Having an issue with how audio recordings handle composers and performers

I am writing my own (well rather heavily modifying an existing) CSL style and I've run into a bit of a problem while trying to cite music in accordance with the University style guide. The required citation is:

Composer (year of CD / chosen medium release) Title. Performer / conductor credits. [format] Recorded at: place of recording, date of recording. (Catalogue number)

For example:

Saint-Saëns, C. (2007) Violin Concerto No. 3, etc. Jean-Jacques Kantorow (violin), Heini Kärkkäinen (piano), Tapiola Sinfonietta, Kees Bakels (conductor). [CD] Recorded at Tapiola Concert Hall, Finland, September 2004. (BIS-CD-1470).

In the above example I have Camille Saint-Saëns listed as the Composer in Zotero and Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Heini Kärkkäinen, Tapiola Sinfonietta and Kees Bakels listed as performers (with their respective roles inserted as part of their name).

The biggest issue I encountered is that for the "Audio Recording" type in Zotero the "performer" Zotero field is mapped to the "author" CSL field so the performer(s), rather than the composer, is considered the primary author by CSL. This meant the performers were listed at the start of the bibliography entry and in the inline citation. I got around this be editing the CSL style so that if the CSL type is "song" (that is what audio recording is apparently mapped to in CSL) it will display the composer's name in the inline citation and at the start of the bibliography entry, rather than the author's name.

That worked fine and I was able to get the Zotero output matching the examples in the university style guide. However I have now encountered a problem. If I have two music recordings by the same composer, which were released in the same year, I would expect an output of:

Saint-Saëns, C. (2007a)
Saint-Saëns, C. (2007b)

The issue is that as far as CSL is concerned the author is the performers, rather than the composer. This means that as the two pieces have different performers credited they have different authors as far as CSL is concerned, so the output is:

Saint-Saëns, C. (2007)
Saint-Saëns, C. (2007)

Can anyone see a way to rectify this issue? One way I can see is to revert the style to displaying the author rather than the composer in the inline citation and at the start of the bibliography entry. Then I could list the composer as the performer in Zotero and the performers as contributors or composers (modifying the CSL style to show the correct field for them). That way the composer would be considered the primary author and the issue would be resolved, but from a usability point of view (having to remember to put the composer in the performer box, rather than the composer box, and having to put the performers somewhere else) it is pretty bad. Is there any better way of fixing this issue?
  • The year suffix should depend on ambiguous citations, not same primary creators. Could you put your style on pastebin.com or so and link to it here so we can take a look?
  • edited November 27, 2021
    I do apologise it seems this was user error on my part. After grappling with this for a good couple of hours last night and this morning I gave up and made this forum post (having come to a mis-informed conclusion on what is going on). About half an hour ago I came back with a fresh mind and decided to start over. I cleared out my Zotero entries for the composer in question and entered all the information into Zotero again and it seems to be working now.

    I'm not sure why it wasn't working originally, I can only assume I must have made some sort of mistake with the name of the composer, but the names definitely looked identical between the two. I also could have sworn one of the first things I did last night was to delete the composer on both entries and paste the same value into both. Whatever caused it, it seems to be working fine now.

    Sorry for wasting your time with this one. I would just like to say a thank you to yourself and all the other volunteers on the forum, this is my first time posting here but your replies in other topics have been very useful in working out how to make CSL styles.
  • No worries at all. This happens to everyone (me included). We'd rather you ask sooner than later as a general rule
Sign In or Register to comment.