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Recommendations
for an efficient search
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This page gives you advices that have been selected as a result of
the survey of the use of Musica on the Web. Most of them seem evident
... once that one is aware of it, and it is better to have read them
than to fall in their hints. If you have any problem with the use of
the search engine, do not forget to visit also the quick
reference page. You will find there many technical informations
on the use of the search engine and on the concept of Musica
database.
Most of the errors done by users of Musica are due to a too
precise set of questions,
or to a too precise question, leading to an empty intersection of
answers.
Be
not too ambitious!
Try simple and easy queries first.
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Search first with 1 criterion, then go back and refine your
search by adding one additional criterion at a time.
- You will not only increase your chances to find something,
but better see the content of the database and get ideas.
Search only for CHORAL music!
- Ex: Do not search for the 5th symphony of Beethoven! You
will not find it. But you may be willing to search for his 9th
symphony!
Use the smallest number of fields!
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Be aware that thousands of records of Musica are
not complete yet: thus, if a restrictive condition is
given in a field which is empty for certains records,
these records will not be selected.
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Ex: if you ask for
Brahms, you do
not need to add
Germany in the field
"Country of the composer"! Indeed, if the record of Brahms would
not contain that he was german, nothing would be selected!
In general:
a composer + a title needs seldom, in addition, a language + a
century + ...
Be not too precise in a first search, and leave full precision
for a further trial.
- Ex1: If you are looking for a music of
Mozart, enter first
just the last name. In the display of the result of search, you
will then see how Mozart Wolfgang
Amadeus appears in the database. In a second trial,
you can then add Wolfgang
Amadeus to the search criterion, if you want to
avoid to collect also the musics of
Mozart Leopold.
Ex2: Lennon J. : The
correct term is Lennon,
John : the dot makes the search to go wrong! Correct
searches will be Lennon
or Lennon J or
Lennon John or
Lennon, John, ...
If a search is unsuccessful, do not quit,
but THINK!
It is impossible not to find any work of Mendelssohn or
Lennon
in a choral music database of 150,000 titles!
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Search in MUSICA is NOT case-sensitive.
It
is often more efficient to use "Words of Title" (4th entry of
the search form) rather than the "Title" itself (3rd entry of
the search form).
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The title is indexed as a whole
entity (with possible right truncation for search), thus
giving the possibility to have alphabetical authority lists.
More interestingly, by using the field "Words of
Title...", the title is accessible by each of its words or
association of words (the condition AND will apply
between the words of an association of words). In addition,
you can ask for 2 criteria (more in expert search mode) that
have then both to be fulfilled.
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- Ex: The correct title of Brahms's deutsches
Requiem is Ein deutsches
Requiem. Thus, searching for the composer
Brahms and the title
deutsches requiem will
not succeed. On the contrary, searching for
requiem in "Words of
Title" will select all the records of Musica concerning Brahms and
containing requiem, even in the keywords. Thus you will not only
find Ein deutsches
Requiem of Brahms, but also the french edition
Un Requiem allemand and
eventually other musics of Brahms about requiem, what can be an
unexpected interesting information.
Be conscious that works with a General Title and originally
written in another country that an english speaking one will
seldomly be found by using their english Title! This is particularly
true if one has in mind that these titles need a manual translation
and that less than 15% of Musica has been input by english speaking
people (these 15% of Musica include mainly the database
Choref).
- Ex1: Searching Mendelssohn's
Elijah will give 3 answers. Using its real title,
Elias, will give 11
answers!
Ex2: Searching Mozart's Coronation
Mass will give 1 answer while searching
Krönungs-Messe
will give you 2 answers, although the language is always latin
(greek for Kyrie).
For the field Voicing,
combine with the field Number of Voices,
if you do not want the right truncation to take
every voicing that begins by...
For the field Instruments,
combine with the field Number of Instrumental
Parts, if you do not want to get all the
Instrumentations that include the searched instrument
Left truncation is NOT activated on the Web ! Therefore, to
look for instance for
anniversaries, you need to do
successive searches for 1899, then 1799, etc... But to obtain such an
answer, it is more efficient to check our "Anniversary of Composers"
Web page. We have put there all the lists for the next years; these
lists come out from Musica, but with features of the software not
available through the Web.
Finally, give enough criteria to find less than 50 answers, but the
less possible criteria to find
something!
We thank you to share your problems and
solutions by writing to Webmaster : muse(at)musicanet.org