Talk:La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ

Change to the capitalization of the title

The capitalization of this title has just been changed. Perhaps the idea is to emphasize the religious nature of the piece? Unfortunately this goes against the Classical Music capitalization guidelines which explains "For Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese titles, capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns (names of particular people or places) in that language" . Can we please change the title back to the way it was before? --Kleinzach 23:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Messiaen's title for his composition has a capital T, capital N and capital S, and to capitalise it any other way seems to me incorrect. The title is a direct quotation, since it's what Messiaen called it, and for me the guideline for direct quotations is good here. The "religious nature of the piece" is obvious no matter how you capitalise it, and I do not think it is for Wikipedia to artificially diminish this. I have found no reliable source that decapitalises the T, N or S. The guideline you quoted starts "Capitalization of work titles should follow the style used in the most recent editions of New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The Oxford Dictionary of Music," and I would at least like to know how Grove capitalises the work before agreeing to its being being put back. --RobertG ♬ talk 07:55, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Can you clarify a couple of things? What you mean by "Messiaen's title"? Are you referring to a particular source? By "The "religious nature of the piece" is obvious no matter how you capitalise it, and I do not think it is for Wikipedia to artificially diminish this." do you mean you think there is a religious justification for the capitalization, or there isn't? (As you probably know the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians has 29 volumes. Unfortunately I don't have the specific one for Messiaen.) --Kleinzach 01:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I think you are making more of this than I expected. I am merely interested here in what the title is.

It is Messiaen's work, he could have called the work anything he liked. It is for Wikipedia to document what it is called. I think no source is necessary to confirm that the title of the piece is not different from what it is because a Wikipedian or group of Wikipedians says so.

No religious justification is relevant to whether certain words in the title should be decapitalised: on the contrary, justification is required to change the published title of the piece. You brought up the subject in your initial post above.

I may be in the library over the next week or so, I will look in New Grove then. I will also check in the score while I'm there. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I have access to the online version of Grove. The capitalisation is exactly as it is in the current article, i.e. La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ. The Grove article is "Messiaen, Olivier (Eugène Prosper Charles)" by Paul Griffiths. Voceditenore (talk) 10:21, 6 January 2011 (UTC)