BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ long citations for multiple formats

[ExecutorElassus]

Hi Forum,

I have a document where I'm discussing the documentation of performances of a specific piece of music. I'm using biblatex-chicago for my bibliography and citations. I have the following line in my preamble:

Code: Select all

\usepackage[notes,natbib,backend=biber,autocite=plain,alldates=edtf,idemtracker=context,ibidtracker=context,dateabbrev=false,language=american]{biblatex-chicago}

It seems that the CMS style treats different media of the same piece as equivalent, and so doesn't distinguish them in citations beyond "author, title."

For example: I have a radio broadcast of a piece from 1970. A record of the piece was made with the same ensemble in 1985. There's also a video of the televised 1970 performance on Youtube (which was a different production than the radio broadcast). Lastly, there's the score itself.

As far as I can tell, if I put these various sources in citations, after the first instance, they are all abbreviated to "author, title" and there's no way to tell which is which.

Is there a way to tell biblatex to use longer citations (but not necessarily the full citation) in cases where the media type changes? I don't want *all* my citations to be full length, but I do want more information in citations to distinguish different media types (and especially when they're different actual performances).

Thanks for the help,

EE

[Johannes_B]

Please post an example so we don't have to reengineer what you have.

[ExecutorElassus]

I'm attaching three files: a small .lyx document with a bunch of bibliography entries for the same piece, different performances/media; the .bib file you'll need in the same directory to compile it; and the pdf as my system outputs it.

As you can see, I have multiple entries for the same piece of music, but from different performances, different years, different media. Lyx/LaTeX just outputs them all as "idem. [title]" or "ibid." one after the other, even when they're clearly different sources.

I want to keep the idem/ibid setting for everything else, and have shortened citation entries also, but is there a way to get biblatex-chicago to understand that these are different sources, and give more information in the citation accordingly?

Cheers,

EE

[Johannes_B]

You have given the same author all the times, which is confusing. They authors, or rather interpretations you cite differ. It is like citing the english and the french translation of a german book, the author stays the same, but the work differs.

Depending how you defined the drivers for audio and video etc. I would rather define new fields for interpreter, composer, director etc.
Biblatex was designed to handle written information, but it can be adapted to handle music or an address database quite easily.

[ExecutorElassus]

As I understand, biblatex-chicago has a bunch of extra material for audio and video sources. It is, however, still based on the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual, and the 17th was just released. A cursory reading through the new edition shows that they've updated the standards there to handle more different kinds of media. It may be that the maintainer/author of the biblatex-chicago package will release a new version soon. Here's hoping.

However, the issue here is that I'm discussing different performances of the same piece, which were published as different media, at different times, etc. Under the biblatex-chicago specs, the composer of a piece goes under "author", and much of the other entries are considered superfluous. That's the issue I'm trying to address.

How would one, to return to print matter, deal with ancient sources that might be different manuscripts of the same source? Different codices of a Greek text, for example. They would all technically have the same "author", but provenance and media (codex vs. scroll vs. printed versions) would matter a great deal. Or, to use your example: the biblatex-chicago has an entry field for "translator." If I were discussing two different translations of a source text, would biblatex or biblatex-chicago cite them with information about the translator or language to distinguish them, or would those be shortened to "idem., title" as well?

Cheers,

EE

[Johannes_B]

Can you export your lyx file to a pdflatex file? I don't have much time lately, i cannot set up a sample document right now.

[ExecutorElassus]

sorry for my difficulty, but how do I export to a "pdflatex" file? I'm using Lyx, and the only options I have to export to pdf are either with luatex, or xetex. Is there some other program I should be using?

Thanks for your help.

[Johannes_B]

I am not a LyX user but LuaTeX or XeTeX should be fine as well.

[ExecutorElassus]

oh! Well, if that's the case, then the pdf output is attached to my second message, along with the other two files. Do you mean something else, or no longer have access to that file?

Cheers,

[Johannes_B]

I do have access to the files, but i need the LaTeX code to run the code and test stuff. Test out different possible ways of changing the current behaviour.