Best practices for tagging classical music for Symfonium?

Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask what the recommended / best practice is for tagging classical music so that it shows up correctly in Symfonium.

I have a classical library (FLAC), and I’m trying to decide how to structure the tags so composers, performers, and albums are properly recognized and easy to browse inside Symfonium.

For example:

  • Is it useful to tag the COMPOSER field (e.g. Bach, Beethoven, Bartók)?
    Does Symfonium actually recognize and expose the COMPOSER tag in a meaningful way?

  • Or is it better to simply include both the composer and the performer in ALBUMARTIST (or ARTIST) and call it a day?

  • How do you usually handle cases like soloist + orchestra + conductor?

  • Are multi-value tags (ARTIST / ALBUMARTIST) preferred or supported well for classical music?

I’m not tied to any specific tagging scheme yet, so I’d love to know what has worked best for others using Symfonium with a classical collection.

Thanks in advance!

3 Likes
2

You are using a Subsonic server, you need to see with them how they handle tags, Symfonium have no access in that case.

3

Yes, there is not problem with navidrome, i can list as composer or artist or whatever. But, for example if i put in Goldberg Variation from Bach played by Glenn Gould like this:
Artist: Glenn Gould

Albumartist: Glenn Gould

Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach will appear in Symfonium in the profile of artist?? i mean, symfonium read the composer tag and use it?

4

Again Symfonium displays what Navidrome sends via it’s API not the tags. Navidrome supports Composer yes.

5

I don’t actually have any classical music in my library but I did some research while building my Now Playing screen. Everyone seems to tag their music differently based on their needs.

First question to ask yourself is: do you want to use all the tag fields “as intended?” Or are you okay with putting info into the “wrong” field if it makes navigation easier for you?

Second question to ask is: how do you intend to navigate your classical music? Do you think to navigate to:

Bach (composer) > Goldberg Variations (referring to the work name) > (any recordings of that work)

Or do you think:

Glenn Gould (performer) > The Goldberg Variations (referring to Gould’s “album”) > (tracks under that album)

Either way can be done in Symfonium. (Even both at once, if you tag wisely.) But which route is better for you will determine how you should tag your files.

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6

Hi folks, I have exactly the same question bc I’m about to start adding classical music to my collection. I understood that it’s more about Navidrome, ok then.

@Celorien
I could perfectly answer your question: I don’t care about correctness, my main priority is ease of navigation :slight_smile:

Bach (composer) > Goldberg Variations (referring to the work name) > (any recordings of that work)

That’s my choice.

ALBUMARTIST comes to mind first, it will group every Bach piece under Bach artist. But I’m not sure about the subsequent structure, it’s basically lacking here, right?

P.S. I’m still learning your other reply about Klayton, still thinking and experimenting.

7

I won’t be able to check my notes until tomorrow-ish, so take this with a grain of salt. Running off memory rn :sweat_smile:

I’ll try to keep to the same example as above. Sorry in advance for the wall of text.

IMO best navigation flow is to have the composer (Bach) tagged as AlbumArtist. Performing Artist is either left blank, or copies the value of Album Artist (Bach).

Then the Work (Goldberg Variations) is tagged as the Album title.

Inside that “album”, each recording of that work will be tagged as a separate disc. This allows you to tag each Release’s Title (The Goldberg Variations) as the DISCSUBTITLE which will be displayed as the separator between recordings.

And then under this disc, you are free to tag each track with the correct Movement info as the Movement.Name & Movement number. (Track number can duplicate movement number, to help keep intended order.)

Performers for this recording are tagged as Composer

Ideally, track TITLE will contain any extra info you may need to search for the track. (It will rarely be displayed in-app, but you will see it on notifications and widgets. RIP scrobbling lol.) Maybe something like Recording Name | Movement Number - Movement Name since Symfonium’s search does not query disc titles (where we stored Recording Name).

*Downsides:

  • you need to assign an arbitrary disc number to each recording. (Tracks with the same (or empty) disc number will be grouped, even if they have different disc titles.)
  • structure of the physical recording is lost, since media is now split by Work
  • if a recording actually spans multiple discs, it is more difficult to retain that info. (The Work field can be used for this.)
  • a single cover art will be shown for the Work on the album page (track thumbnails can still be used to display each release’s cover art)

As I said earlier, I don’t actually have any classical music in my library. So I don’t know if there are other issues with this set up. But in my brief testing, it seemed to give the best flow.

Upsides:

  • navigation follows Composer -> Work -> Recordings path
  • Composer page allows you to easily view all recordings connected to any performer
  • Albums can be filtered by “Composer” when navigating from the Composer’s artist page… Meaning we can filter a Work’s list of recordings to show only those with a given performer

Remember to be smart about your NPS strings, as you will have to remember what info is actually in each field.