A Look at LCC

In looking for elements to use in this system, I thought it might be helpful to look at ways of organizing music that are already in common use. I had planned to start with the good ol’ Dewey Decimal System, but I found its music section to be quite a bit more detailed than I had anticipated; I’ll need a bit more time with it.

Instead, I’d like to use this entry to look at the Library of Congress Classification System (LCC). The area of LCC that we’re interested in is Subclass M. Since we’re interested in musical style or genre (not books about music), it makes sense to look at the system from M5 on.

The primary subdivision used in LCC Subclass M is “instrumental” versus “vocal” music. Vocal music includes any music with voice at all; instrumentals are purely instrumental. What is this distinction based on? It hinges solely on whether there is at least one voice in the given piece. When we look more closely at the vocal music sections (which we will later), we will see that there are subdivisions for music that is a capella; that is, music that has no instruments at all. So it appears that it would be helpful to have an element in our system that specifies whether or not there are vocals, as well as one that tells whether or not there are instruments. I would thus add two new elements, “vocals” and “instruments” that simply express – with a yes or no – whether or not each is present in the given piece.

A quick aside: It would seem obvious that one or the other or those elements would have to carry a “yes” value. That is, music requires at least one voice, at least one instrument, or both, right? Or does it? I’m quite sure that this question will come up again when we look at electronic music. In the meantime, we move on…

For the moment, let’s set aside instrumental music and look at M1495-2199 – the vocal music section. The primary subdivision in this section is “sacred” music versus “secular.” From the twenty-first century perspective, this is a curious distinction; probably 99% of music written since the year 2000 is “secular.” But it’s important to remember that LCC was written in the late nineteenth century; it thus reflects the perspectives and biases of its time.

But what does this distinction mean for our system of Universal Music Classification? What element can we use to capture this? Whether music is sacred or secular speaks to the purpose for which the music was written. Can (or should) one of our system’s elements be “purpose”? Is it always possible to determine that? Does our “lyrical content” element capture this? For vocal music, perhaps. But what about Larry Sparks’s solo guitar rendition of “The Old Rugged Cross”? It is sacred in theme, but without lyrics. So “lyrical content” misses some sacred music. It appears that “purpose” is necessary to capture this distinction.

We’ll look more closely at the subdivisions within LCC’s sacred and secular vocal sections in the next entry. In the meantime, I’m adding three more elements to Universal Music Classification: Purpose is the first. Vocals and instruments (with simply a yes or no indicating whether they are present) are the others.