Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 1

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Opera

Two comments:

1. I am interested in expanding the Opera project. Would anyone mind if I moved the material that pertains to opera here to that one? I realize the one might argue opera is a subset of classical music, but I think that there are sufficient distinctive characteristics to make a parallel approach appropriate.

1. Regarding this exhortation:

NB. Never translate titles - it is Der Ring des Nibelungen not The Ring of the Nibelung.

The practice, up until now, has been to use English titles of operas where they common, ie, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, but Così fan tutte and Der Freischutz. I am not necessarily taking sides on the issue, just making an observation.

--Viajero 09:03, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The Magic Flute is used on Wikipedia - yet no performance or recording or book I have ever read on Die Zauberflote has ever been refered to by the English title. It is a despisable practice. You don't watch opera in English - why refer to it in English? German opera is German opera is German opera - there is no reason, whatsoever to use an English title. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 19:11, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would be more than happy to see operas referred to with their original titles, but I for one am not going to go through the encyclopedia changing every instance of The Marriage of Figaro to Le Nozze di Figaro and force others to do the same. You may, if you wish, but you might find you it difficult to impose your will on others. As happens frequently here (cf UK/US spelling and punctutation), if there is no concensus, then no single standard is imposed. Also, one of the things that Wikipedia's NPOV philosphy implies is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive attitude when writing articles. With that in mind, let's see, for example, what Google reveals (not that I regard it as the final arbiter of everything):

"Die Zauberflote" - 22,500 hits

"The Magic Flute" - 73,600 hits

This would suggest, at least to someone with an open mind, that the English title does in fact have wide currency in the real world. I also notice that no less an authority than the Grove Concise has this listing:

Zauberflöte, Die

See Magic Flute, The.

Finally, if even one was to decree that operas should be referred to with their original titles, where would one draw the line? I for one am more than happy to be able to refer to The Life of the Tsar as such, rather than in cyrillic or in transliteration. -- Viajero 10:29, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have an opera dictionary (I think it's the Oxford Dictionary of Opera, but I'm not sure) that has entries for individual operas. Operas in French, German, Italian, and Spanish are listed under their original titles; operas in other languages are listed in English. So:

Die Zauberflöte, not The Magic Flute

La fille du régiment, not Daughter of the Regiment or La figlia del regimento; but

The Queen of Spades, not Пиковая дама, Pikovaya dama, or Pique dame. -- Marnen Laibow-Koser 15:20, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which states: "use the most commonly used English version of the name for the article." Hyacinth 20:26, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Der Ring des Nibelungen is far more commonly used than "The Ring of the Nibelung", unless it is referred to as "the Ring cycle". Another issue may be seen with Gotterdammerung (add your umlauts yourself), it cannot be appropriately translated.

But it does have a common English title -- The Twilight of the Gods. These days, I believe Götterdämmerung is more commonly used, but it wasn't always so. --Marnen Laibow-Koser 14:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

None of the above is very recent, and no-one replied to Viajero's first question. I have taken the liberty of removing references to opera on the project page and inserting a link to the Opera Project (there is a link to this project on the Opera Project page).

The question of translation/non-translation of titles has also been discussed by some current Opera Project participants, and the result can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/English names. --GuillaumeTell 18:20, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

This should have subcategories - e.g. european and western classical music, chinese, indian, etc. - also, the true classical period in western music is quite limited but a larger group is what people in the west are used to considering classical (Gregorian Chant is not classical in the narrower sense, nor are others more modern.).

The usual convention is to use "classical" in lowercase for the classical tradition (analogous to "jazz", "opera") as a whole and "Classical" capitalized for the stylistic period (analogous to "Baroque", "Romantic"). Thus, Bach's music is classical but not Classical. --Marnen Laibow-Koser 19:43, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This project so far only appears to have recommendations for articles on pieces of music. It should probably also include guidelines for articles on composers and theoretical concepts. BTW, speaking of theoretical concepts, if anyone wants to help me out with Hexachord, which I greatly expanded, I'd love the company. --Marnen Laibow-Koser 03:39, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wikimonography - Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin

Hello,
I am trying to find people interested in making a comprehensive monography about Frederic Chopin (hopefully the most comprehensive ever written :-) ). It should be published as a CD-ROM under GFDL. If you are interested you could look at a description of the idea on User:Schopenhauer/Chopin. I already contacted some people of Mutopia Project that are interested in helping. Chopinhauer 14:40, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sample uploading project

If I made a WikiProject Sound samples to encourage the uploading of ogg vorbis music samples, would anyone join me? I think it'd be great if we had samples of as much as possible, but it's rather tedious and time-consuming to do in bulk. If you don't know how, it's easy -- I can walk you through on a Mac and point you in the right direction on a Windows. We could even advertise a week in which we encourage Wikipedians to do just two a day for a week, or maybe just one sample for their five favorite bands/albums/whatever -- with the number of users who probably have copious sound samples, we could really move towards having a comprehensive review of music. Any takers? (I am posting this to several project pages, please respond at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music) Tuf-Kat 22:23, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

I have always wanted to - but have never found public domain music... Remember to upload to Commons --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 22:11, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Notable Recordings

I'm not really keen on the idea of a "Notable Recordings" header as suggested. This is really a subjective and POV topic. One can ask in rec.music.classical.recordings on USENET for opinions on recordings.--Sketchee 00:15, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Notable recordings is not the same as "recommended recordings". Notable recordings are those that have historical or cultural import. If we take Der Ring des Nibelungen - Georg Solti's recording was "notable" in that it was the first recording of the entire Ring. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 13:07, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okay I agree with that concept then, but it should probably be clarified on the project page :) --Sketchee 21:28, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Of course, one could remove all POV by listing ALL recordings of a piece. --[[User:OldakQuill|Oldak Quill]] 16:29, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In principle, I see no problem in listing notable recordings. But I imagine there could be practical problems. Users, not knowing about the important distinction (between a recording and a notable recording), might add recordings that simply aren't notable, or perhaps recordings that they consider notable (but which are not). This problem would have to be dealt with in some way. Also, I don't think listing all recordings would be a satisfactory solution. If it's any bit short of finished (as it is likely to be for a while except for really obscure works) we might have to regard it as POV. And I doubt such a list fills much of a purpose in an encyclopedia. EldKatt (Talk) 15:04, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Music style guide?

Sick of seeing things like Symphony No. 5 italicized, I began writing a classical music title style guide. It can be seen here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (titles)#Classical music titles. I admit, it needs further refinement and simplification, but these are the basic rules followed by most music journals. In fact, a lot of this comes from Writing About Music: A Style Sheet from The Editors of 19th-Century Music (ISBN 0520063821).

Personally, I believe every article about a specific piece should begin with that work's formal title. This will give all the necessary basic information about the piece in a compact fashion: title (generic or given), performing force, key, index number, and nickname.

However, I think the most important thing is to get rid of improper italics.

— [[User:Flamurai|flamurai^TM]] 05:26, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like okay as a general idea. Make sure you cite precident on the manual of style page. --Sketchee 05:33, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pieces of music) if you haven't already. :) --Sketchee 09:34, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Yup... I saw that. It's referring to the titles of articles about pieces of music, but there's really nothing solid referring to how to cite classical music in text. — [[User:Flamurai|flamurai^TM]] 10:09, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

Side project idea

I was thinking it would be a great idea to have a classical program notes wiki. It'd be good for smaller orchestras who don't have the resources to write good program notes. Any comments? – flamurai (t) 02:53, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Our sister project, WikiBooks, is the home for resources aimed at more specialized audiences -- the Wikipedia is for general use. I think that would be a great addition to WikiBooks, however. Tuf-Kat 03:17, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Help needed, anyone Polish here?

I intended to write an article about all the winners of the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition, but I haven't managed to find any biographical articles about Alexandre Uninsky, the winner in 1932. There is a Polish site though - [1], so if anyone knows Polish, a translation would be *highly* appreciated. I think that anyone that has won such an important competition is worth having an article in Wikipedia. --Missmarple 12:48, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Band music?

Concert bands, marching bands, and the like seem excluded from this project? Marches, original concert band/wind ensemble compositions, etc. Is there a way for those pages to be folded into this project, or do they belong elsewhere? Cmadler 17:10, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

PD books about classical music and musicians

I've created a comprehensive listing of free (Almost all PD) books about classical music available on the net. I found that many of project gutenberg's texts weren't properly categorized on the PG index so I "digged" a bit, using all sorts of queries.

The million book project of Archive.org also has a lot of (uncategorized) books on the subject, unfortunatly they are in DjVu format (scanned graphics), thus aren't really useable as text. --Rotem Dan 21:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Would you consider that violin might count as A-Class, if a formal references section were added? (These articles don't need to be FACs, merely at a stage where FAC might be considered) Can you suggest some other A or decent B-class articles we might use? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot, Walkerma 05:30, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair use copyright tag for sheet music

I've created a fair use copyright tag at {{sheet music}}. Please use this only for sheet music used in the specific article for that work (e.g. Image:Ravel bolero drum rhythtm.png in Bolero). Use {{fair use in}} if you are using the excerpt in another article (e.g. Image:Debussy String Quartet second movement opening.PNG in Motif (music)). If you are going through music articles and you see a sheet music image that this applies to, please add it. For more info about fair use, see Wikipedia:Fair use. Thanks. – flamurai (t) 19:09, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Helping

I am a big fan of classic music, I was wondering how one could help with this prodject.

--Fontenot 1031 00:17, 4 May 2006 (UTC), thanks very much if you know how I could help :-).

Orchestra articles

People here may be interested in recent article creations: Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Mobile Symphony, and Alabama Symphony Orchestra. They could use some fleshing out. --Fang Aili ^talk 15:14, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Arts WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Walkerma 17:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Help needed on Pie Jesu

Due to its age and style, I naturally assume that Pie Jesu is a classical piece. It's got at least some notability (e.g. it was later used in Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Requiem Mass and was one of the pieces on Charlotte Church's best-selling debut album, Voice of an Angel), but it's VERY hard at this point for me to track down either the original composer or the date of composition, or much of anything else, really, except for the fact that there have been a LOT of arrangements of it by other composers over the years. The oldest date I have so far for it is Faure's version in the late 1800s, but I'm not sure that it's the original or just a much earlier arrangement than Lloyd-Webber's. Any help would be much appreciated! :) Runa27 03:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Pie Jesu isn't a single piece of music, but some words derived from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, specifically from the last part of the Dies Irae and from the Agnus Dei. These words have been set by a lot of different composers, so Lloyd Webber's version is therefore quite different from Fauré's, or, indeed, Rutter's or Duruflé's or...

I've altered the article as best I can to reflect this. Have a look at it, and at the articles I've linked above. Hope this helps. --GuillaumeTell 16:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

List

Could someone with a lot of time an unlimited amount of time help me with a List of Piano Concerti by key? The one and only Cliff 00:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Template

Me again. I haven't been active around this WikiProject for a while, but that was me showing my exopedian side. :) That being said, I created a table at {{User:Springeragh/ComposerTable}} and was wondering if I could ask some of you to review it. I eventually intend it to be used in most articles about compositions by composers. I would prefer when it is used, to be subst:ed. Two such examples are here and here. —$ΡЯΙNGεrαgђ (-¢|ε|Ŀ|T|♫-) 23:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea, but I'm a bit concerned about its limitations: what is to be done when a song has numerous key and time signature changes, like in The Rite of Spring? Are all of them to be put in the box? Dar-Ape 18:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, is there one primary key that it is in more than the others? And there are actually really only about three composers who I wanted it to be on… —  $PЯINGrαgђ  Always loyal! 19:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Disography articles

I came across a seemingly unique article, that of the Symphony No. 7 (Sibelius) discography. The category (apologies, can't figure out how to link to it) only lists three others, though the Sibelius is the one that seems most worthwhile and useful. Any thoughts on making similar pages for other pieces? I've found it's quite difficult to find such info in one place. Granted, it'd be better if there were a classical Wiki with such info, but I don't know of any... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 12:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Massive category reorganization proposal

Category:Compositions by instrument is misnamed since it has subcategories like Compositions for string quartet. I propose the following structure:

Musical compositions

• Instrumental compositions
  • Instrumental compositions by medium
    • • Compositions for violin, etc.
      • Compositions for orchestra, etc.
      • Compositions for string quartet, etc.
  • Instrumental compositions by genre
    • Symphonies
    • Sonatas
    • Concertos
  • Vocal compositions
    • Vocal compositions by medium
      • Compositions for solo voices
      • Compositions for chorus and instrumental ensemble
      • Compositions for chorus and piano
      • Compositions for chorus a cappella
      • Compositions for solo voices and instrumental ensemble
      • Compositions for solo voices and piano
      • Compositions for solo voices and a cappella
      • etc.
    • Vocal compositions by genre
      • Operas
      • Oratorios
      • Song cycles
      • etc.

Yes, this would be a pain in the ass to implement, but the category structure is all over the place right now. I would be happy just getting the instrumental compositions organized at this point. Organizing the vocal stuff is a lot stickier.

– flamurai (t) 21:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm an enthousiast withstander of your idea. But wouldn't be the first step be that everyone would at least assign a category?

If I'm correct, you would assign at each piece two categories: one with the instrumentation, and one with the genre or form. wouldn't you get a big redundancy, i.e. 'compositions for cello and orchestra' and 'cello concertos' would be 99,9 % the same...

I would like to see this categorisation get in the guidelines...--Dr. Friendly 11:51, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
• User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
• User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
• User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Portal

I have just created Portal:Classical music and would appreciate participation, suggestions, or anything else anyone has to offer. Thanks, Dar-Ape 23:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Classical music in pop culture

Some articles, such as Carmina Burana (Orff), contain extensive sections on this piece in pop culture. While that wouldn't surprise Alex Ross, I think it is blown out of proportion. If we want to report such trivia as "the band Whatever uses O Fortuna as their intro music prior to taking the stage" at all, they should be limited to the band's article. Should we therefore just delete these sections altogether and replace them with a simple sentence: "This piece is being used by numerous bands, advertisements and college hockey teams." or should we create a new article Use and abuse of classical music in pop culture so those who want to add this information have a place to do so without annoying the rest of us? — Sebastian (talk) 22:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

There's already a place for that, List of popular songs based on classical music. 'Abuse' would be hidiously POV, and not all of use consider such things a bad thing anyway. As for the orther mater, such at talking about the refs in the articles about the originals, well, it's the same case as 'trivia' sections. Most of the time, such things can be written in a more encyclopedic way, and just because you don't like them doesn't mean they don't have value. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 00:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The article name was, of course, tongue in cheek. But I realize I wasn't clear enough. List of popular songs based on classical music is not what I meant. Such trivia as "the band Whatever uses O Fortuna as their intro music prior to taking the stage" have nothing to do with the creativity involved in composition - they just blast it from their loudspeakers. Do you really see value in that sort of information? Where do you draw the line? — Sebastian (talk) 02:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The fact something is so heavily used in pop culture is needed, yes. Why? It shows a pieces influence in general, helps bring a dimension to things from all sides. Certainly not every possible tidbit of info needs to go in every article, but if they can be sourced and are of notable use, then most definetly yes. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 02:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Homophony

I'm not sure how relavent this is to this WikiProject, but the article is up as a FAC, and it could use a little work, so if anyone has the knowledge to make the changed requested by those who oppose the FA status, your help would be appreciated. -- Cielomobile ^{talk / contribs} 04:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Classical piano music project or task force?

I'd like to start contributing to Wikipedia by enhancing the content related to "classical" (in the broad sense) piano music. I guess it would be beneficial to coordinate this effort with other interested people. Since I have no experience in editing Wikipedia, I'd like to ask for your opinion on whether coordination should be in the form of a WikiProject, or as a "task force" within the WikiProject Classical music? I'd also appreciate some advice on the technicalities of starting (e.g. setting up a project page etc.). PianoDabbler, 24 November 2006

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

userbox for project?

Hello, is there a userbox for this project? I'm currently using a generic userbox that links to a non-existent category, but I would prefer an "official" userbox if one exists. I've already tried looking through the standard and userspace galleries, to no avail. Thanks. --Kyoko 20:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I had made one back when I used userboxes. Here it is: {{user:Bottesini/user wp classical}}. It looks like this:

This user is a member of WikiProject Classical music

-- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 21:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S.: I just made it into a template now, people had just been copying the code - that's why it's not listed. -- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 21:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I will insert it now. --Kyoko 21:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It's listed now with the wikiproject UB's. -- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 21:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

You might consider adding a link to a category if one exists... probably "Wikipedians who participate in WikiProject Classical music" or something like that. --Kyoko 21:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Will do. -- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 21:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Project page cleanup

Just tried to fix it up a little and make it clearer. Hope it helps. -- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 20:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Please, do not overspecify article form

I'm worried about the idea of including an "official outline" for all works of classical music. Really, a good article is whatever is well organized and covers what is important about each work. The form of organization that is needed may be different for different works.

An prescriptive outline is fine as a means of making sure that nothing has been inadvertently omitted. But I do not want to see future edits that reduce article quality merely to conform to an arbitrary template. It's easy to foresee that this would produce contentless sections, overelaborated section headings, and other avoidable faults.

I would suggest that the guideline read something like:

"An article should be internally well-organized, following an outline suited to the work in question. Some topics that, where relevant, would be worth including are the following: [list here]"

Thanks for listening, Opus33 17:02, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea: indeed, it is risky to be over-prescriptive for something like this. Articles on things as different as Josquin masses (just wrote one yesterday), Billings tunes, Webern piano pieces, and Wagner operas should not have to conform to a specific template. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 17:13, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen

The article Zigeunerweisen is currently occupied by an obscure Japanese film, and we are trying to move that to Zigeunerweisen (movie). See Talk:Zigeunerweisen for the WP:RM vote.

Also, it would be appreciated if somebody can create a stub for Zigeunerweisen (Sarasate), which shall eventually be moved to Zigeunerweisen.--Endroit 10:02, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I just created a stub for Zigeunerweisen (Sarasate) (which should be moved to Zigeunerweisen). Please check for accuracy, and expand it if possible. Thank you.--Endroit 10:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I just posted on the talk page of Zigeunerweisen - I think that the film is not notable enough in relation to the composition to introduce a disambiguation page. Any comments? -- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 20:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Fantastic! I love when you make a comment about something meaning to go back and do it yourself but others take up the task! -- ßottesiηi ^(talk) 03:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Long and involved question

I have a question about how we provide details about a composition: specifically, when we are describing the musical characteristics of a piece, where is the borderline between description and original research? Here's an example of what I'm thinking of, from Symphony No. 80 (Haydn):

The first movement opens with a turbulent theme in the cellos accompanied by tremolos in the strings, leading eventually to a more lyrical, but still highly articulated, second theme in the relative major. The recapitulation is unusual in that it does not recapitulate the full first theme, but rather emphasizes the second theme, now in D major. The movement thus ends in the parallel major.

Here we are using primary sources; i.e., the score. I am uncertain if this would be considered original research under Wikipedia:No original research. Note the requirements given there for using primary sources:

An article or section of an article that relies on a primary source should (1) only make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable adult without specialist knowledge, and (2) make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims. Contributors drawing on entirely primary sources should be careful to comply with both conditions.

The above quote about the Haydn symphony could be seen as failing to comply with these conditions, as I suspect the average adult would not be able to easily verify this information without some knowledge of music. I'd appreciate discussion and feedback on this. Heimstern Läufer 02:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I've always been a bit bothered by this myself. I think the official policy would say that one should use words culled FROM sources. So if the source talks about "the triumphant theme that'shu both full of beauty and pathos" or whatever else (and then cite it), that's fine. But making qualitative judements one's self isn't. Unfortunetly, Wikipedia is RIPE FULL of similar pages, even about somewhat not-your-typical-fanboy stuff like a Haydn symphony. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 03:21, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, in a case like your example, I think it would be absolutely necessary to cite; otherwise it's just opinion. Here's an edit I once made to try to fix one such problem (forgive my awful copyediting, which has since been fixed). But what I'm concerned about is not just the blatantly subjective descriptions, but also things like descriptions of musical elements, like "there is no true recapitulation", for example. Heimstern Läufer 03:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The example quoted above doesn't seem to me to be subjective, with the possible exception of "turbulent" and "lyrical". However, the OR guidance seems to me to be improperly worded; in this case, anyone who can read a score could verify the description, which would be within the spirit of the OR guidance, if not the letter. David Brooks 07:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my opinion:

(a) I agree with Melodia concerning subjective, editor-created phrases like "full of beauty and pathos". I think they ought to be completely verboten, as they violate the NPOV principle and (for me at least) are useless and irritating. Moreover, it's easy to get opinions from articulate and knowledgeable critics; Google "NameOfWork program notes" and you will usually get something fairly reasonable.

(b) With DavidBrooks, I believe that we should be permitted to look at the score and include simple factual observations based on it, for example: (i) "the trio section is in F major", (ii) "the finale is in sonata form". This sort of observation is usually not controversial and is within the capacity of our staff to evaluate safely. Whenever controversy arises about whether an observation about the score is straightforward or not, we should delete it and insist that it replaced by a sourced assertion.

So with regard to Heimstern's example, my take would be that the word "turbulent" is subjective and should not be included except in quoting an outside source. The phrase "the second theme is not recapitulated" is a borderline case, I think, and might be acceptable if vetted first on the talk page.

Thanks for listening, Opus33 16:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

And thanks for speaking, Opus33! Well, so far, what I can tell is that we ought to avoid subjective descriptions, such as Melodia's examples or even "turbulent" from my example. I have edited the article that I gave an example to remove some of these terms (I was the one who originally wrote them, too, and later came to question if what I'd written was really a good idea). Really, it's the borderline cases Opus33 refers to that are still hanging me up now. Observing quirks like missed recapitulations seems to be an important part of describing, yet it does border on original research. Heimstern Läufer 18:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think you all are on the right track. We have had a long history of issues with OR on "classical" music articles, and the encyclopedia is riddled with unaddressed problems in this area.

Melodia is right about sourcing "purple prose" where it is useful. I think that reading the score as a primary source to determine "fairly obvious" things isn't a problem. Where something is open to significant interpretation (what key does the second movement of Brahms' Fourth Symphony begin in? what is the form of the scherzo movement of the first Razumovsky quartet?) then we have to source the different ideas.

Thanks to Heimstern for bringing this up. Antandrus (talk) 19:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

To a certain extent a rule of thumb that opinions need direct citing and facts do not might be helpful. Cheers, Moreschi ^Deletion! 20:23, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

In light of this discussion, I have removed some more "purple prose" from some articles (mainly Haydn symphony articles) as it was unsourced and subjective. As I did so, I came to the realisation that one way to approach this problem is to replace the subjective statements with more objective statements from the score. For example, if the text says the theme is "turbulent", perhaps you can replace this with some concrete descriptions of the melody that show why it's turbulent: perhaps there is syncopation, or it is chromatic, or it is accompanied by tremolos, etc. These things are not POV nor original research, and they really tell the reader a lot more than "purple prose" does in a lot of cases. Heimstern Läufer 09:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Implementation

I'm diffidently trying to implement various items that emerge from the above discussion. Three things:

• Deleted the ultra-detailed article outline; no one disagreed with my comments given above in "Please, do not overspecify article form", and Antandrus agreed with them.
• Added paragraph banning subjective content except in cited quotations
• Added paragraph allowing observations from the score, but only straightforward ones.

Comments welcome. Opus33 20:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It's mostly looking quite good to me, and definitely a great step in the right direction. I made a little tweak in the wording and will continue to read it over and see if more should be done, but we're doing well thus far, I think. Heimstern Läufer 20:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, and about the removal of the article outline: I definitely agree that we shouldn't overprescribe article form. That said, I wonder if we might consider restoring some of that template, not as a required form for articles, but more just as a possible starting point? We would acknowledge, of course, that not all articles will fit the template well, but we could still say "these are some things to think about including and this is a possible form". The reason is that I do sometimes check that template to see if there are things I could add to an article to make it better. Heimstern Läufer 20:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I would be content with a template that was non-binding. Opus33 20:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, one-size-fits all makes little sense with something as individualized as classical music. I'll get around to restoring the template with the wording changed to say it's a possible way to organize articles later on. Heimstern Läufer 21:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject Film Music

I've made a proposal for a Wikiproject on film scores, if anyone here is interested: [[2]] _SUBWAYguy 22:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)