Talk:Antony and Cleopatra (Barber)

In line citations: see Use of Notes/Footnotes

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (footnotes)

There is nothing arbitary in changing this to in-line citations. Pls read the above. And wait for consensus to devlop. Viva-Verdi (talk) 18:30, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Viva Verdi. Wiki footnote guidelines should be followed. This article is pretty wonky in any case and needs any help it gets. Markhh (talk) 19:20, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree that in-line citations are better.4meter4 (talk) 20:47, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Inline citations are better than what, exactly? This article has already got inline citations—lots of them. They are formatted as parenthetical references, one of the five types of references sanctioned in the guideline at Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_present_citations. There seems to be confusion here over just what an "inline citation is. The definition given at Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Inline_citations is: "An inline citation is a citation next to the material it supports, rather than at the end of the article. Inline citations are used to directly associate a given claim with a specific source. On Wikipedia, there are several different styles of inline citations. The two most popular are clickable foonotes (<ref> tags) and parenthetical references." Where a citation style has been established, the guideline at Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Consistent_style says "You should follow the style already established in an article, if it has one; where there is disagreement, the style used by the first editor to use one should be respected." The recent change from parenthetical inline referencing to footnote style is in fact arbitrary.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Either system is of course acceptable, but, as a reader, I personally find parenthical references more difficult to follow than footnotes. I prefer the footnote format for clarity purposes and would strongly urge this article to adopt that system. Further, if either system is fine, why make such a big fuss Jerome Kohl? Consensus here seems to be going with footnotes and it seems rather POINTY to be getting into a debate over it.4meter4 (talk) 21:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Even if Jerome Kohl is right, and I'm not sure about that, the article should follow the standard ref format in almost every other well-written article in Wikipedia. There's no value in going another way, with clunky, intrusive parenthetical refs. Besides, let's be frank, as it stands this article needs a lot of improvement. I don't think the intention of the original editor, whoever that may be, need be seen as sacred here. Markhh (talk) 21:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I think you will find that I was the "original editor", so far as the inline cetations are concerned. There is no "standard ref format" in Wikipedia (footnote vs parenthetical citation is only a small slice of the reference-format pie). I would suggest you look at a few music articles in particular before jumping to the conclusion that well-written articles always use footnotes. I recommend: Tonality, Atonality, Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Symphony, Aleatoric music, and Definition of music. Not all of these eare equally well-written, but some are first-rate, and all use parenthetical referencing. As to expressed opinions, as a reader, I personally find footnote references more difficult to follow than parenthetical references. I prefer the parenthetical format for clarity purposes and would strongly urge this article to retain that system. Having said that, this is not a matter for a popular vote, nor is consensus achieved that way on Wikipedia. If you think I am wrong, please read the cited guidelines carefully first before telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:04, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

This isn't just a matter of "we've always done it this way". Aside from keeping the main text clear and easy to read, the footnote format has other clear advantages over the parenthetical one that may not be apparent here, as this article is at present quite short. Footnotes allow the reader to click on the note's number/link and be taken right to the note detail and other ref info without having to manually scroll up and down. Also for readers who are interested, all notes may be viewed and studied in one place, at the bottom of the article. Cheers, Markhh (talk) 22:08, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have read the policies, and I suggest, Jerome Kohl, that you carefully read Wikipedia:Consensus, which seems to agree with using consensus as a means of reaching editorial decisons regarding verifiability (a.k.a. referencing). Further, I find your interpretation of the rules out of balance with WP:OWN. Adding some refs was very useful, but certainly your formatting decision was personal and not obligatory. What we have here, is a choice of several referencing styles which are all acceptable, but not necessarily all desirable. It seems clear, that the majority of editors prefer the use of footnotes over parenthical references. There is a consensus in this discussion for footnotes. Therefore, footnotes should be used. When any article starts valuing the contributions of a single editor as "authoratative", I think the very spirit of wikipedia has been violated.4meter4 (talk) 22:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

With respect, I suggest you re-read the section Wikipedia:Consensus#What_consensus_is. "Consensus" is not the rule of the mob. It requires persuasion, and I am not persuaded that there is a valid reason to change the established citation format in this article. To claim that "most Wikipedia articles use footnotes" as a reason is the same logical error as claiming that, because more editors on the English Wikipedia are Americans than British, that American English is the standard that must be adhered to in all articles. Wikipedia policy does not say that a group of three or four editors have the power to change the style or format of an article (provided that it adheres to the guidelines provided), just because they momentarily outnumber editors of a contrary point of view. If you can come up with a real reason for changing this format (and not just "I like footnotes better"), then I am willing to listen. So far, this remains a "beauty contest", and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

To Markhh: I'm surprised that you can claim footnotes get in the reader's way less than parenthetical citations, since the latter do not require the reader to move his eyes away from the main text in order to see the citation.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually I agree with Markhh. Further, one still has to scroll down to read the name of the source in parenthetical references as well. You can easily click on footnotes and then click back to where you were when moving back and forth. That's a feature parenthical references don't provide, and it's therefore easy to lose your place when scrolling back and forth. Another reason, why footnotes are better. You're arguements concerning consensus continue to bother me. I do not like your 'I was here first, so what I say goes' mentality. 4meter4 (talk) 04:44, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

So the argument is over which style to use -- footnotes versus parenthetical references? They're both ok, right? As far as I know both methods are acceptable, and both have advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I'm agnostic but I've been using the footnote method just out of habit (copying and pasting references I use a lot from the last article I wrote, for example); I like the cleanly appearance of the parenthetical method, and above all its friendliness to newbie editors (can you imagine wrestling with citation templates and named refs as a newbie? I still have trouble but maybe I'm just dense). Before getting worked up over it -- please consider that either way is all right -- no one needs to "win" or "lose" if one or the other is chosen by the group, and a referenced article is better than an unreferenced one. JK, if a majority of people want to change something it's probably going to happen; it's the Wikipedia way, and remember it's not as painful as having a pack of amateurs destroy an expert-written article, something which is a real disaster. Philosophically, Antandrus (talk) 05:26, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

• I'm with Antandrus here. The following is cross posted from my comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera...

  Briefly, as I'm in Italy on a dreadful dial-up connection... As long as the article is well-referenced, the style is consistent within the article, and one of the forms mentioned in the MoS, I am not in favour of imposing mass-uniformity across articles. It is potententially contentious, and unnecessary. There is far more important work to do in terms of improving articles. The Bartered Bride was recently changed for no reason, except for this nebulous 'uniformity'. It is a Featured Article and the referencing system was approved during the FA process. Note also that "References/Sources" should not be used for "further sources". For articles which use the shortened footnote format (author's last name, date of publication and page number), that Section gives the full bibliographic information for the works in the footnotes.

  Voceditenore (talk) 07:38, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

There really seem to be two discussions here: 1) Which one of two ref formats is more useful. On this one I have learned that the parenthetical format is perfectly acceptable and so it comes down to a matter of opinion. 2) How are conflicts resolved when there is disagreement among editors. Here I think Wikipedia suggests that when a consensus is achieved among the well-reasoned arguments of interested editors that that choice should prevail. I have to agree with the ever sensible Voceditenore that there's no reason to impose uniformity just for the sake of it where an acceptable and consistently utilized alternate is in place. I guess I am changing my opinion, for whatever it's worth, to let the perfectly okay refs stand as they are for now, since there seems to be no clear consensus that a change is needed. I would suggest, however, -in my opinion- that if this article is ever seriously rewritten and expanded that using the footnote format would be preferable. Cheers! Markhh (talk) 23:08, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Here's my ha'p'orth - Think of this from the reader point of view. Nerds like myself have no problem with in-line citations, which are not uncommon in academic publications, although rather rarer elsewhere. However non-academic readers may find them rather - or even very - confusing. For this reason I think that footnotes should always be preferred.--Smerus (talk) 09:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, yes. But this discussion belongs over on Wikipedia talk:Citing sources, since it concerns the general practice of citation formats on Wikipedia. This page is for discussing the article on Barber's Antony and Cleopatra. I'm still waiting for someone to offer a reason why the formats in this article (as opposed to all Wikipedia articles) should be changed. FWIW, I can think of two arguments that might be raised, but I'll not bring them up, since I am in opposition to the change.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:12, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Recordings

In my opinion this section doesn't require complete discography information of an album by Leontyne Price. The only information relevant in this article is the recording of the Antony arias themselves, by Price and Schippers for RCA in 1968. (Recording dates are listed in the credits for the CD release, June 1-2, 1968.) Best wishes Markhh (talk) 04:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you are presenting a conundrum here. What are you going to use as a reliable source to document the dates of recording, unless you provide a proper reference to this CD release? The original LP release of 1969 does not list the recording date of the two arias, nor of the accompanying Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Also, if a commercial release is not important, then I might suggest including the recording of the Metropolitan Opera world premiere.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:45, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

The catalog number of the CD can be listed as a reference for the recording date of the Antony arias, yes. But my point is that the entire title and contents of the CD release, "Knoxville..." and "Hermit Songs", don't belong here because they don't have anything to do with Antony and Cleopatra. Likewise the complete contents of the LP as currently listed including "Knoxvillle..." doesn't pertain here, in my opinion. Best, Markhh (talk) 05:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't suppose there is any problem with that, in principle. (Are the Hermit Songs on the CD, then? They were recorded much earlier than 1968, and certainly were not included on the LP release.) The issue really is one of discography formats, which are much less standardized than the ones used for books and journal articles. What worries me in such cases is the question of publication—that is, there are a great many recordings that exist, without ever having been offered for sale as commercial releases or, sometimes, suddenly appearing forty years or more after they were recorded.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:14, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

A few citation issues

Pinging Jerome Kohl as first and main editor, and Markhh as the other still-active editor with a significant number of edits on this article. Other editors, in particular those engaged in the issue of references and formats in the thread above, are obviously welcome to chime in too. Although, I must stress, I do not intend to reopen that discussion! But I am approaching this "timidly" (non-WP:BOLDly) as I see from previous discussion that this is a topic on which there has been previous disagreements.

In any case…

First of all, the following references do not appear to be currently cited in the article. Absent objections, I therefore propose to move them to a "Further reading" section so they will remain easily available, and can be moved back to "References" if or when they are actually cited in the future.

• Heyman, Barbara B. (1995), Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-509058-6
• Kolodin, Irving (1966). "Music to my Ears: Barber’s Antony, after Zeffirelli". Saturday Review (October 1).
• Porter, Andrew (1975). "Antony’s Second Chance". The New Yorker (February 24): 123–24. Reprinted in his Music of Three Seasons: 1974–1977, 97–102. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1978.
• Schonberg, Harold C. (1966). "Onstage, It Was 'Antony and Cleopatra'; New Opera by Barber a Bit Lost in Shuffle". New York Times (September 17).

Second, I notice that what appears to be a good compromise solution to the above disagreement between parenthetical- and footnote-based inline citations seems to have been found: using {{harv}} to generate parenthetical citations that link to the full references (and as most good compromises I expect it leaves everybody a little unhappy). However, I see the article currently uses the |loc= parameter to give page numbers. This formats the inline citation without a leading "p." or "pp." before the page or pages. Is this intentional? If not, I propose changing them to use |p= and |pp=. I ask because some historical technical limitations have led to use of the less specific |loc= in some articles where |p=/|pp= was actually the preference. If the choice was deliberate, of course, I withdraw this proposal.

Third, I see the full references in the "References" section use the {{wikicite}} template (and, once, the generic {{citation}} template) to generate link targets with a manually formatted reference. In my experience, it is better to use the CS1/CS2-based specific citation templates (e.g. {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}, etc.) to both format the reference and generate the link target automatically. For one thing, it will often be able to eliminate issues of mismatched IDs (until just now, Fiedler 2003 had a link target generated for Fiedler 2001), and for another it gives you consistent formatting among references in the article without requiring manual effort from the editors to make them so. So again the question is, was this method a deliberate choice, or was it simply a result of what tool was to hand at the time? If it was not a deliberate choice, I propose to change them to use the previously mentioned CS1/CS2-based templates. If it was deliberate I withdraw the proposal.

Finally, I notice there's a "citation needed" tag in the article, attached to the recording date of the 1969 recording. I'm not quite sure why that, of all things, needs a citation; but I also imagine it should be fairly easy to find a cite for for those familiar with the sources and the field. For instance, I imagine this would be mentioned by any biography of Barber, Price, or Schippers; or, equally likely, it is mentioned by one of the sources already in the article but just lacks a specific inline citation. --Xover (talk) 16:29, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I actually managed to find a reference for the recording time (Heyman 2012, 422), so I added that to the article. But as this is not my field, I would appreciate it if someone qualified would check it. --Xover (talk) 17:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, and thanks also for the ping. I was startled to see your mention of the Heyman and Porter items being missing, since I remember adding both of them myself, some time ago. Someone in the meantime has removed them, presumably because they were not cited in the text. I think I also added the Schoenberg at that same time, but perhaps not the Kolodin. If any of these were evidently irrelevant, then the removal might have been justified but, [misunderstood, I see now what you meant] as they are all right at the center of the subject of the article, they should have been moved to Further reading, instead. Thank you for rectifying this situation.

I can take credit for linking the inline citations to the reflist, which was a technique I learned only after that disagreement over the citation formats some years back. You are welcome.

The "wikicite" templates are used because neither the "citation" template nor the "cite xx" family supports the citation style used in this article. The CS1/CS2 styles are only two of dozens, perhaps hundreds of formats, and I have issues with some of the defaults that seem to be unalterable, in particular the formatting of volume and issue numbers, and the handling of dates for newspaper articles. If you have persuasive arguments for accepting those defaults, I am willing to listen. Using the "loc" parameter is also a part of this same issue. The citation style I prefer to follow is the Chicago Manual which, rightly in my view, regards the abbreviations "p." and "pp." in author-date citations as redundant, even silly. What else would a numeral following the comma represent? If a volume, then the correct format is [vol]:[pages]. Using [author] [year], vol.[vol.]: pp.[pages] only compounds the problem.

I cannot recall for certain, but it was probably me who placed that citation-needed tag. I doubt very much that it was intended for the 1969 date, but I will have a look and see.

I notice further that you have fixed a bad inline date link to the reflist. Thanks for that, but I hope you will forgive me for double-checking it, just to make sure it is to the correct source, and not a product of having Heyman's book removed from the list of sources.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:42, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for responding so quickly, Jerome Kohl.

If I understand you correctly, you agree that the four references listed above (Heyman 1995, Kolodin 1966, Porter 1975, and Schonberg 1966) should be moved to a "Further reading" section? Absent objections, and if nobody beats me to it, I'll move those at some point in the near future.

As regards which templates to use, my preference is based on somewhat more technical priorities, and things like internally consistent formatting without depending on manual effort by all editors (including drive-by editors, or people who are not logged in / do not edit wikipedia regularly). In general, I would argue that those factors outweigh the (otherwise well-founded) preference of the local editors. But my position there is neither backed by policy, nor has usually been found persuasive by those editors who do care strongly about citation formatting, so I don't think there's much point in entering into a discussion of the finer details of that here. I am not terribly concerned with the specifics of the formatting in terms of commas versus full stops, and so on, that I observe to often be the crux of such discussions. My only really strongly (relatively speaking) preference there is for including p./pp. prefixes because I, personally, find that much more easy to parse. Well, and I feel similarly for similar reasons about footnotes versus parenthetical citations, but that's out of scope for this discussion. In any case, for both issues (which citation templates to use, and |loc= vs. |p=), I merely wanted to check whether the current choice was deliberate or had come about by happenstance, and since it's the former I'm happy to withdraw those proposals. There is no pressing policy-based reason to change them, and in those circumstances the default guiding principle is that the first editor and major contributors' preference should be respected.

Regarding the citation / citation needed tag. The tag was placed next to the recording year (1968), not the release year (1969), so I assumed the tag was to verify the time of the recording. The release date is implicitly cited to the recording itself, as are at least most of the other details regarding it. Personally I don't think the recording time needs to be included in a list format, but would be relevant if it were described in a prose paragraph (typically including more information about the circumstances of the recording). If included, I don't think there is a pressing need to include a cite for it being recorded in 1968. It's not really a controversial fact that is likely to be challenged. So my suggested minimal approach would be to just drop the citation and the citation needed tag, and maybe even just leave out the recording year (but keep release year, obviously). Since I went looking for a cite that included it, I added the specific dates of recording (1–2 June 1968), and if we're to be that specific I see more justification for having the information cited. But, again, I find it odd that this, of all things in the article, is what requires a citation. In any case, thanks for checking it; this really isn't my field. (Oh, and I am obviously very happy to have my changes double checked in general!) --Xover (talk) 10:25, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely, do move the uncited items to "Further reading", if I don't get there first myself. When I originally placed them where they now are, I had intended to quickly move on to a discussion of the critical reception of the revised version of the opera. Somehow, I never got around to it, though I may return to it now that I have been reminded.

One issue that often comes up with recordings is that the release date may be misleading, especially if the recording in question is a reissue. This is why many discographies give the date of recording, when it can be determined, since this does not change with every subsequent re-release. In this case it is a rather trivial matter, so long as the original album release year of 1969 is retained.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2018 (UTC)