In this screenshot of my iTunes window you can see five instances of string quartets played by both the Alban Berg Quartet and Quartetto Italiano, but in two of them, QI comes first in the name sort and in the remaining three, ABQ comes first.

Does anybody know what criterion is causing that behavior?

Thanks.

Edit: I just found that "Date[s] Added" are consistent with what I'm seeing. Can anybody confirm or refute that, and, even better, explain why an invisible, relatively unimportant criterion would supersede visible, significant ones?

My take is iTunes using the date/time added to maintain the tune sequence within an album. At lest that is the only criteria I can find that iTunes might use to retain the sequence within an album.

I'd have to tear apart the plist to verify, but attributes that can have multiple values (such as playlist membership) MUST occur in the plist in an order. In most cases, the order is irrelevant. (such as playlist membership) But in certain instances, the order of occurrence may become important, such as when listing what playlists a song appears in. (or what composers are cited)

On the one hand, maybe, but on the other, wouldn't it be intuitive, make more sense, and even be easier to program if visible columns were considered as user preferences and iTunes simply sorted from left to right rather than by some arcane algorithm?

I could then have "Date Added" as my third column and see what I want intuitively rather than have it mysteriously introduced into my mix.

It seems to me to be pretty unApple-like behavior. (I wonder if it persists in later versions of iTunes than my v 8.2.1.)

And I find this curious, although it may not be: If your scenario is on the mark it would mean that invisible (Date Added) data is being accessed while, at the same time, iTunes "Search" can't access info in an invisible (Comments) column.

I am using iTunes 12.0.1.50

Well... So much for the "Date Added" theory.

I've now tried injecting every criterion that seems like it may be relevant into the mix, but with no joy.

Edit: Oops! I just noticed the missing "e" in the first "Pastorale"; "Date Added" holds.