Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 18

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Bach cantatas

Hello. I hope I have come to the right place! I have a question about User:Campelli's apparent use of a template for the articles on Bach cantatas. I find that his rigid format does not allow for the encyclopedic content contained in Alfred Dürr's monumental tome and other encyclopedic commentaries. I prepared Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht, BWV 105 based on this tome. I had also added details of the scoring of the sinfonia in BWV 21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, to the article which were later removed by Campelli. In addition his approach appears to give no English translations of the texts (there is a whole book devoted to these). I do not think the German texts on their own are particularly helpful. In this scheme there seems to be no place for musical descriptions of the form of the movements, including special or unusual musical features, present in Dürr and almost all published texts. Is there some wikipedia policy that this is how Bach Cantatas should be written up? I don't think it is very helpful and seems far too rigid. Far more information can be found in Dürr or alternative encyclopedic tomes (e.g. the forthcoming English translations of Vols II and III of Wolff & Koopman). Is this wikipedia policy? I just added information from Dürr to Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56, and would hate to see this flattened by a "template" steamroller. Similarly I prepared Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes and would hate to hear that this went against some organ music template. It includes GNU Lilypond extracts from the score along with midi renderings of the chorale preludes (some with ornamentation inserted by me). I hope to start a similar article on the Organ Trio Sonatas, using the 2nd edition of Peter Williams as one of the main sources. But why in this "template" for Bach cantatas is so much space devoted to text and hardly any to the music? To repeat myself, it seems quite unhelpful to the reader and contrary to all published encyclopedic texts. It seems to leave little or no place for scholarship in music, in particular for Bach's musical iconography in his sacred works, or for that matter for borrowings and rewritings by Bach. Mathsci (talk) 11:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Its often helpful when working on a large set of pieces like the Bach cantatas or the Haydn symphonies to have a generalize "template" used to generate the initial article. Its also some comfort to the reader navigating these large sets of works to be able to find information in similar places in each article. So, I can certainly see why User:Campelli (who is not active recently) would use a similar format as he worked down the BWV list. These "template" should not be restrictive, though. Well-cited information should always be welcome and the article and/or article-sections should be allowed to expand to accommodate more information. If something got deleted when he standardized the format for BWV 21, it should be re-added. The same goes for images and score snippets. Those are often not available when the stub is created, but they should be welcome when they become available. I wouldn't worry about the choral preludes. I think this only is an issue when there are many similar aritcles. I'll look into the specific BWV 21 issue later. Cheers.DavidRF (talk) 14:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I will hop about through the cantatas; I might look at BWV 39, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot. At the moment there is no description at all of the opening sinfonia and chorus, to which Dürr devotes a full page. He writes, "Bach's music shows the composer at the height of his powers. This applies in particular to the large scale opening chorus, whose 218 bars sum up the entire range of compositional means that Bach had acquired and developed further, methods that he now employed with perfect mastery. [...] The introductory sinfonia, with its block-chordal sequences interspersed with rests, passed between various instrumental groups, unmistakably depicts the gesture of breaking bread." No mention of this or the fugal episodes, etc, etc. I'll try to improve this article, seeking out other sources, possibly modifying the format, in order to do justice to the text and the music of one of Bach's finest cantatas. I'm not sure the German text is needed if there is no English translation, even of first lines, or even a summary of the content. Mathsci (talk) 15:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

For now, I'd leave the German text. Its isolated off in its own subsection and, as you've noted, it stinks when content is removed by another editor. The issue with the text is a general one that applies to all the articles and I think warrants a more thorough discussion. Expand to include translation? Keep? Move to wikisource? Replace with external link?

What we've been doing with symphony articles is adding the movement descriptions to the "structure" section (here its called "scoring and structure") as prose text that appears below the list of movements. At first it might be just a sentence or two describing one or more of the movements. At some point, it might grow large enough so each movement gets its own paragraph... after that a subsection for each movement. But even the most popular cantatas don't have anywhere near that much information yet, so that should suffice for a while.DavidRF (talk) 16:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think perhaps moving the text to Wikisource is a good idea -- IIRC, they weren't specially written for the cantatas, so there's no real reason for them to be on the page about the composition. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, though. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 17:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

They were usually specially adapted/written for the cantatas (clearly this applies to all the recitatives!). But I agree that putting them on wikisource is probably the best way forward. Providing English translations on wikisource could be a problem, because of copyright. Using snippets from standard published translations in the actual article (as I have done) is OK. I wonder whether Victorian translations exist? Mathsci (talk) 17:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Haydn and Mozart

I have gone ahead and created this project after the discussion above. My reasoning for doing this, as opposed to either a task-force or simply using this CM page, is straightforward. There are various subjects pertinent to the corpus of our H+M articles which I think would benefit from an ongoing (if leisurely) discussion in a static place. I don't know how many of us who care particularly about the minutiae of the use of continuo in the performance practice of Haydn symphonies, which sources are the best to cite in terms of MS evidence and the like, but as this kind of topic is pertinent to our extant H+M corpus, it seems salutary to have a discrete focal point for relevant exchange. If it falls into desuetude, I'll trot it off to the knackers. Eusebeus (talk) 13:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Style issues

There is a lack of consistency between the various styles that editors use when referring to the titles of musical works. Some of these styles are imported from external references. But some are obviously made up by editors, either in a genuine belief that they're appropriate, or simply as their best guess. In isolation, some of these styles would be acceptable, but others could not possibly be considered so in any circumstances. It would probably be more accurate to call the latter ones "mistakes" or "errors", but I'll refer to them as styles for the sake of charity and clarity.

It's one thing to use a consistent style throughout an article, even if the style is considered "wrong" in itself. Consistency should always be the minimum standard, whether it's music titles or anything else. But so very often, we don't even have that. It is rare in my experience to read a music-related page without seeing a need to make some edit related to consistency of style, so that we can at least get to first base. In most cases, though, many changes are required. A case in point is this recent edit I made to List of compositions for cello and orchestra. It beggars belief (mine, anyway) that we can present ourselves as a professional quality encyclopedia if we can allow this sort of shoddy presentation to exist. I know I'm not the only editor who's troubled by this sort of thing, but maybe what's stopped anyone from doing anything about it till now is that it's perceived as all too hard. Once one starts specifying exactly how works should be cited, the list of possibilities becomes large.

The fact is that we've had little or no guidance for editors in WP:MOS or anywhere else as to what are acceptable styles, so it's no wonder that we ended up with the "colossal mishmash" in the above article. I raised the issue of guidance @ Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music) some time ago in relation to opus numbers and D numbers, but it seems to have attracted relatively little attention. So, I thought I'd attract a wider audience here.

I'd like to propose that we agree on a standard format for musical titles, and once promulgated, it be fairly rigorously adhered to. I've created a sub-page of my user page where I list some ideas, and maybe people would like to visit it and make some comments. I stress that there are just my ideas, and others will surely disagree, at least on some matters.

Then, when we have a consensus about the style, we could have it inserted into WP:MOS (music) and we'd all be better off. Some of the matters I refer to are already touched on @ WP:MOS (music) but others are not. Whether editors actually read WP:MOS and adhere to this policy is another question, but where they diverge, we can at least have something to point them to and say "Here are the rules; please follow them in future". -- JackofOz (talk) 03:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Standard formats for musical titles would be a good thing, though they would need to reflect published editorial style (Grove, Oxford, Chicago etc.) and we'd need a well-crafted, absolutely clear set of rules. --Klein zach 03:57, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the clarity. There'd be nothing worse than a policy guide that purports to tell all and sundry what to do and not to do in all conceivable situations, but contains large holes. On the other hand, small loopholes are fixed all the time in real-world policy guides, and in WP's own MOS. On the adherence to published editorial style: WP makes its own rules about style generally, and we don't slavishly copy any one external guide. I see no reason why we can't be guided by usage outside, but at the end of the day this is our encyclopedia, and we get to decide how we want these things to be here. This is an expression of our "collective personality", if you like, and we have a right to be as individualistic on this matter as any external encyclopedia is. On music style, there is possibly more variation outside than there is about non-musical matters, so it would be a hard ask to try to stick closely to any one external guide. -- JackofOz (talk) 04:45, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I suggest the following format for composition titles (this is pretty much the de facto standard):

[Title] [in key] [No. x], [Op. y] [No. z] (Composer)

For example,

String quartet No. 15, Op. 132 (Beethoven)

or

String quartet in F minor, Op. 20 No. 5 (Haydn)

"Op." can be replaced with "D.", "BVM", "K.", and so on, depending on the composer.

Title, Op. and Composer are mandatory; all other fields are optional.

If there is agreement on this, I will update the style manual. --Ravpapa (talk) 05:09, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I see some problems there. First of all, I don't think JackofOz was suggesting a piecemeal approach. I'm not either. --Klein zach 05:31, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for going off half-cocked. I read JofO's suggestions and they seem fine to me. I say, go with it. --Ravpapa (talk) 05:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The use of periods (".") is inconsistent in the catalog initials that you list. Consider either "D.", "B.V.M.", "K." or "D", "BVM", "K"--dbolton (talk) 18:09, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, but may I suggest all such specific comments be made in the relevant Comments section of User:JackofOz/Musical styles. -- JackofOz (talk) 18:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that abbreviating "opus" makes as much sense as abbreviating "Miss." But there's a rule that would really help clear up a lot of these style issues, but unfortunately it's a rule that could only be enforced by the honor system: Those who have never played or listened to a piece of music should have the basic decency not to chop the article down to a substub just because of their ignorance. Basically, don't be an A-hole. Willi Gers07 (talk) 20:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

JofO, I suggest that you be bold and move your recommendations from userspace directly to the style manual. If there are reservations, they can be addressed there. --Ravpapa (talk) 05:33, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Which style manual are you referring to? --Klein zach 08:56, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Mustard. I see you did it, at least somewhat, already. --Ravpapa (talk) 09:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

If by "Mustard" you mean Wikipedia:Manual of Style (music), then no, I don't think so. I certainly haven't put anything in there, and afaik nobody else has recently either. As I said above, some of the points in my paper are already touched on at WP:MOS (music). I'm still receiving comments, and nothing has been decided. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

MUSTARD is at the Music Project. --Klein zach 02:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh. Thank you. Never heard of it before. Is everything in MUSTARD duplicated @ WP:MOS (music); if so, what's the purpose of having 2 different "style manuals"?; and if not, why are some topics in one but not the other, and which takes precedence when it comes to "authority"? In short, why do we have 2 places for this sort of material when people would generally assume there's only one set of "rules"? -- JackofOz (talk) 04:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I assume you want the short answer not the long one, right? Many things in WP are fuzzy. Different people work on guidelines and policies at different levels. The general idea is to improve the editing dialectically. Also note that music covers a broad spectrum. MUSTARD addresses that spectrum. So, no, no precedence and (hopefully) compatibility rather than duplication. --Klein zach 08:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Coronation music - category or list?

It's struck me that it might be useful to group music written for (or performed at?) coronations in some way. I'm aware of such works as Zadok the Priest and Handel's other four Coronation Anthems, Elgar's Coronation Ode, including Land of Hope and Glory and Walton's Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre. If we go for a category, I could just slap the cat on these. For a list, someone more knowledgeable would be useful.

And, of course, all those I've mentioned are associated with British coronations. Presumably other courts commissioned music for this purpose too.--Peter cohen (talk) 11:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd go for a category first - I have a feeling that there were far more kings and queens than coronation pieces. That list would have to start with a simple list of all European monarchs, which in itself is hardly possible (see Category:Lists_of_monarchs to assess the complexity of the problem). --Jashiin (talk) 20:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

And the next question is where should this category go. There is Category:Sociological genres of music, but I think it should have a subcat for occasional music into which things like Category:Anthems might go. Comments?--Peter cohen (talk) 11:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

There's currently a Category:Royal anthems. That may not be the right place for all of it as all of them might not be "anthems" but it gets you really close in the categorical tree. DavidRF (talk) 16:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

[Year] in music articles

I was wondering if the members of the project would agree to take at least some of these articles under our wing. A typical article on a, say, pre-1800 year, would only deal with what is now considered "classical music". And many of these articles are quite poor, in dire need of help concerning important publications and events.

If we agree that the articles (say, up to 1850 or so) belong to our project, then a bot run needs to be arranged to tag them all accordingly, and we also have to discuss formatting issues (the way things are now, there's a weird-looking "classical music" section in all of the articles, a "publications" section in many, apparently intended for treatises only, etc.) - if those are discussed elsewhere for "[Year] in [field]" articles, I'd be happy to know where they are discussed. The articles are not tagged with any project banners.

I understand that most of the articles in question would deal with early music, a subject not particularly well covered in Wikipedia, with few editors interested in it, but at any rate, I encourage people to consider these year articles when expanding articles on composers and compositions, and introduce relevant entries every now and again. --Jashiin (talk) 20:53, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

There's a lot of "low lying fruit" types of tasks here. Some fairly odd pieces are noted (String Quartet No. 3 (Mozart) in 1772?) while some fairly well-known pieces are left out (Symphony 25 from the following year). Plus some odd choices for notable events as well. It has Mozart traveling to Vienna in 1773 looking for work. Maybe so, but it doesn't say the trip was not successful and taking the court position in Salzburg that very same year seems like a much more important event in his life. These types of "almost-inaccuracies" can provide unnecessary maintenance headaches down the road, so perhaps its best to stick to the more major milestones? There's also the issue of uncertain dates. Zaide is listed in both 1779 and 1780. Perhaps that date is known for certain and can be cleaned up, but I know of several pieces where only a "window" of dates is known. At any rate, I can certainly skim through add obvious omissions in my spare time, but I'm not certain a lot of real effort here (once the low-lying fruit is gone) is a good idea. My two cents. DavidRF (talk) 21:31, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The "low lying fruit" types of tasks is precisely what made me post about this - all these articles seem to be very neglected, and if we at least clean it up by fixing obvious problems such as the ones you cited (i.e. important events and pieces left out), it'd be a major improvement. I've got no idea whether the less important pieces should be mentioned - at least for pre-1700 music it doesn't seem like a bad idea, given how there were fewer pieces published and fewer (?) composers; so it won't clutter up the articles. As for events and works for which the exact years are not known, I suggest leaving them out altogether. --Jashiin (talk) 21:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I started making "year in music" articles (e.g. 1570 in music, 1571 in music). I see the format for "births" has gotten messed up, but I haven't been paying attention. Those articles aren't all that easy to research. If you have online Grove access, searching on the date is useful, and it's wise to have a little list of major composers to search manually to see what was going on in their careers. I stopped making these articles because they were hard to write and there was no evidence anyone was finding them useful. Antandrus (talk) 23:20, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Help with refdesk query/Bassoon trios by Julius Weissenborn

I'd like help with my query at the humanities reference desk. Please respond there. (It will eventually be [[archived here). Graham87 16:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Articles to check

I ran across a whole slew of recent articles today, which need bannering for this project (perhaps a couple are for composers). They all have various issues too. Most are very stubby with no independent sources, cats are often problematic, many need clean-up and/or have redundant "See also" sections. And the orchestras have these weird infoboxes that are meant for pop groups, e.g. [1]. I started trying to fix and banner a couple, but I've got enough on my plate with the Opera Project articles so I'm posting them here. For a couple of the orchestras I changed the infobox to something slightly more appropriate, [2] but frankly, I don't think they need one at all. Voceditenore (talk) 22:45, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Orchestras, Concert halls, etc

Musicians

I've bannered the people. Many of them were composers that belong with the Composers Project. (It's important to remember that this project "maintains all articles related to classical music, that aren't covered by other classical music related projects.") Next time I'd recommend putting a banner on each article if you don't have time to do any more. The banner will put the article into the system for eventual further editing. --Klein zach 04:22, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

David D'Or

David D'Or -- Israeli Singer of the Year and Eurovision contestant; needs sourcing for some platinum albums; also, any expansion that can help it attain GA/FA status. Also assessment review. Thanks.--Ethelh (talk) 00:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The project's input would also be valuable on Talk:David D'Or#Wikiprojects; Deletion of Six Categories. The article is currently bannered with {{classical}}, which not appropriate, in my view. Voceditenore (talk) 08:32, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with V that input from WP members would be valuable on the indicated talk page (though I'm not sure that I agree that such bannering would be innapropriate -- but I defer to members of the WP). Many thanks.--Ethelh (talk) 23:10, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this falls within the scope of the Classical Music section. He's clearly a popular music performer. I suggest taking this to the Eurovision Project. --Klein zach 03:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

What Kleinzach said. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Opera portal at Featured portal candidates

Portal:Opera is being considered for featured quality status, at the Featured portal candidates process. Comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Opera. Cirt (talk) 20:25, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of orchestra members

Can members of professional orchestras be notable, and if so when? A number of cases have come up recently: Richard Bamping (now an afd here), Fenwick Smith (prod removed/May 25). My understanding is that the Criteria for musicians and ensembles applies. Any thoughts on this? It might help if we can agree a position on this! Best. --Klein zach 09:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Fenwick Smith is clearly notable in my opinion - Criteria for musicians and ensembles - No. 5,6. I'm not absolutely sure with Richard Bamping, I voted "keep" at this AfD, since I think that available information (and notability) is sufficient. --Vejvančický (talk) 09:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Here are criterias 5 and 6:

5. Has released two or more albums on a major label or one of the more important indie labels (i.e. an independent label with a history of more than a few years and a roster of performers, many of which are notable).

6: Is a musician who has been a member of two or more independently notable ensembles, or an ensemble which contains two or more independently notable musicians.

I think both of these are directed at pop musicians/bands, not orchestras, otherwise Joe Bloggs who played the triangle for both the LSO and the LPO (in either performances or a recordings) would be entitled to a Wikipedia article. --Klein zach 09:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget the recordings, Kleinzach. OK - do we have any special criteria for "classical" musicians? I think, that solo performances with notable orchestra, recordings published by well-established labels, teaching experiences in notable music schools (Btw, F. Smith is also a professor at the New England Conservatory), activity in notable chamber ensembles should be sufficient for us. I want to see Wikipedia more varied, with detailed and correct informations, and I want to find here more. This is the strenght of Wikipedia. I don't want to belittle this project with spam, believe me. Both mentioned artists meets these criteria in my opinion. Especially, when we compare with hundreds of really poorly sourced "pop-music star" articles. However, this is just my personal view ...and I believe in consensus. --Vejvančický (talk) 10:49, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've just seen the Fenwick Smith recordings — I hadn't seen them before. Clearly notable on that evidence. (IMO they should have been listed in the article then it wouldn't have been prodded in the first place.) However Richard Bamping is an entirely different case. --Klein zach 12:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Run of the mill orchestra members are highly unlikely to deserve individual articles without a significant soloist career or other such accomplishment. Surely, my fellow denizens of CM, we can agree on this standard and uphold the line accordingly at AfD. Eusebeus (talk) 12:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Finally I agree with you on Bamping - Wikipedia rules are far more important than my personal inclusionistic opinion. I tend to save, rather than delete. --Vejvančický (talk) 12:37, 27 May 2009 (UTC)