Beck’s Song Reader: Recording or Score?

Coming soon to the Music Library: Beck’s latest album, Song Reader. A library user’s request brought the album to my attention. It’s a novel approach to a sound recording: Beck produces the sheet music and you, the fans, produce the performances. You can read more about the project and watch selected interpretations at www.songreader.net.

I wonder where we’ll put it in the Music Library collection. Do we respect the author’s vision of the work and classify it as sound recording or do we ignore the larger context and deal only with the portion that we collect, that is the sheet music? Then again, how is Beck’s work any different from a score produced by Beethoven or Monteverdi other than its new conceptual frame. We’ll definitely link to the related site from the catalogue record. Watch the library catalogue for its ultimate classification. We’ll depend on our intrepid music cataloguer’s judgement!