Pierre LebeaupinToday I tested for you Apple’s newest app: #AppleMusicClassical.
I am focusing on the main selling point of the app: the classification by composers first, then works, at which point further drilling down (e.g. by performers) can occur.
But anyone can attest as to whether this works for “classics” of classical music: your Bachs, your Haendels, your Mozarts, your Beethovens, etc.
Let us see what happens when we search for the composers who have followed those in the same way modern art has followed the fine arts:
Excellent! #PierreBoulez, #OlivierMessiaen, #ArnoldShoenberg, and #BélaBartók, probably the foremost modern classical composers, not only are found without trouble but have excellent landing pages.
Now for something slightly different: composers who we may not necessarily think of as classical either, because they have composed as part of a larger scene production: an operetta, a musical, or other “less prestigious” outlet, but whose works have since entered the mainstream concerts repertoire:
#JacquesOffenbach, Sir Arthur Sullivan of #GilbertAndSullivan, #GeorgeGershwin, and #LeonardBernstein are well featured too; no portrait and no editor’s pick for the operetta composers, but still…
And now we get to those who are entering that repertoire: the feature film composers; how are we going to find their music in the app?
OK, it was obvious that #JohnWilliams, #JamesHorner, #DannyElfman, and #HansZimmer would have great landing pages, but is that a representative situation?
Let us check more great examples of film composers, but who may not have as much name recognition:
#MauriceJarre does not get any header image, and neither he nor #MichelLegrand, or #SakamotoRyuichi get any editor’s pick (#EnnioMorricone does), but those are solid landing pages otherwise
And now we get to the real challenge for this app: does it feature the next in line to enter the repertoire: the video game music composers? Let’s start with the obvious one:
#UematsuNobuo of course. And here we see an issue already: I don’t know about you, but “Final Fantasy”, even if there are “only” 38 renditions of it, does not narrow it down much for me.
First, it’s not a single body of work: it is a series of games, now at n°XVI; and even if it were, there is a larger issue…
The run times for the music in each game, according to https://vgmdb.net/ , clock at:
42:22 for #FinalFantasy I&II (common soundtrack release)
54:44 for FF III
58:18 for FF IV
2:08:06 for FF V
3:07:47 for FF VI
4:34:13 for FF VII
4:09:14 for FF VIII
4:47:14 for FF IX!
And that’s once the themes from other composers are removed; in fact, these other contributions increased starting with FF X, so let’s set aside X and up.
We already have a cumulated run time that would make Bayreuth flinch!
Speaking of Bayreuth, when listing the works by Wagner, the Ring *is* broken down into Das Rheingold, Siegfried, Die Walküre, and Die Götterdämmerung, so there is no reason why “Final Fantasy” cannot be broken up into Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy II, etc.
Remember, Final Fantasy I came out in 1987, while Final Fantasy IX did in 2000…
Another issue with Uematsu-san’s landing page is the bio, which is for a completely unrelated artist…
And this is for the foremost video game composer, what is the situation going to be elsewhere?
These are no small composers by any means, and I know for a fact performances of their works exist in the Apple Music catalogue:
#KondoKoji or #ShimomuraYoko do not get a header image of a breakdown by work! #GrantKirkhope does get a photo, but no breakdown by work! Only #MitsudaYasunori gets a proper breakdown of works…
Perhaps I was unlucky, let us look further…
These composers are no small potatoes either:
…None of #JesperKyd, #SakurabaMotoi, #NakamuraMasato, or #JackWall get a breakdown of works; in fact Masato Nakamura does not even get a landing page: what I captured here is the results page for a search for his name.
I saved the most surprising outcomes for last:
None of #DavidWise, #TimFollin, or #BobbyPrince get any relevant result for a search for their name; as for #FrankKlepacki, he gets a landing page… which is completely empty: no works, no albums, no tracks, no nothing.
I know the Japanese composers are ahead when it comes to having their compositions be performed, but this is utterly ridiculous: performances of works from each of these composers do exist, but the app can’t find them.
How should I summarize my findings? The principles of the app are good, as evidenced by the instances where composers have a high-quality landing page, not just by editorial work but also well-maintained data about works and other composer connections.
And this includes contemporary composers who have succeeded the classical ones, whether they compose for the scene, for film, or still purely for music.
However, this hardly extends to video game composers, who don’t just suffer from a dearth of performances: even those which exist are hard to locate when starting from the composer, both because of poor breakdown of works and because the connection sometimes doesn’t exist at all in the data.
And there is no reason for data management in their case to be any harder than it is for film composers, so there is reason to hope the situation will improve in their case, too.