When I select the Composers view and then use Focus and select Genre=Classical, many composers are returned who are not associated with classical music - Pat Metheny, John McGlaughlin, Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus etc. etc… If I pick any of them and look at their compositions they all appear to be in different genres to classical.
OTOH If I select “Only classical” in the sort by drop down at the top right, and forget about the Focus, I get just Classical music composers.
Why the difference? Why does the Focus on Genre = Classical not seem to work sensibly for the Composer view?
roon’s algorithm seems to add Classical to composers if there are certain sub-genres attached to that composer. One of the worst offenses here is that anyone who has written anything with lyrics gets the sub-genre Vocal Music added and that in turn triggers Classical being added. roon really needs to fix this @support . Also anything having to do with Soundtrack (Film Score, for example) or Musical Show (Stage & Screen) will result in Classical being mis-added.
Because “Is classical composer?” is a Yes / No value attached to the respective artist. If the composer is flagged with a yes for that value then this composer is included in the “Classical only” view.
Not that I have seen the specification documents of Roon but I believe that’s (most likely) because as a Performer Pat Metheny got a “Classical” genre attachement. That will make him appear as a composer in your focus filter for “Classical”.
Obviously there is a reason for the behaviour. But I can’t see what good reason there is. Pat Metheny is exclusively a jazz performer and composer. If you focus albums by Genre=Classical you don’t get any Pat Metheny. Yet if I Focus Composers by the same criterion I get lots of Pat Metheny compositions none of which are in the classical genre. Doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me. Hopefully someone from @support will tell me whether this is a bug, or an intended behavior. If it is intended, I would like it to be justified.
… but what genres does Pat have assigned when you look at his performer page? Maybe two screenshots of the artist pages - one of Pat’s composer page and the other of his performer page - would help (me) to check.
ah, ok, if I go to Artists, pick Pat Metheny, and then Performer, Classical shows up as a tag. As do various Jazz Genres like Jazz Fusion. I can’t understand why classical would show up as a tag for Pat Metheny the Performer, but not for any of his albums, or for him as an artist. Can your tell me how to find out which albums he features on as a performer in the classical Genre. Bear in mind my initial question was why does Pat Metheny come up as a Classical Composer.
And if that is true, why does “Classical Only” give one set of Composers, and Genre=Classical give a different set? And since “Classical Only” is indeed a useful constraint (Because Genre=Classical doesn’t give me what I expect), why can’t I also have “Jazz Only” etc.
Roon’s data model of Genre is certainly not intuitive to me, and leads to results which seem to me absurd. For example, I go to Composer View. I focus on Genre=Childrens and get 11 composers, among them Mozart, Mendelssohn and Bach. There are hundreds of compositions listed under Mozart, none of them obviously Children’s pieces (cf. The Requiem!). Same with Bach. The Mathew Passion is not a children’s piece for sure, yet Roon returns it. If I use the album view, I only have one entry in the Children’s Genre.
Edited to add: even more absurdly, the Children’s Genre is only assigned to Mozart as a performer. (as are other genres). Mozart can not possibly be a performer on any cd, as he died a century or more before recording was invented.
I don’t know. Perhaps because the artist genres reflect their main fields rather than the totality of genres covering all their albums. That’s just a guess, we’d need to get a reply from Roon.
@anon47919701 answered that above - there’s a yes/no switch for classical (and there isn’t for jazz)
Because Allmusic has assigned that genre to them. Roon imports that. If you edit that genre out of Mozart, you won’t get all his compositions under the children’s list.
Agreed. He pops as one because of some bad metadata on some albums. I have fixed that on mine so he is no longer listed as a performer.
Thanks for trying to help me Brian. Can I ask for a bit more…?
I go to Composers, Click on Mozart, Click on Performer, where Roon gives me 10 Albums under Appearances on which it believes Mozart appears on. Mostly from Qobuz, and all Piano Concertos. I should be so lucky. Picking a track from one of one of these arbitrarily (Piano Concertos 17+25 Uchida/Cleveland) and looking at the credits under composers and Performers Mozart is credited as the composer and also with the cadenza. I am guessing it is the cadenza credit that somehow causes Roon to deduce that he is a performer. Am I right? How could I stop it?
So Roon does indeed say that makes him a performer (but not a composer, or an artist - which in roonspeak corresponds to primary or album artist).
So, you’ll have to find the relevant tracks (or albums), select 3 dot edit, choose edit track or edit album. and look for the credits section. Remove the offending assignment. There’s a whole section here but I hope that my precis will suffice.
