I love Roon’s ability to randomly play a classical Playlist without losing sight of compositions. However, this fails miserably when movements aren’t identified as being part of a single composition. This is precisely what happens with some of my albums. Here is a recent example:
Before someone suggests it may have something to do with the complex history of this piece, the same happens with Beethoven’s third piano concerto as performed by Uchida:
I do tag externally, but I fail to see why that matters since the Schumann tracks are tagged in exactly the same way. In fact all my thousands of classical albums are tagged like that (tagging system goes back to Sonos days) and only a small percentage of those display this problem. To give but one example, all 11 of my Beethoven third piano concertos are tagged in the same way; none of the others (I double checked) have this problem.
The “Kartiny” you mention is part of the Russian title: Картины на выставке (Kartiny na vystavke).
What I am saying is I don’t know where the PC3 comes from , Roon looks up in either AllMusic or MusicBrainz neither uses a format such as this so it’s odd that its showing up in your Compositions
It would read
Piano Concerto No.3 in C minor, Op.37
If Roon were to look it up
If you “Prefer File” in
You must be rigorous in getting all works identical or you will get a mess
I am rigorous (had to be in the Sonos days). As far as I have understood, Roon does not identify albums on the basis of track names. Moreover, when I go to edit in Roon the Mussorgsky/Schumann album is correctly identified.
PS. Another composition on the same album is also treated as (in this case) two compositions (Mussorgsky’s Memories of Childhood).
Setting aside the issue of metadata provenance and the fact that this problem can be probably overcome with local files (using correct Work/Part tags), the same happens all the time with albums from streaming providers. And in that case there is no option to correct metadata, and a feature to correct the grouping of work parts into the proper composition is sorely missing. In fact I consider this one of the most vexing shortcomings of Roon, especially (although not exclusively) for classical listeners. Browsing ‘Compositions’ on my Roon database, I find that it is full of single movements and single parts wrongly identified as ‘Composition’… makes the concept of ‘Composition’ in Roon rather pointless.
I could not agree more. I also have problems with searches for classical music which can yield really odd results, and I recently ran into another issue peculiar to classical music: likes. If I like a particular composition or track, Roon automatically likes all the compositions, irrespective of the artist. This is really annoying. I may like a particular version of Beethoven’s fifth, but that does not mean I like all performances of the same work.
Yes, that’s another annoyance. Roon has no notion of ‘Performance’ vs. ‘Composition’… so if you find a track or several grouped tracks on a classical album and you like the performance by these particular artists on this particular albums, there is no way to ‘Like’ this performance. Hearting it will in fact ‘Like’ the composition, without regard to any particular performance. That doesn’t make any sense…
I completely avoid hearting tracks in Roon; I only heart albums as a whole, if I find them partially or completely appealing to me…
Yes. I noticed it when I added a composition and when I looked at it again it suddenly had the hearts/likes I had given a different performance of the same composition. It is a great shame. Is that why Apple thought there was a market for a classical player?
I’ve found that the trick is to just the tracks themselves in the work’s performance, i.e. the actual recording of the performance. That does not make the composition itself a favourite.
So, for example, here, I have favourited this performance of Mahler’s 4th by marking the tracks, but not the composition:
The drawback to this method is that each track in a composition must be marked as a favourite, it is not possible to select multiple tracks and apply the with one click…
Thanks, that helps. I don’t mind marking the individual tracks. Now what about my Mussorgsky problem? Any idea what causes it? I have a feeling it may not have anything to do with my tagging.
The problem is that the source metadata has not allowed Roon to recognise the Mussorgsky as a single composition. If you have this album as a local set of files, then you could group the individual parts into a single work and tell Roon that it is this one:
At the moment, the list of recordings given on this page does not include the Andsnes performance, because Roon has not made the connection.
You need to have local files to form the parts into a work - we can’t do it for streamed albums unfortunately.
Edit: I’ve just bought this album from Qobuz, so now I have local files that I can edit the metadata. Before editing, The composition was not recognised:
I then edited the files (using Mp3Tag) to add WORK and PART metadata. The last step was to edit the Metadata Preference for the album in Roon to tell it to use the file data for multi-part composition grouping. That got the composition properly recognised and the performance added to the list of recordings on the composition page…
Thank you, that’s interesting… and something rather than nothing. I will test this with suitable music like symphonies or concertos with usually lower total number of movements. Of course, this is tedious with other types of music—say choral works, baroque suites, opera, and other compositions with a large number of parts or movements.
Have you tested if favourite performances can still be selected in the compositions page, if only one track or part (say the first track) has been hearted? If so, that would make the marking of favorite performances of all types of works easier…
Edit: I just tested this, using Haydn’s Op. 20/3 string quartet as example… It works, marking only the first track or part of the work. It still can be selected on the Compositions page as ‘hearted’ or liked… But it will identify the hearted part, and not the work as such. If all movements are hearted, though, the work as such is recognized as ‘hearted’ or liked…
In case others are reading this and are having the same problem. Roon has two versions of this album in its database. You need to search on the album title “Pictures Reframed”.
You can set the title to anything you like afterwards if “Pictures Reframed” does not work for you. That seems to have been what the cover art designers did. All composition hierarchies should then be correct. They are for me.
Whatever the implementation issue is, the solution (to mark all the tracks) is pretty dumb, if that’s the best roon can do.
BTW I went to Apple classical, pulled up Rachmaninov Sym 2, chose one of the recordings, André Previn and the LSO, and hit the star to make it a favorite. None of the other recordings were marked.
I use Roon only for streaming (Qobuz and Tidal), and I don’t encounter this issue with favorites. If I favorite a Qobuz album on Roon, it will become a favorite on my Qobuz account and other albums with the same composition are unaffected. Perhaps the issue only involves favoriting local albums? My thought is that when favoriting an album on a streaming service, Roon will simply sync the favorite information with the service, but when favoriting a local album, it is trying to do something extra.
@mSpot - making something a “favourite” has different meanings and results according to the context and source.
Making an album or track a favourite in Qobuz (or Tidal) will cause the album or track to be synced to your Roon Library. All Qobuz (or Tidal) items that are favourited get added to your Library this way.
Similarly, if you add a Qobuz (or Tidal) album or track to your Library from within Roon, then it will get marked as a favourite in your streaming service.
However, making an album or track in your Roon Library a favourite is an attribute that is unique to Roon, and gives a way of distinguishing favourite albums or tracks in your Roon Library.
Lastly, one of the issues that this thread is about is the distinction between a composition, and performances (recordings) of the composition. An individual recording of a particular composition can be marked as a favourite without affecting other recordings of the composition. However, if a composition is marked as a favourite, then all recordings of that composition become marked as a favourite, and this is not particularly useful or desired for most of us.
the tracks themselves in the work’s performance, i.e. the actual recording of the performance. That does not make the composition itself a favourite.
