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Best Ways to Organize a Classical Record LP Collection ?

Need advice and recommendations from AudioGon Classical LP Aficionados.

I recently acquired a large 30+ box Classical LP collection.
Feeling a little overwhelmed. :^( 
Organizing Classical music is different from other genres.

Do you organize by Composer, their Work, the Performer, the Label, other .... ?

Can you please share your experiences, ideas, the pros and cons you found with each method. 

I am hoping your information will help me to decide which method will work best for me. 

Thanks 

ct0517
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
I organize by composer's birthday. That way I have a progression that goes by music period *and* composer simultaneously--renaissance, baroque, rococo, classical, romantic, impressionist, 20th century, and contemporary.
The only problem is the collections that might have multiple composers or even artists as well. For those I have a separate block of albums generally organized alphabetically by primary artist.
paulparsons
1 posts
 
Yes, definitely organize by birth year of the composer. That way you can get a visual feel of the progression of centuries of music, and understand which composers wrote during the same period, and which ones influenced those who were born later. Here is the way classical.net broadly divides things:

Medieval - 11th though 14th Centuries
Early Renaissance - 15th Century
High Renaissance - 16th Century
Early Baroque - Late 16th and 17th Centuries
High Baroque - Late 17th and Early 18th Centuries
Classical/Romantic - Late 18th Century
Romantic - Early 19th Century
Romantic/Modern - Late 19th Century
Modern - 20th Century


In each composer section, I subdivide by opus numbers, chronologically. When that is not feasible, I keep all the symphonies of that composer together, all his string quartets together, and so on.

If you have a violin record with four composers on it, what do you do then? You can either put it in with your favorite composer on the LP, or you can have a section of records at the end or beginning of your shelving devoted to particular instruments. Piano, clarinet, guitar, what have you.

Operas you can have in a separate section or not.

Filing alphabetically is the lazy man's way, essentially pointless except for convenience. Is there really any sense in having Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner next to each other, when what they primarily have in common is the letter B?

Filing by label is valid if you collect by label and when music is not your main concern. But why have to go to dozens of different sections to find all your Beethoven?

Enjoy your new collection!
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
I had my CDs organized by birth of composer and my son (when he was around 10) reorganized them by the color of the spine of the jewel case, which essentially means they were organized by label regardless of period, performers, or composer. It was a daunting task but I eventually got them reorganized by composer date of birth.
ct0517's avatar
ct0517 OP
2,041 posts
 
Very helpful posts - thanks.

Hi Johnnyb53

I had my CDs organized by birth of composer and my son (when he was around 10) reorganized them by the color of the spine of the jewel case, which essentially means they were organized by label regardless of period, performers, or composer. It was a daunting task but I eventually got them reorganized by composer date of birth.

That is quite a feat for a 10 year old. Imagine how you would of felt if he did that with your records and was manhandling them. I have the boxes on two floors now away from view. I am going to need more shelving !
I am trying to decide between the ease of flipping through the records (much preferred) over storing albums like books in the shelving. The many box sets are not a problem this way, but the singles; I know they just won't get played as much this way with me. They become archived and then lost. I want to see the whole album face when flipping through it. I think now my wife doing me a favor by pulling the Deutsche Grammophon singles, and filing almost two boxes was a mistake :^(

**********************************

Hi Paulparsons - you said something that hit home with me. (btw - welcome to AudioGon as a poster)

Yes, definitely organize by birth year of the composer. That way you can get a visual feel of the progression of centuries of music, and understand which composers wrote during the same period, and which ones influenced those who were born later.

.....

Filing alphabetically is the lazy man's way, essentially pointless except for convenience. Is there really any sense in having Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner next to each other, when what they primarily have in common is the letter B?

Filing by label is valid if you collect by label and when music is not your main concern. But why have to go to dozens of different sections to find all your Beethoven?


I have always been the type to listen to whole records regardless of genre. I want to get to know the music and artists and feel at times, the music that doesn't get air play, is many times the best stuff. So I feel the extra effort to do this would in the end bring me a lot more actual music enjoyment and learning enjoyment; getting to know the Composers and as you said, seeing how those that came later were influenced by those before.
Thanks for links in your post. So I went to the website source and copied and pasted the referenced composer list into a spreadsheet.

Holy Moly, 1100 friggin Composer entries !!!

***************************************************

Bdp24 - Was thinking some more about what you said earlier about Longhair.

You can see TV clips from the 1950s, in which what is now called Classical was then referred to as "serious"---as opposed to Pop---or "longhair"---a pre-Beatles term!---music)

I'm not so sure about this Longhair comment.  

The Beatles.

http://verygoodmusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/bands_the_beatles.jpg

Beethoven

http://assets.classicfm.com/2009/04/ludwig-van-beethoven-1233160023.jpg

Bach

http://cp91279.biography.com/1000509261001/1000509261001_1707045537001_BIO-Biography-17-Composers-Jo...

So who has the longer hair?   What is it about those B's ? 

bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,272 posts
 

Ha! I watched the documentary Anderson Cooper did on his Mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. Her second husband was conductor Leopold Stokowski, and there were some pics of him on stage, hair flying all over the place. I think that look was very common amongst conductors in the first half of the 20th Century, and may be where the term came from.

Paul Parsons, what makes sense in having Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner next to each other on a shelf is the same as for having Count Basie in between The Band and The Beach Boys---I know where to find what it is I find myself wanting to listen to. My shelves are for storing, not for chronicling the progression of musical styles through history. I find myself wanting to hear a particular composer or composition, not a period in time or genre in general. To each his own!

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