[Data-modeling] Songs as Written Works

[Jeff Prucher]

I had suggested giving "composition" a subject property somewhere, at some
point, but I can't seem to find the thread. This would allow non-song
compositions to have subjects, if such a thing is needed. (Thus "Flight" and
"Bumblebee" could be instances of a "composition subject" type, I suppose.)

Co-typing compositions with language components (or "songs") as written
works is an interesting problem. Written work has three date properties:
date written, copyright date, and date of first publication. Co-typing would
allow having different dates for the completion of the words and music,
although it might cause confusion about copyright -- would it apply to the
words, the music, or both?  The "series" properties might be a bit odd, too,
since they expect a type "Literary Series". Compositions can of course be
parts of series, although one probably wouldn't call them "literary series"
and I imagine that wordless compositions could equally be in series. "School
or movement" has the same issue.

There's also the issue of poems that are later used as song lyrics -- how
would those be treated? (We do this via Adaptation/Adapted Work, and
treating the poet as (a sometimes unwitting) lyricist currently.)

A very strict model might actually treat the words and music as separate
items, with a mechanism for linking the two. But I think that way lies
madness. Or at least unusablity.

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of 
> Christopher R. Maden
> Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 4:07 PM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: [Data-modeling] Songs as Written Works
> 
> I wanted to capture the fact that the Tori Amos song "Yes, 
> Anastasia" is about Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov using the 
> Subject property of the Written Work type.
> 
> Unfortunately, treating song lyrics as a poem causes a bunch 
> of redundancy with the properties of Composition.
> 
> <URL: https://www.freebase.com/view/en/yes_anastasia >
> 
> Should the Composition Lyricist property delegate to Written 
> Work Author?  The lyrics of a composition are really a form 
> of poem; this will allow us to add the Written Work type to 
> instances of Composition without causing redundancy.  (It 
> also gives us somewhere to put the language values from 
> MusicBrainz, if Metaweb ever renews the import of that data.)
> 
> ~Chris
> --
> Chris Maden, text nerd  <URL: http://crism.maden.org/ > "All 
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