Award for music: add to printed music or recording?

I'm adding some historic Pulitzer Prizes, which generally refer to a piece and when/where it premiered. Often, the work isn't available at all when the prize is awarded, but prizes given out a while ago can have recordings and printed music available.

Question: Should I add the Pulitzer Prize info to a recording or to any printed music/sheet music/score?

Example from 2001: The Pulitzer Prize site lists the Music winner as "Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra, by John Corigliano (G. Schirmer). Premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on November 30, 2000 at Symphony Hall, Boston, MA."

This work does not yet exist in LT. I'm happy to add the work, but do I go for the printed version or a recording?

(Note: I am aware of the issues around the combining of printed music versus recordings, and different recordings. That's a whole additional series of conversations that probably can't be fixed in this topic. I suspect.)

I would add it to the score, not a recording, because it’s the score for which the Pulitzer was awarded.

>2 lilithcat: Thanks! That's my instinct, too, but I don't want to make the decision on my own mess up.

I don't know that's technically correct. The Pulitzer site says "For distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year". They refer to "performance" and "recording" and don't mention "score" per se at all. (Surely last year's award was based on the recording of DAMN by Kendrick Lamar, and not the "score" if that's even the right word for his composition, for example.)

I'm OK with the argument that as a rule of thumb, the score might be a better record of the composer's intent than a recording by another person/group of people, and it is the composer who gets the award. But I'd say that's a guideline which is likely to be overruled a lot in future.

>4 hipdeep: OK, looking at the list of winners for Music (https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/225), I see that they specify:

-- recording (three times, including DAMN)
-- music for the film (Louisiana Story)
-- commissioned by
-- a ballet (Appalachian Spring)
-- premiered
-- performed by

So adding the award info to the recording applies for sure three times, and more if I can find a recording of the performance named in the prize?

For the film music, the award info goes with the film (which already exists as a work in LT).

For the rest, go with the score?

Additional thought: What if a winning work is later recorded by the same ensemble? This is also why I'm thinking that associating the award with the score might be a better fit.

ETA: See The Flight Into Egypt, by John Harbison.

I don't see why you couldn't add the award to both the score and the recording.

Same composition, just different media.

I would support adding the award to the score in every case, except maybe if another version (e.g. movie; audio recording) is wildly more popular on LT than the score. But even then... I think the score is the closest you can get to a neutral representation of a composition.

Adding the award to recordings raises some problems.

Although it is true that there is a reference to “first performance or recording in the United States“, the award is not given for the “performance or recording”, but for the composition. This isn’t the Grammys.

And what if the performance preceded a recording (as appears to be the case in most instances)?

Or there are multiple compositions on the first recording? Showing the award for that would be a bit misleading.

(I do note that in rare instances the award specifically refers to a recording, and I would make an exception in those cases.)

In a lot of ways, this is kind of a question about what we want users to see. On the Pulitzer Prize awards page, the award went to the composer, and the score is the most likely thing to have the composer as the author, so we make that page most truthful by using the score. (So maybe I shouldn't have well,actually'd this whole thing.)

But the flip side is, for people cataloging other media on LibraryThing, multiple entries or using the most popular work maximizes their ability to see that they have an award winner. So this is really a discussion about which use case ought to get privileged.

>5 karenb: Based on this list, would this actually be an award for the composer and as such should be on the composer's page instead of the work's page?

>11 gilroy: No, the awards have all been for specific works. Some composers are finalists in one year and prize winners in a different year.

>10 hipdeep: For most of the music pieces I've seen, recordings are not cataloged on LT.

I've been adding works from the Library of Congress, which occasionally has recordings of on-site performances. The NYU and Boston Metropolitan libraries tend to have scores but not recordings.

Would academic libraries tend to have both scores AND recordings? I don't know.

>10 hipdeep: In a related example, Art Spiegelman's complete Maus won a Special Citation in 1992, after the second book came out. Award info has been added to the combined version (The Complete Maus) as well as to the individual first and second books.

I've been working backwards through time. So far, that's the only work I've seen appear multiple times like that.

hipdeep (#10):

or using the most popular work maximizes their ability to see that they have an award winner.

But *do* they have an award winner? If the award is truly given to the composition - which it's clear in this case it is - then someone having a recording of one particular performance does not, in fact, have the award winner.

This is clearly a case where the work-to-work relationships, if they had been fully developed, would be helpful - people holding a recording of a Pulitzer-winning composition could see exactly that fact.

Am I missing something here? If the recording is an unabridged performance of the score, aren't they the same work for LT purposes? Much the same as a book and an unabridged audiobook are the same work?

>14 lorax: So, here's where I would get on a very high soapbox indeed and say that the concept of honoring a composition in some abstract, unrealized state is absurd on its face. That's why the Pulitzers wisely require that it must have debuted in performance or recording - because that's the point when it's actually complete. Honoring a score for being a good score that's never been performed would be like honoring a manuscript that's still being edited. (I note that the Tonys and Oscars et al. feel the same way about scripts.)

But climbing down off my soapbox, yes, this is where a more fully developed work-to-work system would be of great value. (Or, given that I'm philosophically more inclined to agree with >15 Cynfelyn: , a more complex work-to-item system.)

>16 hipdeep:

It’s interesting that they do not have a similar production requirement for drama.