A Question about cataloguing

[David Carter]

How does one catalogue pieces with a number at the beginning. By number or word? Should "7 variations on a theme..." start with a number or a word? And what about "14 variations..." and "33 variations..." etc. Should one to ten be done as words and anything from 11 upwards as numbers?

[dyn]

IMSLP alphabetises collections of things without regard to initial numbers; e.g. "6 Gesänge" and "12 Gesänge" are both under G. if there's a number in the title of the piece, it depends to some extent on the composer's orthography—"The Seven Last Words of Christ" would go under letters, "...22, 13..." under numbers.

[Elroel]

You could place the numbers in brackets after the name 14 Variations becomes Variations [14] evt followed by extra info. F.i. Variations [14} on the name of Bach.
So you always start with a letter.
When only 1 Variation is there, I start with the name (if it has) and than show where it's from
Variation followed by a name if any (No 4 from Variations [14] on the name of Bach. Now you can sort on Variations [14] and still get all the loose ones as well.

As I have a fairly large collection I use more codes, for reasons of sorting. (All  the symphonies, All the violin concertos, etc
That depends entirey on you.
If you're interested I could give you the method I created.

You can put it in a spreadsheet, or database.
How large this will be, depends on what information you like to have.

Elroel

[guest54]

From Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers, Oxford, 1986, the following:

Words or Figures? Figures are to be applied generally to all units of measurement (tons, cwt., feet, seconds, and so on). Separate objects, animals, ships, persons, etc., are not units of measurement unless they are treated statistically.

e.g. "The peasant had only four cows." but "A farm with 40 head of cattle." In the first example each cow is identifiable individually.

In descriptive matter, numbers under 100 to be in words; but print "90 to 100," not "ninety to 100."

[David Carter]

Thank you gentlemen. Actually my issue is a little more specific as it concerns iTunes which lists works by putting any title which starts with a number after "Z".

Ideally iTunes should be clever enough to list "5 Songs" as though it had been written "Five Songs" after all it knows to list "The Planets Suite" under "P".

"33 Variations on a Theme of Diabelli" looks cumbersome as "Thirty Three Variations on a Theme of Diabelli".

[imslp]

Hello everybody.  dym is quite right, it is best to use the number form at the beginning of works.  The reason is that if somebody is searching for something called "5 Songs" they are more likely to look under "S" than they are to look under "F".  This creates a clean consistency and also keeps the pages cleaner.  Generally speaking IMSLP will keep the letter-form of the number if it appears in the middle of the work.  In other words, the titles appear on IMSLP as they were first presented by the composer.