Talk:La voix humaine

Capitalisation of title

At the FAC for the article on Poulenc, this exchange came up. I said I'd mention it here, and now do so:

• Our article doesn't capitalise the V of "La voix humaine", any reason you do?
  • I think the capitalisation in our article on La Voix humaine is debatable. Though we'd normally expect a common noun like "voix" to be uncapitalised in a French title, there is no doubt that the composer's practice was to capitalise it (e.g. "Denise et moi redonné La Voix humaine à New York") a practice followed by his biographer Carl Schmidt. Practice varies on the documentation with the available CDs. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians doesn't capitalise "voix", but from the same publisher The Oxford Dictionary of Music does. On balance I incline to the view that the composer and his principal biographer should be followed. I'll mention the point on the talk page of the opera.

Comments invited on whether we should follow the composer's capitalisation here. Tim riley talk 10:52, 27 November 2014 (UTC)‎

The capitalisation of French works is certainly debatable and several debates about the titles of French operas can be found in the Opera Project's talk pages, e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 55#Summary of the Opera Project's position, and at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article guidelines#Operas: capitalization and diacritics and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (operas). In short: for the sake of consistency and simplicity, we follow Grove and disregard non-uniform usage and even the Académie française; instead we apply sentence capitalisation. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:05, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense, avoiding anarchy. (Pleasing to reflect that Grove from das Land ohne Musik is our ultimate operatic authority!) As the Poulenc biography I have up for FAC is not part of the opera project I'd really rather like to stick to Poulenc's preferred form there. Do you think that would upset any of the opera project people? I could add an explanatory footnote on the point if wanted. Tim riley talk 19:37, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't dare to correct a Featured Article of yours (unless absent-mindedly). For wider input by the Opera Project people (I'm not), you could raise the matter at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera, or not. BTW, there are still 3 occurrences of La voix in lower case in the Poulenc article. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I support following the composer's preferred version, as I did in A Boy was Born. I wouldn't mind changing our guidelines also, to make it easier not to follow the semi-sacred "house style" (which has been made by us, not by some revelation) but the creator, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:37, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

• Comment This article should remain as La voix humaine per the guidelines. I have no objection to anyone using La Voix humaine within another article if they so choose - just pipe the link here. (PS: If we're going by Poulenc's wishes, wouldn't the title be The Human Voice? As far as I remember, the composer wanted his operas performed in English to English-speaking audiences. Just a thought. Not that I'm suggesting moving this there!). --Folantin (talk) 10:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks to all for these tolerant and helpful comments. Particular thanks to Michael B for spotting the inconsistency in the FAC article. Shall away to correct instanter! Tim riley talk 18:30, 1 December 2014 (UTC)