzonas, real scores, where each melodic line was written on a separate stave.

For RDA Format of music terms see http://metadataregistry.org/concept/list/vocabulary_id/109.html (accessed October 11, 2014).

In AACR2 vocal score was defined in the Glossary: “A score showing all vocal parts, with accompaniment, if any, arranged for keyboard instrument.” Voice score is not in the glossary, but appears in MARC 21 008/20 as code d = “Voice score with accompaniment omitted.” A similar concept is in Unimarc 125 $a/0, as code d = “Voice score, chorus score, accompaniment has been dropped,” described as “The accompaniment to vocal or choral parts has been omitted and only the voice parts remain. Vocal and choral works originally unaccompanied are assigned other codes as appropriate.”

A discussion is pending on moving this statement to 250—Edition statement, see http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2013/2013-03.html (accessed September 16, 2014).

In the Bibliographic Framework (BIBFRAME) it is treated in bf:formatOfMusic.

UNIMARC Manual Bibliographic Format, 3rd ed. (München: K.G. Saur, 2008). In UNIMARC 125 multiple musical formats may be individually specified in subfield $c, where any number of codes can be recorded.

MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data: 008: Music. http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd008m.html (accessed September 16, 2014). The same information is also treated in field 006/03-04.

INTERMARC (B)—version 4—déc. 2002, “Zone 009c.” http://www.bnf.fr/documents/pb-RIMB_009c.pdf

PRES table. http://www.iccu.sbn.it/opencms/export/sites/iccu/documenti/2013/TB_CODICI_31-10-2013.pdf (accessed September 16, 2014).

Formato IBERMARC para registros bibliográficos, sexta ed., tomo I (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 2001). http://www.bne.gob.es/es/Servicios/NormasEstandares/Docs/Rbibliograficos2001_TomoI.pdf (accessed September 16, 2014). The same information is also treated in field 006/03.

The concept of primary expression is under discussion in the FRBR Review Group in the process of the consolidation of the conceptual models of the FR family.

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report (München: K.G. Saur, 1998), 124–125.