Why own multiple performances of the same work?

[pastoralguy]

I once tried filing my CDs in alphabetical order according to record companies! It wasn’t very successful but it did look good!

[Pulcinella]

I once tried filing my CDs in alphabetical order according to record companies! It wasn’t very successful but it did look good!

And then what....numerically?
Memory a bit vague, but I think that's how Roger must have arranged them (i.e., the CDs themselves, behind the counter) in his Bristol shop.

[Roger Webb]

And then what....numerically?
Memory a bit vague, but I think that's how Roger must have arranged them (i.e., the CDs themselves, behind the counter) in his Bristol shop.

Yes, they (the master bags) were strictly numerical followed by alphabetical order - I say 'strictly', but filing away master bags was everyone's least favourite chore - ie, not a patch on drinking coffee, listening to music and chatting to the punters!... this meant that boredom bred inaccurate placement, the result a customer somewhere down the line brought a CD case up to the counter and the master bag was not in its correct place....usually not even close....so 421 049-2 (Pav Boheme) was not easily found next door at 421 050-2, but may be at 411 049-2, a whole three shelves away! Result? Unhappy customer + Unhappy shop owner!

Of course I could have left the disc in the case, Result? Happy shoplifter = Unhappy shop owner....what a life!

[oliver sudden]

Mme. M and I are in the midst of a removal, and Les Gentlemen de Déménagement have packed everything into boxes. I have no clue what will happen at "the other end", but I can look forward to hours, days, weeks of amusement or anguish. I look forward to discoveries. "‘tsundoku’" i now learn.

In 2021 I was planning to move from the smallish flat I had occupied on my own to a rather larger one also capable of accommodating my partner, who was moving over from the other side of Germany, and our impending twins. I had taken delivery of a stack of boxes from the removalists and was getting ready for a couple of days of serious packing.

When lo! the telephone rang. “Are you very busy today? We’re about to become parents.” This was a bit earlier than expected. I left the boxes and hopped on the next train to her side of Germany. I didn’t cancel the removalists though, reasoning that once the lads had been safely placed in their boxes that would be their temporary homes there would be relatively little either of us could do for a while, so there was no point cancelling an expensive booking which it had taken ages to organise. So I went back to my side of Germany a couple of days later. But under the circumstances the removalists also ended up doing the packing.

This meant that several thousand carefully organised CDs ended up being cryptically reorganised. They were of course placed in their boxes in whatever way was possible at speed. They then had to be extracted from the boxes as quickly as possible to free up space in the new flat before I headed back across Germany. The result was several bookcases full of CDs most of which were still next to their former neighbours, but which had nonetheless been thoroughly shuffled in big chunks.

It was a few years before I had time to sort them again. Strangely enough I got quite used to the new placement of things and still find myself looking for some things in the spots on the shelves they had been occupying during the years of chaos.

I trust your move will go smoother!

[MickyD]

I love reading all these anecdotes...makes me feel that I am not alone in my collecting obsession !

I too file alphabetically by composer but the huge amount of mixed programme CDs is to me impossible to file ...I just have to spend time looking for a title, which inevitably ends up taking more time due to finding pleasant looking discs that I had forgotten ! A bit like when I was a child, looking up something in an encyclopaedia and being diverted by other discoveries.

I will have to move house in the next couple of years and I dread the packing up of the thousands of CDs, but doing that will at least mean I will have to inspect them all again and no doubt I will turn up discs that I don't even remember buying. But that's all part of the pleasure, isn't it?

I have pretty much all of the original L'Oiseau Lyre Florilegium LPs (especially Hogwood) and would love to give them to a deserving home. Anyone interested who might pass by in southern France?

[Sir Velo]

I employed a variant on the chronological/alphabetical approach by also cataloguing CDs by composer's nationality, realising very soon that it was a huge chore trying to wade through thousands of CDs for the desired record, but if they were also organised by country one at least had a chance of locating a particular CD before the urge to listen to the piece in question dissipated! Consequently, I had Russian, French, Italian, American, English, Spanish shelves etc. A sideshoot of this was a separate category of miscellany by genre: eg lute music; guitar; bassoon concertos etc. Eventually it became a sisyphean task and the move to streaming has been musical feng shui cleansing the mind for the actual pleasure of concentrating on the music!

[Roger Webb]

I have pretty much all of the original L'Oiseau Lyre Florilegium LPs

Do you have amongst them the recital disc with the scandalous misprint in the biography of the artist Micky?....I don't have it, but remember the fuss when it came out.....I mentioned it the other day (Vinteuil was slightly teased by it!), but not, of course, the identity of the person.

[mikealdren]

I eventually reverted to follow Gramophone's reviewing conventions so pieces are filed under each composer by Orchestral, Chamber, Solo, Vocal and Choral and Opera. Recitals and conductor box sets are stored at the end in alpha order by name of artist.
I do keep formats separate, so LPs, CDs, SACDs DVDs and Blu Rays are all filed separately.

I used to do the same, the problem is inserting discs as the collection grows, a lot of shuffling around.
When I started putting my CDs onto the computer, I allocated each CD a number and I now store them in ascending sequence. The computer database makes finding the number and hence the CD, very easy and adding more CDs simply requires more plastic crates.

[richardfinegold]

Multi composer-usually recital-discs flummox me. I organize them by instrument, then alphabetically by artist. The problem is that if I really like an item on the disc when I am refiling CDs (usually at night, before going to bed, and most likely having awakened from nodding off at the end of the listening session) I tend to put the disc under the composer. For example I have a Sviatislav Richter recital double CD that has favorite versions of a Bach Prelude and Fugue from WTC and a Debussy favorite Prelude. I have misfiled the CD under both composers more than once. I have re purchased a few that were misplaced only to find the originals later.
I have burned some of these to my server, but server software is particularly bad at organizing multi composer discs so then I need to make playlists. Several playlists were wiped out during an update by mconnect (although the files are still there).

[MickyD]

Filing the miscellanous discs under the artist(s) is an excellent idea, Richard...thank you, can't think why I never thought of that !

[MickyD]

Do you have amongst them the recital disc with the scandalous misprint in the biography of the artist Micky?....I don't have it, but remember the fuss when it came out.....I mentioned it the other day (Vinteuil was slightly teased by it!), but not, of course, the identity of the person.

I'm afraid I don't know to whom you are referring, Roger...send me a private message with the info and I'll tell you if I have the disc !

[Roslynmuse]

I've been attempting to catalogue my collection for years. When it is complete it will make locating CDs simplicity itself. However, until then...

I work on pure alphabetical order (by composer). If there's more than one composer then A will come before B. I do make case-by-case judgements though - my Rachmaninov Complete Recordings set includes a short piece by Bach (possibly the E major Partita transcribed by Rachmaninov himself, but even so...) and for a while it sat in the B section on the shelves but common sense prevailed and there's a note in the catalogue to say where it is physically located.

The multi-disc, multi-composer sets are still filed under the first alphabetical one - if I can't immediately find it I look it up and the catalogue tells me where it is (so anything uncatalogued invites a voyage of discovery...)

I also had the experience of moving CDs from one cupboard to another and still finding myself looking in the previous location.

And yes, it is a pain trying to fit in new CDs on already bulging shelves. I try to leave a bit of slack but every so often there's a larger scale shuffle when the latest additions are filed away.

What a lot of time it all takes up (more than I spend listening?!!)

[smittims]

The problem with filing CDs in alphabetical order of commposer, or of the ',main' coposer', is , how do you find, or remember the little fill-up piece by a composer whose name is in a different partofthe alphabet? The only answer, I think, is a cross-index.
My CDs are in that order, as it's nice to have all the all-Bruckner Cds etc. together, but there is a long section of 'orchestral' in conductor-order (then 'vocal', instumental' and so on, in artist order) . I have to rely on memory for little works included in them. Often I have a pleasant surprise : 'I'd forgotten I had that!' . But at my age . re-indexing every work on every CD is too much effort.

When I reordered my vinyl I did compile a loose-leaf index of composers and works in alphabetical order, and the Lps are filed in company/catalogue number order, e.g. HMV ALP, BLP, CLP, etc. just like an old record shop. Each entry in the ctaalogue gives the disc number .

[Petrushka]

I've been attempting to catalogue my collection for years. When it is complete it will make locating CDs simplicity itself. However, until then...

I work on pure alphabetical order (by composer). If there's more than one composer then A will come before B. I do make case-by-case judgements though - my Rachmaninov Complete Recordings set includes a short piece by Bach (possibly the E major Partita transcribed by Rachmaninov himself, but even so...) and for a while it sat in the B section on the shelves but common sense prevailed and there's a note in the catalogue to say where it is physically located.

The multi-disc, multi-composer sets are still filed under the first alphabetical one - if I can't immediately find it I look it up and the catalogue tells me where it is (so anything uncatalogued invites a voyage of discovery...)

I also had the experience of moving CDs from one cupboard to another and still finding myself looking in the previous location.

And yes, it is a pain trying to fit in new CDs on already bulging shelves. I try to leave a bit of slack but every so often there's a larger scale shuffle when the latest additions are filed away.

What a lot of time it all takes up (more than I spend listening?!!)

I've basically got two sets of CD collections, one downstairs in my listening room and one upstairs, the overflow room. I keep all the operas upstairs but often move discs from one room to the other depending on where I want them to be. Large scale shuffling of shelves is largely avoided but I do leave gaps in strategic places in the alphabetical composer order. When I had only the one room for storage it was a real pain to get a disc by, say, Ziehrer or Zelenka and have to shuffle the entire collection backwards!