User talk:Cypressdome

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Hello, I beg you for help. Very much needed musical notes: Ignaz Moscheles, opus 107 (processing scales). I live in Ukraine, here they never get it, and the Internet can not be found. Please help, it is necessary for research work. Thank you. Here is my mail: padre_gabriel@mail.ru

Answered over here. --Cypressdome 23:44, 29 August 2011 (UTC)


where'd everything... I mean, Rattenfänger

it looks like just a held C continuing into the next line and singing "ah"? ... or do I have the wrong page? (that's page 194 written, not page 194 of the PDF.) Eric 00:28, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks- reinserting and recompiling :)! Eric 01:03, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Off-topic, but I notice that Google has scanned in a number of 19th century Senate/Congressional documents that include inter alia copyright deposits - apparently that's the document where they were registered then, instead of the LoC document where they were printed in later decades... (e.g. 1850 Congressional edition with Wels' Grand Funeral March, copyright having been asked for it in October 1850. Eric 06:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I actually ran across this when compiling the Grobe worklist. Apparently, there was a brief period of time, perhaps only a few years, during which Congress had placed some type of responsibility for receiving copyright submissions with the Smithsonian Institute in the hopes that it would help the SI bulk up its library and the reports of the SI to Congress included lists of copyright submissions. I recall reading part of a report (sadly not bookmarked by me) from an SI official complaining that it was costing them a small fortune to handle this due in part to publishers sending submissions to them postage due and that many publishers weren't submitting their expensive, quality material so that in his opinion the SI was amassing a collection of nearly worthless ephemera consisting of cheap popular novels, patent medicine labels, and sheet music! --Cypressdome 02:08, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The social status of music in much of the 19th century from what little I (think I) know (based on e.g. Walker's Liszt biography)... erm... erm... yes. At one point I was going to add to the IMSLP:Other music score websites page a brief description of what people could expect to find in e.g. the Sibley collection, the LoC collection (lots of brief piano music and songs, the occasional longer choral work and chamber work (e.g. Matzka's vn. sonata, some other piano and organ sonatas),... but I think that I underestimated all of them and was wise not to write them up (even Sibley which I still regard most highly of them :)) . (actually, I'm pleased- was surprised, now just pleased- to see that so much of the portion of the LoC collection consisting of music that seems to be for the domestic market, while a lot of it is what I admit I expected- silly trifles really- a lot of it too is fairly to rather good; and they have some real gems there that make the LoC American Memory collection really worth searching in. I think I mentioned I was absolutely not expecting to find the first edition 3 Piano Sonatas for the Young, Op.118, by Robert Schumann there (or of anything by Schumann), but then, they were published by Schuberth, so, makes sense- still, that's not the same as "expecting" to.) I still don't know if it's static or dynamic, that is, if it's still being added to.) Eric 03:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Chopin Werke (Breitkopf)

Fantastic addition - thanks. I found a partial copy of the "Kritischer bericht" at Google books. It looks like Ballades, Waltzes, Etudes and Songs were edited by Rudorff, while the Nocturnes and Polonaises were edited by Bargiel. Carolus 02:39, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I have no idea how I'm going to post those 3 supplementary volumes since they are critical reports with only snippets of the scores. --Cypressdome 02:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Hrm, well, that's a pain :)

Just installed OS 10.7 then noticed that without my 10.6 install disk, I can't reinstall Fink and so can't reinstall GraphicsMagick. Will try to install Imagemagick soon. Eric 00:08, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Bummer! Hope it works out for you. --Cypressdome 02:02, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Actually for the most important things I've used it for, I may need Graphicsmagick less than I thought (though Scantailor, yes. Will have to see if that still works- hopefully!) So long as an idea I just had works out. :) Will experiment with it soon... Eric 05:07, 20 August 2011 (UTC) Ok, that didn't work - Preview.app isn't that flexible :)..., installed ImageMagick (still need to reinstall some things from someone's OS 10.6 install cd - lost mine at a repair store I think...- but will do that soon. :) ) Eric 00:41, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, since you've posted some works by him in the past...

there are some works by G.E. Whiting at Hathitrust- not sure if you've already seen them and found too many scan faults to proceed, I only had less than a quick very hurried look (one biggish vocal score of a cantata I think, one organ instructional work, maybe others). May well try to attack them myself. Happily, ImageMagick is proving tractable so far based on what I've learned of Graphicsmagick- very glad to finally be learning how to use programs like this, very helpful. Thanks again and cheers! Eric 02:53, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Eric! I have been waiting forever to process and post Whiting's The Tale of the Viking. First, the copy from Google books was problematic and then the copy finally posted to Hathitrust suffered from the "monochrome only/grayscale dropped" problem for which I submitted feedback and which they supposedly fixed but also informed me that there were pages still missing. I haven't heard back from them but need to download what they have to see if that has been corrected. Odd, I thought we had Organ Accompaniment and Extempore Playing posted here but I guess not. Thanks for the heads up and glad to hear ImageMagick is working out for you! --Cypressdome 03:11, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Spoke too soon. Well, should hopefully have Development Tools reinstalled ere long :) Thanks and apologies for all the play-by-play. Cheers! Eric 16:30, 21 August 2011 (UTC) (adding to that list of a few days back, I think I've seen some music in the Athenaeum too, will keep my eyes open for such things etc. and for any in German journals etc. that had escaped my eyes- besides the excerpts from printed scores being reviewed which was always an interesting and useful feature of the AMZ, especially when the work itself has disappeared :( )

Oh. Also, LoC has some issues of (J.L.) Peters of St. Louis' monthly magazine scanned, which consists almost entirely of brief piano works and songs, no other matter except ads. (They're back up after a few days of being down *cheers*) I've downloaded the May 1884 issue and will be downloading the June 1884 one too... (48, 52 pages or so, at least partially briefish works that I think made some of their first appearances there, as with some works in The Folio, say. Pleasant-looking stuff.) Eric 03:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Neat! There is certainly some interesting items buried in their Music for the Nation collection. Too bad no copies of Brainard's Musical World. --Cypressdome 04:07, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Gothic

uploading to imslp.us... then will create a page if that's successful, and insert there. I am confident I can find the plate no. etc. that I want (since it's good to have that sort of info just to have it, independent of copyright-questions) from the U Syracuse online catalog (the last place I looked at the physical copy of the Cranz score. Goodness, back then I'd barely heard of Cranz, then saw their org. mentioned for the first time in MacDonald's book on Brian, now I'm learning rather a bit about 19th-century-(flourishing) music publishers... never as much as I think I know, but that leaves more for tomorrow. Great fun, sometimes... Eric 03:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Page is already up and waiting, with one placeholder page. Symphony No.1 (Brian, Havergal)Philip @ © talk 03:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I see the preliminary matter that's been posted- I can't do anything about it, since I can't access others' blocked material (admin or no, that's not among my privileges.) I've uploaded the rest and am creating a IMSLP-US link out of it now. :) Eric 03:39, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Fixed that. You can look back in the earlier history for it, as I’ve removed the file from the current version of the page.
You really should hold conversations on the page where they start, or else if you’re going to reply elsewhere, remove the first comment in the conversation to the page where you intend to reply to it, because I didn’t see that this current thread had started by means of Cypressdome’s comment on your talk page until about an hour later. It’s a very expletive confusing and annoying habit! (Don’t stress, I’m not really that annoyed. :-)
Cypressdome, where did this version turn up from? Does it have the same problems that were in the other scan with three garbled pages? Regards, Philip @ © talk 04:43, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The three pages you mentioned all appear fine in this copy. I found it within the first few pages of a Google search using the keywords Brian, Gothic, and Mediafire. It was on a file-hosting site that made you jump through a few hoops and suffer a few pop-up windows but it did deliver the goods! --Cypressdome 22:36, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Mason

oh, gah :( Thanks. Eric 03:45, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

the (un? ... I don't know)family Robinson

ack! sorry about that. And here I am exhorting people to be careful about such things-well, hoist-by-my-petard is my middle name (no, really...) Eric 23:46, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Podlaska

actually, didn't know we had any others- just saw the link to that one in Worldcat and walked along, erm, followed along. :) Eric 00:14, 5 September 2011 (UTC) (but so long as the scans are there, potentially with a template more people might find more of them; can have that effect- there are parallels in my earlier line of study (which was intended to become paid work :) ) Eric 00:15, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

about digitized versions of NZM/ZM

I hadn't known or had forgotten - according to German Wikisource, Neue Zeitschrift and Zeitschrift für Musik already exist online at archive.org (for many of their issues). That article contains links to many similar magazines in digitized versions- a good resource, possibly. Eric 22:01, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

That is one impressive list. Doesn't look like we'll run out of material to post here anytime soon! --Cypressdome 03:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Preview

yep, seems to apply to all in a combined block the way this is currently programmed, no way to separate it out that I can find using e.g. Sample Filename 1 and Sample Filename 2 or that sort. Thanks for catching my date clumsiness there... Eric 04:06, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Not really a big issue. --Cypressdome 03:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

High resolution scores from ThULB (and Morgan)

Hi, thanks for the comments. I've just uploaded some more new stuff reverse-engineered from ThULB.
I wonder how much detail of my methods I should explain, in case it encourages countermeasures. :-) First I study what is being transferred while downloading the scores the library-preferred way. I then put this into a perl script which fetches the tiles and calls ImageMagick to reassemble them. It also keeps copious logs so that if something goes wrong I can easily find why and where.
It's not quite as automatic as you suggest! If all goes well, the main script leaves me with a large, high-resolution image plus a logfile for each page of the score. I visually check the pages; if any are borked I check the logs to find out why and modify the perl script accordingly. When I have a complete set of satisfactory pages I write another script to call ImageMagick again to convert the pages to monochrome, compressed PDFs, and pdftk to collate them. (The Schubert and Mozart autographs I uploaded in colour.) With the Lassen and Moscheles scores, I also checked the PDFs and changed the threshold parameters for a few pages to make them clearer. (I resisted the temptation to start cleaning them by hand.)
So the whole process isn't automatic, but the most tedious part is usually automatic or nearly so. I've often contemplated trying to make the main script more self-correcting, but at the moment it's not really worth the time: I'm not really a coder, and I still have a large backlog of (among other things) scanned music to process and upload.
Your work is impressively eclectic: it's good to see some Parry among your contributions. How quickly was the second English renaissance forgotten. :-(
BTW I'm often on the IRC channel, usually around midnight UTC. Nightjar 04:25, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

HathiTrust 10/11

Can't seem to access anything of theirs anymore- everything is (c) due to copyright restrictions. You? Eric 18:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Thankfully, no problem here! You had me worried there for a moment as I must have about 100 items bookmarked to convert and post here. Are there specific titles you can't access? On a not-completely unrelated note there has been an updated version of Hathihelper released (version 2 here). Not sure what all it addressed but it did correct a fatal error that I would receive using Hathihelper if I had Imagemagick installed. Just an FYI in case you want to give it a test. --Cypressdome 21:02, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll check again- maybe they have me on a blocklist (ow.) I don't think I can install Hathihelper, Graphicsmagick etc. until I have gcc etc. re-installed :) which I've put off briefly! Eric 23:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Joseph Marx

Thank you for putting the p trio and p qt on the US server. They look like very good works.

As you know there are about a dozen Marx works, on archive.org, mainly from what looks like Alma Mahler-Werfel's collection at the U of Mass at Amherst. They are good quality monochrome scans which only need a little trimming to make them usable. As you can see from my talk page I have tried and failed to put some of them on IMSLP. Perhaps you could help me out?

Most are short- songs and piano pieces. Two of them which look particularly good are Durch Einsamkeit a song with viola, and Adagio a song with cello. A bigger work is Herbstchoren an Pan, a kind of cantata with orch. There may be a PD problem with the vocal score arranger Gustav Binder (no info on German Google).

Speaking generally, thanks for you monochrome versions of color scans. This is something I have yet to achieve, so I have been uploading color works from ThuLB SBB and BSB in the hope that someone might have the time and skill to make them into practically useful monochrome scores.

Regards WB

Hi William! As luck would have it I'm between large projects so I'll take a look at the Marx scores on archive.org and post the PD-US ones on the US server. Thanks! --Cypressdome 03:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Jemnitz

Interesting- I was just looking at a score I purchased a few years back at a local booksale of one of Sandor Jemnitz' (1890-1963) solo violin sonatas (PD-nowhere, I think) but the one that Debrecen has (his opus 18) is probably PD-US (but PD-US-only I suspect for now. Alexander Jemnitz is the name he's under on both the score I have and the score they have too... I'll see about uploading that later, I think. Bit surprised a Hungarian library has several items that aren't PD-EU but not for the first time.) Eric 05:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC) (yep- op.18 probably published 1922. the one I have- sonata 2, op.37, pub. with Richard Franko Goldman's hymn for brass choir in "New Music", October 1941) I think was published 1941 :) )

Even more bizarre is their policy regarding their scans of operas (here) in which they only make available the first five pages of any opera. Doesn't matter if it's in the public domain worldwide or under copyright in the EU. Google Translate butchers it but it seems to state that university policy is to provide only photocopies of this material through interlibrary loan. Elsewhere on their site are five operas that are fully accessible even though on the page listed above they are blocked. Downloading one of them now. --Cypressdome 01:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Hofmeister @ Kistner

Hi − Your cleaning of the Monatsbericht is wonderful!
I just noted that from 1836 on it was published by Kistner and no more by Hofmeister himself, wasn't it? And also, who was "Ad. Hofmeister" that is credited from 1834 on? − Pierre Ch. 14:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Pierre! Apparently Kistner only published it from 1836 until 1839. I have no idea why. "Ad. Hofmeister" is Adolf Moritz Hofmeister who has Friedrich's oldest son and was editor of the Monatsbericht until his death in 1870. Apparently, he was also the editor of most of the volumes of the Handbuch and the Verzeichnis issued during his lifetime. By the way, I have a long road ahead to get all the Monatsbericht posted as all the volumes up to 1947 are available on the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek website. --Cypressdome 19:21, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
Do you know if there was a volume/12 issues in 1946 that's/that are just missing from the ONB site or was it not published (even in the diminished form it was published in during some other periods) at all during that year (and then indeed it closes altogether in the middle of 1947, for particular reasons I do not know)? Eric 20:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi Eric! This would appear to answer your question. From what little I typed into Google Translate it would seem that the Monatsbericht wasn't issued from May 1945 until this issue appeared in June 1947 which listed anything issued from May 8, 1945 until June 30, 1947. Considering the situation in Germany at the time I'm amazed Hofmeister was able to issue the Monatsberich up through the end of 1944 (the last wartime issue that appears on the ÖNB website) and was able to start it up again only two years after the war had ended. --Cypressdome 21:46, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
It would be great to add an OCR layer to the PDFs. Is it feasible? I have no idea how... − Pierre Ch. 21:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
Pierre, perhaps Hofmeister XIX offers something like this with their browse option found here which allows you to browse page by page with links back to the page image on the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek website. I don't think these early volumes would generate very good results when run through an OCR program because of the degraded quality of the text and page curvature that affects multiple lines of text. If the text improves by later in the 19th century I'll try to look into what I'd have to do to make the PDFs support text searches/OCR. My ultimate goal would be to post the post-1900 issues to Archive.org (in addition to IMSLP) where their page viewer would support text searches. --Cypressdome 21:46, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Abt song links

Thank you for adding the lied and art song links to the Abt songs. I'll try to do them myself in future. With 600 opuses and about 2000 songs there's plenty of scope with Abt.

Regards WB

Thanks William! I keep waiting to see who is going to tackle compiling a list of Abt's compositions! --Cypressdome 04:01, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
I haven't heard anything of his (seen a bit in score), but I like the challenge. This sort of thing could be done - is done (well, is often done) as a collaborative project too (even in stage 1 too?...- people in the project finding works and adding them to a collaborative shared google-doc or IMSLP work subsite or etc., ...) Eric 05:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for starting this. I have a list up to Op 300 based on HMB. To do it really well one would have to search SBB to fill the gaps. Regards WB

and contemporary journals like the NZM and AMZ for advertisements, etc. (and one presumes that the search of the HMB was further than surface-level of course- one misses a lot if one trusts the Holloway search-engine to catch more than a smidgeon, one has to be clever! ) To do it really well, access to his manuscripts, etc., of course, but barring that... Eric 00:04, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Gentlemen, please feel free to add to the list and correct any mistakes I make (as I've see Eric has already done!). For my part, I'll just continue plodding through the list of 817 items generated by a search for Abt in HMB. Not a perfect list but a good place to start. --Cypressdome 02:16, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

sorry about all the bitty bitty chunks of contributions (I have this thing about making a big post and finding that someone else has made a post while I was doing same ;) I really should edit in another window so I don't risk losing my "work", etc. But really, this is fun, or so I see it.) Eric 07:12, 4 December 2011 (UTC) (wonder if there's a work of his sans voice and sans piano?)

Just added op 223 to 300 in a raw state. Feel free to delete them. It's HMB data with the prices deleted, but put in Op num order. Unfortunately the deletion also deleted 'rt' 'fl' and 'gr' in the text. WB

Debrecen

Is there a PDF download button or does one save Debrecen scores page by page? :) Will return to the Abt-list soon... hopefully not too much of what I did needed to be undone, to borrow a line from Scott Adams. Eric 17:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

You'll have to download the jpg files page by page or use a downloader application to grab them. --Cypressdome 17:46, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!! Eric 01:57, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The files there are trouble to get, but mainly not very old, and of good quality- monochrome and not skew. See my Drdla Zwiesgesprache for example. As for content, the first 100 or so are cello and have mainly been uploaded, the violin ones 100 to 700 are good, some still not PD (Kreisler Drdla etc). The last 50 or so are for piano. There's some odd Diabelli for enthusiasts, Grieg arr for violin by Sitt, and plenty of Hungarian dances by as yet unknown composers. Good luck WB

Well, I noticed there were some people there I really had to look up, but I was glad I did, they seemed (possibly) interesting people I hadn't heard of, like István Bartalus. (Buttykay I'd heard of - though not yet heard! - and we already have some of his works.) (And e.g. Richard Eilenberg (1848-1925or7 - German, not Hungarian, but also in their list a number of times) shows up all the time in later HMB issues - prolifically - but I am not sure how much of his music I've actually seen - not much at all. This may be a good opportunity to fill in his output, unless the Debrecen scans are the scores that we already have, and just need the Scanner field filled in :) ) Eric 15:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC) (addendum - in my honest opinion which need not be shared, it's better to take an attitude of preservation than of evaluation. Good, bad, and routine music (whether absolutely, subjectively, or however one sees that issue of philosophy :) ) have all perished in accidents, library fires, and thelike, but through better distribution efforts physically/electronically/... the chance of the music being permanently lost decreases. And even some published works (leave alone manuscripts) have been , or e.g. the piano scores (which were published more widely) remain but the parts (which the publishers kept inhouse) were destroyed (e.g. Moscheles' piano concerto no.8 - only one set of orchestral parts remains - anywhere - and it is in private hands.) Eric 15:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC) (Clarification: some works may only be for enthusiasts, but that's one major thing we're here for, ultimately- to help preserve music for present and future enthusiasts, in my opinion. Apologies for the ramble and ... well, apologies :) :) )

I may actually be the only contributor for whom evaluation of the music I'm considering uploading cannot be a factor in the decision. In some ways the inability to read music (meaning specifically being able to translate the notes on the page to what it would actually sound like) probably liberates me from the burden of wondering if my efforts at re-formatting, cleaning, and uploading scores are being wasted on dreck. To me, they could all be masterpieces. --Cypressdome 02:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the sandbox list of progress on DU works. You might like to mark some of them "already in IMSLP" and "non PD" to save people searching around. Regards WB

Abt: 40 Mélodies..."Mélodies populaires"

Hi Cypressdome, some of those melodies I could identify. But I think all of them are Abt's arrangements of German folk songs. Tomorrow, I'll give more informations. Right now I'm too tired. Cheers --Ralph Theo Misch 00:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the additions to the growing Abt collection! --Cypressdome 23:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
With pleasure! --Ralph Theo Misch 23:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Internet Archive hacks

Thanks for the tip on finding their raw files. Clicking on the normal PDF option takes me to Google UK, where the PDF isn't available. Nightjar 02:33, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad the information proved of some use to you. Looking forward to more of your contributions! --Cypressdome 23:20, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Abt list

Well, we're almost done with opp.201-300- except for op.300 and some duplications :) but yes. And thanks!! Eric 00:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

DU details

Thanks for msg.

Just a few examples of poor listing at DU no 822 is Carmen fantasy arr Singer Peters 9389 no 826 is Ov to Anacreon arr G Krug 2 pno 8 hd no 827 piano school no 813 Behr arr p vl cmplt 775 Behr p duet 778 arr Tausig 772 arr Kreisler 771 arr v p cmplt 786 arr Kreisler 765 Bach-Gou Ave Mara arr v p Seybold 2763 Sarasate Fantasy good print current Imslp version is very poor 756 Allegretto v p 755 no 10 Tarantella v p 753 Dussek Menuet v p 751 Dussek v p The Diabelli works 487-524 are mainly sonatas for p duet and flute solo versions of opera tunes. Regards WB Just added 724 (DU URL 304) and 813 URL 393

Thanks, they've been noted! --Cypressdome 17:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning Dancla. We now have all the DU Grieg arr v p, Dancla v p, Alard V p and Drdla (DU no 724,725,726,727,730,728,731,733,734,735,736737,738,739,740,741,743,767) Other big series to do are Kuffner's les delassements de l'etude and Hubay. Regards WB

626 done 632-636 planned
Grusse Schalltrichter
Thanks Schalltrichter! It has been noted. I've just started working through the Hubay. --Cypressdome 05:08, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

760 595 571 done 762 is self as 774 (Gounod Serenade vl p)already on IMSLP Grusse Schalltrichter

Thanks again Schalltrichter! They have been noted on the list. --Cypressdome 19:42, 4 March 2012 (EST)

finally found my install disc by the way

and am attempting to reinstall GraphicsMagick though not I think with much success- well, it installs, sort of, but won't run. Will work it out. :) Eric 15:41, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Best of luck to you. Few things are more frustrating than computer problems. --Cypressdome 20:53, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The solution may be very simple and I will have to try it in a few days (it rhymes with reboot, to paraphrase a talk show host I like :) ) Eric 15:03, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

unsortable sortable table

Well, it's about List of compositions by Franz Abt/LOC Abt Upload List; I'd like to sort it by Op. number, but the sorting feature doesn't work but for the first column. Do you know how to make it work? Thanks − Pierre Ch. 23:02, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that's done it! You may have to get rid of the "Op." to perhaps get it to put the number in proper order as opposed to sorting on the first digit (which currently gives you ...387, 39, 400...). Enjoy! --Cypressdome 23:14, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for your magic! :-) − Pierre Ch. 22:41, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Re: Scores in the Univ. of Louisville Music Library

Thank you so much for creating a template for our library. I really appreciate it! I have many, many more scores to add in the coming months. JP3 14:57, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Unsolicited comment: glad to hear! Eric 15:01, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

GUF

interesting- checked one of the pages (Dessoff's quintet) and the change to the GUF template while it sends this to a new page on the GUF website doesn't "break" it, just sends it to a different place to download the files, since they've updated their whole site. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks! Eric 09:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I was glad they hadn't yet wiped out the old urls as it made finding the new urns easy. They seem to have a large number of librettos. It's too bad their scan quality is so uneven. There was at least one Urspruch score I had to give up on as the images once extracted from the PDF file were only 100dpi. --Cypressdome 22:21, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, sorry to hear, as we are not overfilled with Urspruch and I would like to see and hear more of his music (I am glad recordings of his music at least are accelerating now that I've heard some ! ). Hopefully some other library with works of his will step up to the ... hrm, must avoid especially horrible mixed metaphors. Anyhow, thank you again. Eric 23:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Parsons

ah! ok. strictly speaking also I've never been sure whether LinkTr/LinkLib should be used in works in which there's no (spoken- or scenario, e.g. ballet) text unless they're actually books (as against annotated scores) but I don't really know! Eric 02:49, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

actually, I

should subscribe to its RSS feed (as I do several other IMSLP ones) if I don't already... Eric 03:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Grobe

I think LoC has been scanning in practically everything by Charles Grobe they can find... I may be mistaken and am only going by spot checks here, but the number of works they now have (by Grobe specifically) that we haven't "transferred" yet has grown by a lot :) Eric 06:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know. I don't get the impression that the LOC is actively adding content to the Music for the Nation Collection. It would be great if they are and if they do have content to add. As for Grobe's works, as I recall nearly all of the works listed on the first version of his work list here was taken from LOC and that is nearly 540 works! I do remember that there was a lot of duplication of his scores at the LOC (whether it was duplication of actual scores or just duplicate search entries I don't recall) but it is certainly a long road ahead to transfer all his scores. He must have been a real cash cow for his publishers as they seemed to have made sure to get his scores to the Copyright Office. --Cypressdome 14:36, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

You may be right, though it -seems- there's more there than when I first was looking at it some years ago. Maybe I get better at searching- it's a skill one keeps developing, and the LoC search is particularly bad (though the site and that section of it are, I must emphasize, particularly appreciated taken as a whole.) As to Grobe, listening just now to one of two distinct recordings of one of his few? ever (or recently anyway) commercially recorded (I think?) works- his opus 43 United States Grand Waltz. (Distinct because the 1995 commercial recording lasts 2-odd minutes and the YouTube lasts 4-odd - either the YouTube just introduces electronic repeats, which is conceivable, into the commercial recording, which would be rather clever at that- indeed the difference seems to be in the repeats taken not in the speed (fortunately) in any case... there's also at least two MIDIs available online, of opus 666 and opus 1250. And a commercial recording of Natalie which I think is probably by "Grube" who may or may not be "Grobe"- heck-if-I-know. And then there's Scherpf (who was a friend of Grobe, not the same person, and mostly wrote arrangements- I think. Maybe fantasias. If I knew the original works better, I could tell. That's my problem there. Erm. Anyway. For all that I sound grumbly though, this is a lot of fun- well, for me... thanks again!...) Eric 12:39, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Nice to finally hear something Grobe wrote but it certainly is a sad comment on how we Americans treat our cultural heritage--one commercial recording for a composer with over 2000 published works. Maybe one of these days enough information about Grobe will be found to at least give him a Wikipedia entry although I don't see any scholarly journal articles or full-length biographies in his future. Too bad as I have a great title for one: Charles Grobe: A Life, with Brilliant Variations. --Cypressdome 05:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

No argument there,-- almost no argument there. Without getting taken in by Hollywood etc. I still think of a really good historian who's willing (as Alan Walker, for all his faults, seems to have done) to go "into the field" quite a bit, (what an expression...) (and actually go to Hungary, France and Rome to check at length for baptismal records for Daniel Liszt, for example- in his case...) - can turn up quite a whole lot ... if there's enough to go by. But that may be the problem too- until yesterday I didn't even have an actual -biography- for Grobe, and I still don't know what the source of it is. For all I knew it could have been a pseudonym, a mask, that different composers could have taken on at different times. (I was considering the case of works uploaded to LoC that were composed by "A Friend" etc. and remembered finally I could maybe upload them to "Anonymous". Well, that helps. Anyway.) ... Eric 15:57, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Re LoC new things or no...

LoC has a composer listed in the American Memory section names "Braham, David, 1838-1905." Rather stands out since most or all of the others don't have dates attached, especially not dates later than their 1885 limit date (for that particular subsubsection of the project, that is) and I'm- fairly sure I didn't see him there a few years ago... anyway, it seems they have - probably including multiply-scanned works and incomplete works - 200 or so (213) works of his, none of which we've transferred. I wonder if I should be curious. I know I (at least :) ) should have a look. Probably nothing even as sort-of-substantial as the Weil Ballade I rather liked (from sight, still haven't heard it), for instance, though interest and quality come in many forms of course- a memorable turn of musical phrase not least... Eric 15:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, for what it's worth, the opening page states "Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music contains more than 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music" and according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine it has said that since the first crawl in October, 2002. Still, with 62,500 scores and IMSLP having only 1561 work pages with the LOC template identifying the scanner I guess we've really only scratched the surface and considering the LOC's hit and miss keyword approach for searching there are bound to still be some hidden gems. Braham seems to be a very interesting find as there seems to be quite a few extended selections (vocal, piano, and instrumental with parts) from his plays/operettas. That should keep you busy for a bit. ;) --Cypressdome 03:57, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

"The American Offenbach" apparently (the name of the biography that came out a decade ago) and the real Offenbach is probably among my least favorite composers, but I've come to decide, I think, that preservation is more important than whether I am personally enthused and inspired by the music - though I always do hope to find on one of these sites somewhere, and hear played by someone, something equal in craft and power of emotion to some of the best pieces sung and unsung that I've been exposed to so far. Can always hope. :) (well, since there's some performers who look at this site checking for interesting music to perform, there's always at least the possibility that if I do find something I might hear it. I used to be able to create MIDIs myself, though I no longer have such software- LilyPond has limited such abilities and my piano-typesetting abilities are limited too... or else I'd do such a service for more works by e.g. Grobe myself instead of waiting for others too, i think.) Eric 05:50, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

LoC also-

hrm. well, with four operas in vocal score that we already know of at LoC (among lesser-known works and counting the latest discovery, and not counting works of which only selections seem to be there) it stands to reason that more might be there too. Their cataloguing/tagging system seems to me to have some advantages over ours area by area but I prefer ours taken on the whole- as a relative matter and acknowledging that it's a Herculean task...) Eric 00:58, 5 March 2012 (EST) (also, arguably the largest item they seem to have by Charles Dupee Blake, cowritten with Charles Albert White- Madame La Font, Act One of which opera begins here. One of us may want to start downloading and processing that 102-page act or whole opera soon :) )

Well, since you don't seem to mind I've just downloaded act 1 and it is currently running through Scan Tailor. I don't see any of the other acts on the LOC site. The other selections from that opera appear to be from act 1 taken directly from the vocal score with no changes in page numbering. Still. something is better than nothing. --Cypressdome 20:36, 5 March 2012 (EST)
Of Madame La Font or of the other one you mentioned? If of Madame La Font that's fine, I'll delete the tifs I just downloaded myself for later processing- at least you have Graphicsmagick and can do a better job with them :)! Oh. I have a list (not well-maintained- updated but not sufficiently stickered-with-"done"s) in my google documents of Library of Congress links that I either have downloaded, mean to get to, or etc. etc. - but mean it to be sharable, at least if not too publicly then via link. Should I send you the link (and maybe get to adding some "done"s to the ones I've already uploaded, later ...) if you might find such a list interesting? It's up to 15 pages (of text) or so now (though maybe half or more of those are ones I've already uploaded to the site... well, still probably worth a look if time permits and if interested). Eric 21:50, 5 March 2012 (EST)
Whoops! Sorry about that. Yeah, I did Madame La Font and not Solomon's Virginia. Your list sounds like my "titles" bookmark folder that contains at least 500 ah!-I-should-process-this-for-IMSLP music scores. I'm always interested to see what you've found. --Cypressdome 22:06, 5 March 2012 (EST)
Ok- sent a PM your way on another site with the link, not sure if that's still a good way to reach you but can try another. Cheers! Eric 10:42, 6 March 2012 (EST)
Thanks, I got it! Impressive list. Even more amazing is that there is so little duplication with the list of composers (mostly American) I've compiled whose works are in the Music for the Nation collection that I'm hoping to upload. Perhaps I'll manage to accomplish that over the next 20 years ;) --Cypressdome 23:54, 6 March 2012 (EST)
Likewise and thank you :)

Hathitrust jpg2000

Hi Cypressdome - I see that yesterday you uploaded some nice stuff from Hathitrust, converting their greyscale jpg2000 files. I've tried doing this with Irfanview and haven't done especially well. For example, here: http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Hardy_Norseman's_House_of_Yore_(Pearsall,_Robert_Lucas). I'd be willing to try imagemagick. Can you tell me exactly, step by step, "for dummies", how I should process the jpgs with either software? Thank you. Olmsted 22:26, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

Hi Olmsted! It looks like the problem is dithering. If you are using Irfanview for batch conversion somewhat in the manner discussed in IMSLP:Image Conversion then within the Change Color Depth area you would want to uncheck the use Floyd-Steinberg dithering option. As long as the original grayscale images are not too faint Irfanview can probably convert them to an acceptable black and white image. Irfanview's main shortcoming is its inability to let the user set the black and white threshold and whatever the default is it is usually too low for those faint grayscale images from HathiTrust. I haven't used Imagemagick much (I mainly use Photoshop) for image conversion but this should work to convert all the grayscale or color jp2 files in a directory to black and white tif files. Assuming you're running Windows open a command prompt and change directories to the one with your images and type:
FOR %a (*.jp2) DO convert -threshold 70% %a.tif
Of course, you'll need to test out the threshold level but I would think somewhere in the 55 to 80% range would work. You can create a batch file for this you'll just need to add extra % signs like this:
FOR %%a (*.jp2) DO convert -threshold 70%% %%a.tif
Then you can just copy the file into the directory with the images and execute it.
You can also add an option to re-sample/re-size the image by say 200% and change the density/dpi to treat the image as 600dpi (I think most HathiTrust jp2 images can be considered 300dpi). Here's what this would look like in a batch file:
FOR %%a (*.jp2) DO convert -filter lanczos -resize 200%% -threshold 70%% -density 600x600 %%a.tif
I assume you are using Hathihelper to get the raw images. Great app that!
Hope this helps. --Cypressdome 01:12, 15 March 2012 (EDT)
Thanks! I will try that this weekend. And yes, I did use the amazing Hathihelper. Olmsted 08:46, 15 March 2012 (EDT)
But see this!: http://imslpforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6265&sid=834900b1e493fc40ba475c3e608a9db7 Olmsted 17:56, 14 May 2012 (EDT)
  • Update 5/24/2012: just in case anyone on the internet stumbles across this the above commands worked fine under Imagemagick on my Windows XP machine but fail under Windows 7 (even running in an elevated command prompt). Running Cygwin on Windows 7(also running as an administrator because Imagemagick will otherwise fail to decode the jpg2000 files) the following script will generate practically the same results (adding Group4 compression) while also avoiding convert's habit of loading all the files into memory first before processing them all:
mkdir bwtif
for f in *.jp2
do convert $f -filter lanczos -resize 200% -threshold 70% -density 600x600 -compress Group4 bwtif/$f.tif
done

Still would like to figure out how to tweak the output filename to suppress the inclusion of the original extension as part of the filename.--Cypressdome 00:04, 25 May 2012 (EDT)

Vannah

the LoC has a few compositions by a "Miss L.K. Vannah". You think maybe? :) Eric 12:55, 24 March 2012 (EDT)

According to Musicsack Letitia Katherine Vannah = Kate Vannah. Seems like a rare surname. --Cypressdome 15:57, 24 March 2012 (EDT)

ah good. I like it when one can find compositions (especially), editorial work by, translations by, etc., a person (or fill out a stub category, or... :) ) ... thanks! Eric 19:02, 24 March 2012 (EDT)

Just curious

Hi, thanks again for your help with understanding user talk. I was just wondering how you happened to find my query? --Rhymesandchymes 18:41, 24 March 2012 (EDT)

As an admin here while I'm online I try to keep a watch of Special:RecentChanges that shows every edit, new page created, file uploaded, new user registered, etc. and saw your post to your discussion page. That does bring up a good point. If you have a question and just post it to your discussion page it may go unanswered as no one may notice it. You can find a list of IMSLP staff members here: IMSLP:Staff contact list with links to their talk pages should you have a question you can always ask one of us from there or post a question in the forums. --Cypressdome 18:51, 24 March 2012 (EDT)

It's becoming clearer--thanks!--Rhymesandchymes 22:56, 24 March 2012 (EDT)