How to create a Composer's Works List to add to Themefinder

---

Basic format

A composer worklist contains three sections: (1) the biographical section that described the composer, (2) a list of webpages to group works on, and (3) a list of the compositions by that composer.

Examples of composer work lists can be viewed here: J.S. Bach (large composer list) and John Alden Carpenter (shorter composer list). View these files and see how to create the contents of a large or small composer work list.

The composer worklist file start with the line:

   @START: COMPOSER

and ends with the line:

   @END: COMPOSER

With the three sections organized in this order:

@START: COMPOSER
section 1: biographical information
section 2: paging information
section 3: composition information
@END: COMPOSER

Section 1: Composer Biographical Information

Here is the example biographical information for John Carpenter:

@ID: carpenter
@LASTNAME:  Carpenter
@RESTNAME:  John Alden
@FULLNAME: @RESTNAME> @LASTNAME>
@BIRTHDATE: 1876/2/28/
@BIRTHLOCATION-COUNTRY: United States of America
@BIRTHLOCATION-STATE: Illinois
@BIRTHLOCATION-CITY: Park Ridge
@DEATHDATE: 1951/4/26/
@BIRTHLOCATION-COUNTRY: United States of America
@BIRTHLOCATION-STATE: Illinois
@BIRTHLOCATION-CITY: Chicago
@NATIONALITY: American

The meaning of the fields are as follows:

ID	Usually the last name of the composer, unless there are other composer in Themefinder with the same last name. The ID value is only the lowercase letters a-z with no accents allowed.
LASTNAME	The last name of the composer, or the name under which to alphabetize the composer. (E.g.: Beethoven)
RESTNAME	The rest of the composer's name not including the last name. (E.g.: Ludwig van)
FIRSTNAME	If the composer has an unusual name such as Ludwig van Beethoven where van is not part of the last name, or not part of the first name, then this field can be filled in as well. (E.g.: Ludwig)
FULLNAME	The complete name of the composer in normal form (E.g.: Ludwig van Beethovem)
BIRTHDATE	Birthdate in the format: year/month/day/. If month or day is not given, then still put all slashes. (E.g.: 1854/// = born in 1854).
BIRTHLOCATION-COUNTRY	Country where the composer was born
BIRTHLOCATION-STATE	State where the composer was born (depending on country)
BIRTHLOCATION-CITY	City where the composer was born
DEATHDATE	similar to the birth date
BIRTHLOCATION-COUNTRY	country where the composer died
BIRTHLOCATION-STATE	state where the composer died (depending on country)
BIRTHLOCATION-CITY	city where the composer died
NATIONALITY	nationality(ies) of the composer.

The data for a field can contain a special expansion string which is of the form @xxxxx> where xxxxx is the field name of another field in the data. For example, if two fields for the name are:

@LASTNAME:  Carpenter
@RESTNAME:  John Alden

Then a third data field can reference these fields like this:

@FULLNAME: @RESTNAME> @LASTNAME>

and the record @FULLNAME: would expand to: John Alden Carpenter.

Section 2: Paging Information

For major composers with many works, it is useful to break the compositions up by genre as is the case for J.S. Bach's worklist. Composers with a shorter list of works can often ignore this section, (such as John Carpenter's worklist)

A page record starts with the line:

@START: PAGE

and ends with the line:

@END: PAGE

Here is an example entry for J.S. Bach:

@START: PAGE
@BWV: 1-224
@NAME: cantata
@TITLE: Cantatas
@LINK: Cantatas
@TITLEFILTER: Cantata 
@END: PAGE

NAME	the html name of the page which is listed in the composition record (see next section below).
TITLE	The title of the page
LINK	The title of the page as listed on the main page

Another field for the page (BWV in this case) is used to sort the pages, but not necessary if it doesn't fit the organization of the compositions on the page.

Section 3: Composition Information

Each composition is placed in a record which start with the line:

   @START: COMPOSITION

and ends with the line

   @END: COMPOSITION

Here is an example COMPOSITION entry:

@START: COMPOSITION
@DATE: 1915///
@TITLE: Watercolors
@SUBTITLE: 4 Chinese Tone Poems
@NOTE: orchestrated in 1918
@DESCRIPTION: <i>@TITLE</i>, @SUBTITLE>
@CATEGORY: Other Works
@END: COMPOSITION

Most fields in a composition record are optional. The only required one is the DESCRIPTION field which contains the description of the pieces as it would be printed out in the list of composition for the composer (including the font selection). The components of the description should ideally be separated out into their own data records, such as the title and subtitle fields in the above example.

Possible sorting fields include, composition date, opus number, or scholarly catalogue number:

@DATE:
@OPUS:
@BWV:  (for J.S. Bach)
@RV:   (for Antonio Vivaldi)
@K:    (for W.A. Mozart)

If compositions are to be sorted into separate pages (by genre), then the following field must be present:

 
@PAGE: cantata

Which would place the current composition onto the Cantata list in the file cantata.html.

A special record called ISTN is used to generate a link to a specific theme or collection of themes in the Themefinder database. For example:

@ISTN: w239330095090

This would generate a link to all themes for the composition (work) which contains theme 239330095090 Other possible initials to add to the istn number are: m = movement (only themes in one movement), or c = collection (all themes in a collection of works related to each other (possibly all composition listed under one opus number).

Other commands

The following commands are used to finally generate the html pages for the composer's works list (these are for J.S. Bach):

@LISTEDBY: BWV
@SORTBY: BWV
@MAKEPAGE: cantata motet mass oratorio wedding chorale schmelli wtc invention orch

LISTEDBY	Specifies which data field is to be used in the column to the left of the composition description to help identify the piece, such as the date, opus number, or scholarly catalog number.
SORTBY	The composition record which is to be used to sort the compositions in the list. Usually the same as the setting for LISTEDBY
MAKEPAGE	A directive to the html creating program which specifies the pages to create. If only a few pages need to be recreated, then this line can be edited to include only the necessary pages.