looking for feedback on openclassical.com

[DavidH]

Hi there. I have been working on a new internet project called openclassical, which has the aim of making classical music easier to discover and learn about.

I am posting here because one of my first test composers is Beethoven, so I am hoping that the community here might be able to take a look and provide feedback. The other composers with full works listed are Rachmaninoff, Alkan and Medtner.

The project is still in its early stages, but I think it's ready now for comment from the music community.

Please find the home page here:

https://www.openclassical.com

and Beethoven's page here:

https://www.openclassical.com/compos..._van_Beethoven

Please also note that each work also has its own page (by clicking on it).

Thanks all!

[Peter]

A useful resource - thanks for sharing.

[Euan Mackinnon]

David H

I have had an initial browse round several composers on the site and agree with Peter - this is a very useful resource, one I have bookmarked.

One initial question: do you have a schedule in mind for completion (at least, of the basic information)?

Euan

[DavidH]

Peter and Euan, thanks so much for your positive words.

Euan, to your question. I think the right answer is probably next year, but I would like to elaborate. This is connected to what I'm working on now, which is a community toolset for adding and editing data on openclassical.

I am choosing this path for a few reasons, the first being the enormous amount of music to catalog which include sketches, revisions, transcriptions, arrangements, unpublished, questionable, fragments and lost works! In addition to this there are the numerous editions of published works to consider, which are often slight variants, sometimes based upon an ambiguity in the original manuscript, or other conflicting sources.

More importantly in my opinion, since historical judgements change over time the data needs to be dynamic, and who better to modify the date, title, text, etc of a Palestrina work than a Palestrina scholar. Also, new composers and works are discovered from time to time - I would like openclassical to provide a mechanism for these discoveries to be shared directly and immediately with other musicians both professional and casual.

I would also like to go deeper into each work, in terms of instrumentation, movements, keys, time signatures, texts, and so on.

I think this ambition is a good fit for a community project, so I am trying to build a framework that makes this possible in a consistent way. Data vandalism is a concern of course, so I will be using a consensus and reputation-based system which I have seen used effectively elsewhere.

[Quijote]

Great Idea. Lord, it's going to be a huge project for you. Good luck!

[susanwen]

Great site - thanks for your hard work!

[Megan]

DavidH, I see you have worked hard and still are on your very worthy project, thanks for the link, I am very pleased to keep this on my favourites, it's very professional.

[Sorrano]

Nicely done, DavidH! Thank you!

[DavidH]

Thanks to all for the positive feedback - really appreciated.

For those interested, the complete works of Chopin are now cataloged:

https://www.openclassical.com/compos...3%A9ric_Chopin

Planning and work on the site continues, and I will update here from time to time to keep you posted on new developments.

[DavidH]

Hi all, I wanted to give a brief update on openclassical.com news.

There's been a lot of work done in the last month, and we have received a ton of great feedback from visitors. We're now managing around 1,500 works across 60 composers. Works are being continually added.

We're also starting to get visits from the web in general, thanks to search engine indexing. This is really exciting for us!

Another thing we pushed out in the last month has been Amazon integration. This adds a potential revenue stream to the site (commission based), while keeping openclassical free to use. Hopefully this will also be perceived as a useful feature to the visitor who browses a work, likes it, and would then like to purchase a quality recording.

The other client-facing features are:

* work movements - displayed on the work page
* work collections - for example Beethoven's Seven Bagatelles, Opus 33 is a collection of works - this is represented on the composer page by a plus / minus sign, as well as on the work page in a tree format
* work instruments - displayed on the work page

Since movements / collections / instruments are another level of enrichment, most works have yet to be filled out. But this will come. An early example of a work fully enriched:

https://www.openclassical.com/compos...artet_Opus_131

Hopefully a few of you might try out the updated site, and again all feedback and thoughts are most welcome.