Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 27

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Early music of the British Isles

Early music is defined (by the article of the same name) as "European classical music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, sometimes also including the Baroque". However Early music of the British Isles extends until 1800. (The scope of the article includes Handel and opera etc.) Should the article be cut back? (BTW this article also has a problematic timeline, half occupied by political events and monarchs, see here and here.) --Kleinzach 02:17, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like that article was split off of Classical music of the United Kingdom. Looks like the dearth of British composers in the early to mid-Romantic was the motivation for the location of the split. Sound like it could just be split again at the 1660 mark. As for the political events and monarchs, its mainly the early stuff that fixates on that which I don't think is uncommon for art of these centuries. That plot is a bit excessive, though. Yes, its interesting who was ruling when certain composers wrote "consort" or "coronation" or royal fireworks music or whatever, but I don't see the events has having much musical influence and after 1603, the Scottish and English monarchs are all duplicates which creates a waste of space. Plus other than W&M, monarchs never rule at the same time so the Scot/English lines could be consolidated to one line each with alternating colors.DavidRF (talk) 02:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It was a split of the Classical music article and, as suggested above, the lack of composers was part of the motivation. The other problem was the name of the Classical Music article: Classical music of the United Kingdom. There clearly was no United Kingdom before 1707 and, arguably not before 1800/1. The article could be "cut back", but in order to continue to provide coverage of the topic this matterial needs to be accessible somewhere. It is worth pointing out that the Baroque is something of a border region in musical studies, sometimes in the early music camp, sometimes in the classical and so this view is not totally invalid. I suppose a solution would be to split the article taking the Baroque material to "Baroque Music of the British Isles", but that would make for quite a short article between two longer ones. A number of suggestions and some of the issues over the timeline have been made on the talk page of the article and this issue does not have an overall impact on other articles so should be dealt with there.--SabreBD (talk) 07:54, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

An article on the "Baroque Music of the British Isles" would be 1,300+ words which is viable. I favour this, but what do other people think? --Kleinzach 08:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Looking over that part of the article I think I can see how this could work and if the article has the suggested title of "Baroque music of the British Isles" and goes up to 1800 then I think it will be fine, otherwise it will be a bit short. It looks to me that the existing material could be "grown" in the future and is probably more likely to do so if it is treated seperately. Should it split at 1600 or 1660? The former is more common on a European basis, but as the existing article points out 1660 is more appropriate for the British Isles. It may be a good idea to have a short delay to see if editors (particularly those who contributed to the debate on the orignal split have comments), but I think a serious object is unlikely. I will undertake to do it in a few days if that is acceptable and post here for comments.--SabreBD (talk) 17:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the period, but were there any English representatives of what the Baroque music article calls the 'early baroque' (dated from 1600 to 1654)? If not, 1660 might be a good place to spilt. (I see English Baroque architecture starts in 1666.) --Kleinzach 00:35, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

This now done at Baroque music of the British Isles.--SabreBD (talk) 22:24, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Rename Category:Chopin Competition winners

Category:Chopin Competition winners should really be called Category:Winners of the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition. So proposed. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

More precision? That seems sensible. --Kleinzach 02:38, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Requested move/Eine kleine Nachtmusik

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

For your information — Serenade No. 13 (Mozart) → Eine kleine Nachtmusik — sent to WP:RM: see article's talk page. --Jubilee♫clipman 01:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was the original title and it was changed to match the "standard". I could go either way on this move. We do have a nav-template to clear this up, but Jubilee is correct in that the ordinal numbers are almost never used for the serenades. Anyhow, we should probably clarify *when* we should make exceptions to the ordinal-number standard. Page moves are messy and hard to undo. We've discussed naming before here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Classical_music/Archive_17. Cheers.--DavidRF (talk) 01:32, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

You might want to have a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Style guidelines... --Jubilee♫clipman 02:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I was looking for that. You might want to spell out what you mean by your "might want to have a look" tone. I'm not disagreeing with you on the move. I just don't think it should be done without a discussion about which pages warrant the exception because something like this might cause some confusion and trigger other page moves (which can be messy). And I don't think we can have a good discussion when half the website is on vacation. In my opinion, we can wait a week. Cheers.--DavidRF (talk) 08:15, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, you might want to sounded condescending or judgmental now I look again. All I meant was that that discussion is especially pertinent to what you just said concerning ordinal numbers. You have a good point about everyone being on holiday! --Jubilee♫clipman 14:52, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I find it preferable when pages are moved that policies or guidelines be cited (and quoted) and weighed and not preferences. Hyacinth (talk) 09:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Hyacinth! I may have confused you with this post: the RM itself is on the article's talk page. --Jubilee♫clipman 23:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done moved to Eine kleine Nachtmusik. --Jubilee♫clipman 22:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

List of eponymous musical terms

I've just discovered this article. Is it useful? No doubt it could be expanded to huge proportions, but that poses questions about how it could be organized and how it would be used. Any thoughts? --Kleinzach 03:06, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

To be honest, I hate the word eponymous as it just sounds pretentious. Furthermore, people don't fully understand what the term means: how are Jefferson Airplane self-named? Certainly Fleetwood Mac (= Mick Fleetwood + John M[a]cVie) could be there, though they are hardly a "musical term"... I can see the point of the other items though (eg Wagner Tuba named after Wagner etc) --Jubilee♫clipman 23:22, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

BTW, there is List of eponymous band names, List of eponymous albums and even a List of eponyms... We might need to limit the present article considerably to stop it spiralling out of control (ie not band names or albums, at the very least). --Jubilee♫clipman 23:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we could merge it with List of eponyms then? --Kleinzach 00:18, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

That would make sense, but it depends whether or not anyone feels that there should be a specific article about "musical eponyms". Perhaps move to List of musical eponyms, though, as a shorted term, or even List of eponyms (music); or would they actually further widen the article's catchment area...? --Jubilee♫clipman 00:27, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent. It's not really an encyclopedia article (no one would ever look it up if they were actually trying to learn about something), but it's perfectly fine as a parlor game. If our goal is to amuse our readers as well as inform them there seems to be no harm. It reminds me of all those old "X in popular culture" articles (which, it's worth noting, got ruthlessly deleted).

Maybe there's a WP policy on this?

If we do keep it as a source of amusement, we ought to keep it as a separate article. Opus33 (talk) 01:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I'd say that our goal is to inform rather than amuse. The latter is the province of Uncyclopedia and others... The only articles that are kept as humourous are those tagged with: {{humor}} or {{humourous}}. I'm not sure we can do that here... --Jubilee♫clipman 01:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

We can think of this in those terms (i.e. inform vs amuse), but we can also consider whether this effort belongs here or with the eponym specialists. IMO we have more important things to do. --Kleinzach 01:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I also might note that most of the items in the list are actually musical instruments rather than musical terms, per se. I suggest merger into List of eponyms (assuming these terms are not already there) and forgetting about it... --Jubilee♫clipman 23:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. I've put merge tags on it. --Kleinzach 23:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done Now merged. --Kleinzach 08:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Good. Thanks for that; I wonder if there are any more anomolies of this type? There are bound to be! --Jubilee♫clipman 22:36, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Italian loanwords

Loanword explains "A loanword . . . is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another." However Category:Italian loanwords contains a lot of technical musical terms that aren't exactly current on the streets of Newark, Peterborough, or Newark, New Jersey, words like Scordatura, Staccatissimo, or Tenuto. How can we distinguish between what is and what isn't an Italian loanword? Any ideas? --Kleinzach 07:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a single musical term in that list (other than, perhaps, falsetto) is a loanword. --Ravpapa (talk) 07:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

What about bravura, diva, tempo? --Kleinzach 07:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The description of that category is: "This category contains words borrowed from Italian, and other Italian words that may be seen in English texts." which would include those technical musical terms. Attempting to separate words of Italian origin into those which are recognised by the man on the Clapham bus and those which are not must be fraught with original research point-of-view bias. I don't see how the presence of these terms in that category does any harm. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:06, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

IMO category descriptions don'r carry much weight because no-one ever checks them. Regarding the original research question, loanwords would presumably be defined by being in an English dictionary. --Kleinzach 12:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Why do we have this category at all? This type of thing should be in the wiktionary. In fact, it already is: [1]. I like etymology more than most, but there's entirely different sets of debates involving those which really should be left for the linguists in the wiktionary. Vandalism is a French loanword because of an East Germanic Tribe that sacked Rome? We can't be adding categories for every word or surname that does not date back to Anglo-Saxon. Over half of the encyclopedia would be categorized as a loanword that way.DavidRF (talk) 14:48, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point actually: when does a loanword stop being a loanword and start being a simple word? Exit comes directly from Latin, is it thus a Latin loanword? Similarly, all of these musical terms have been used by English speaking musicians for centuries, surely they are now part of the language? A cappella, for example, is used even by that gentleman from Clapham for unaccompanied choral singing; maestro and diva have all sorts of connotations to the man in the street; and cantata, opera, soprano etc are terms that have been used in English for centuries. Oddly, crescendo is missing ("he whipped the crowd up to a crescendo..."), but even that is simply a (usually misused) technical term that has been with us for centuries. Almost all these terms are English terms now, IMHO (perhaps leaving a capella out). I would say that influenza is also an English word now. There is already a List of English words of Italian origin into which most of those words should fit nicely. --Jubilee♫clipman 15:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Addendum (!) - Many of the words that were discussed at the CfD seem to have been deleted: eg piano and ocarina. Maybe most of the other musical terms should be deleted too? --Jubilee♫clipman 16:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Moreover - as DavidRF has implied, almost every word in English is a loan word... Definition loanword noun /ˈləʊn.wɜːd/US pronunciation symbol/ˈloʊn.wɝːd/ n [C] a word taken from one language and used in another (Definition of loanword noun from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary). The loanword article actually cites music as a loanword even though it has been changed orthographically from the French musique. In that sense, dog is a loanword...! Where do we stop with this?! --Jubilee♫clipman 17:11, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Crescendo redirects to Dynamics (music). So it won't show up in a category like this. (you could force a cat on the redirect, but that's not usually done. There's a subtle distinction between loanword and the foreign words that are usually left italicized when written in English which I think gets lost on creation of these lists. a priori is a Latin phrase that's kept its Latin flavor, but a word like "column" is just an English word that came from Latin a long time ago. I just found a transwiki directive for copying information like this into the wiktionary at Template:Copy to Wiktionary. Maybe we could ask the folks over there what is expected from the rest of WP on this issue. My feeling is that we should let the linguists sort it out and just stick to music here.DavidRF (talk) 17:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Good point about crescendo: I hadn't checked that. I've asked over at Etymology. You're probably right: we should leave it to them. --Jubilee♫clipman 17:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

No sure where we have arrived with this, however I've changed the category description to "This category contains loanwords from Italian that are now part of the English language." This links to the loanword article. I hope that's OK with everyone. --Kleinzach 23:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

We are waiting for the linguists to arrive! Your change makes sense, though. --Jubilee♫clipman 00:19, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Opus numbers in article titles/Key signatures in titles

JackofOz has raised questions about opus numbers and key signatures in article titles, see here. Opinions would be welcome on this. (I've been wondering myself what system we are following.) --Kleinzach 02:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a bit off topic, but would it be a good idea to add the something like the following to Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Style guidelines#Opus numbers vs. catalog numbers:

Work titles which include opus numbers should preferably use the abbreviation "Op. " (with capital "O" and a space between the period and the number, and be set off by commas). For example: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, by Beethoven.

Or maybe it's better not to use an abbreviation, but to use "Opus" for accessibility reasons: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Opus 111, by Beethoven (like in the lead to the article Piano Sonata No. 32 (Beethoven)

It's different yet again in the lead to Piano Sonata No. 1 (Beethoven): Beethoven's Piano Sonata in F minor, op. 2, no. 1, was written in 1795....

And Piano Sonata No. 17 (Beethoven) has: The Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Opus 31 No. 2, was composed....

Do we need to standardize on one format? If so, what should it be? --Robert.Allen (talk) 07:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the abbreviation "Op." causes significant accessibility problems. It ends in a period/full stop, which causes a pause in the text when it's spoken by a speech synthesizer, but speech synthesizer users should be used to that because abbreviations that end in periods/full stops are ubiquitous on the Internet and in real life. I don't care either way whether "Op." or "Opus" are used in article titles. Graham87 08:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

'Op.' is about as standard as it gets, showing FAR FAR more use than the full word 'Opus'. We've had this discussion before, and IIRC it was agreed that the first option -- Op. set off by a comma with a space after (say 'Danse Macabre, Op. 40')-- was the way to do it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:18, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Totally agree. I've corrected both the Beethoven examples. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

There's more than just those two. Of the 32 different sonatas, there's almost 32 different ways of stating the number, key and opus.  :-) I did the first 10, but have to run. I'll clean up more later.DavidRF (talk) 22:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I proposed some text to add to a specific guideline (see above). Would it be OK to add it? --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

DavidRF - What about the Variations and the Symphonies? And all the other sonatas etc by everyone else...?

Robert.Allen - That's a good start, at least.

Everyone - We obviously need to standardise all of this some how. Every other encyclopedia sets these things out in a formal and standard manner in both titles and text. --Jubilee♫clipman 23:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Everyone seems to agree on this, so I went ahead and added a guideline here. Obviously, feel free to change the wording or revert, if it is not appropriate. --Robert.Allen (talk) 23:34, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I added a shortcut so you can type an edit summary like "Per WP:OPUS". (Not sure if this is totally kosher, but it sure makes it easier.) --Robert.Allen (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

This seems to overlap with the other long discussion here but no doubt we can sort this out. --Kleinzach 01:39, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Jack of Oz appears to be monitoring both, so maybe he can be our co-ordinator. --Robert.Allen (talk) 03:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to add another example to WP:OPUS:

String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 33 No. 2, "The Joke" by Haydn

And add some text, such as, "The opus number should follow any key designation but precede a nickname." But I'm not sure about the comma usage. And do we need to specify this? What do people favor? --Robert.Allen (talk) 18:14, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, this is a mini-minefield all by itself. Does the nickname appear:

• in italics - The Joke
• in quotes - "The Joke"
• in brackets with either of the above - String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 33, No. 2 ("The Joke") by Haydn
• before or after the opus number - String Quartet in E-flat major The Joke, Op. 33, No. 2, by Haydn

There are 8 possibilities there already. In many cases, works are known by their epithets: the Eroica Symphony, the Appassionata Sonata, the Minute Waltz, and so on. How do these appear, italics or quotes, and does it apply just to the epithet or the whole title (Eroica Symphony)?

Also, is it (a) Op. 33 No. 2 as you have it, or (b) Op. 33, No. 2 or (c) Op. 33/2? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 18:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Then there is, for instance Overture "The Hebrides", Op. 26 ("Fingal's Cave") by Mendelssohn. Clearly a lot of different formats are used. Typically nicknames are in quotes though, not italics. --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

My personal preference is the nickname after the name, in single quotes (though I believe double is more correct), but before the Op. #. I've seen it all different ways and I don't think there's any real standard there. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I have a strong preference for single quotes, even if this goes against usual practice in WP. --Kleinzach 23:16, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The Manual of Style has this:

If a word or phrase appears in an article in single quotes, such as 'abcd', Wikipedia's search facility will find that word or phrase only if the search string is also within single quotes. This difficulty does not arise for double quotes, and this is one of the reasons the latter are recommended.

--Robert.Allen (talk) 23:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Mmm. The imposition of American style? The whole point of using both single and double quotes is to distinguish between special usage (nicknames, irony etc) and genuine (he said whatever) quotations. End of token rant. --Kleinzach 00:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting, and I guess I did not quite realize that. I always thought it was primarily when you had something quoted that was already within quotation marks, e.g., "The President said 'Forthwith today will be a holiday in my name' or something like that." But in any case this seems to be because of a limitation in the Wiki searching software. (Not imposition of American style? But the programmers are probably American.) --Robert.Allen (talk) 02:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we're influenced by the recordings we own. I checked 9 different recordings (5 were DG, 2 Philips, 1 Decca, and 1 Musical Heritage). All of them put the nickname after the opus number. All used double quotation marks, except the Decca used single. (Musical Heritage also italicized it! MOS says that is baaad!) --Robert.Allen (talk) 02:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Most computer languages favor double-quotes. Most of languages of the past 30 years have a "C-like" syntax. I suppose Dennis Ritchie was American, but I hadn't thought of UK/US bias here. Interesting.  :-)DavidRF (talk) 02:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Regarding opus numbers/keys/nicknames etc: Does anyone have the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians or for that matter the Chicago Manual of Style (though the latter may not go into detail)? (I only have the Grove Opera and New Hart Rules (a British equivalent to Chicago). The latter defers to Grove as "a comprehensive source for the correct titles of musical works and appropriate styling". It's worth noting that the well-proven Opera Project guidelines are solidly based on Grove. --Kleinzach 03:18, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been looking thru New Grove 2, but haven't found anything useful. We already have this for the Beethoven Sonatas: Template:Beethoven piano sonatas; and this for the Haydn String Quartets: List of string quartets by Joseph Haydn. One lists the nickname after the opus number, the other before (plus other differences). Maybe we should just ignore the issue. --Robert.Allen (talk) 00:20, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Ignore the issue of what to call articles about works with generic names! Surely you don't mean that! Regarding List of string quartets by Joseph Haydn this uses ♭, ♯ and ♮ signs which apparently can't be used in article titles or headings. --Kleinzach 01:31, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I like the Template:Music accidentals. I'd rather use those than argue over "B flat" versus B-flat". (The hyphen seems to have won that battle which I'm not thrilled with but its not worth arguing over). It is a limitation that they shouldn't be used in article titles and section headers. (Oddly, they *are* used in all the "note" articles referenced by Category:Musical notes but those articles titles don't render in IE for me. Those should be changed.DavidRF (talk) 02:01, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I too was slack-jawed with stupefaction at Robert's suggestion of "just ignoring" the issue. What are rule-makers to do if we can't make up rules? Have a heart, Robert. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 07:28, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, that category page (Category:Musical notes) renders fine here with IE8. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:25, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm a firefox user, so this isn't an issue for me personally. I've tested IE again. At work, the untemplated ♭ and ♯symbols render fine in IE8, but at home, they render as blank character squares. Not sure what triggers the rendering. Some sort of font thing. The "music" template wraps the unicode character with the appropriate font-settings so that it always renders regardless of the settings on the users machine... which settings I'm not sure.  :-) My knowledge is pretty spotty on this and an HTML/Unicode expert could probably clarify more.DavidRF (talk) 13:46, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Some of these articles seem to be mixing sharps and hashes, see B♯ (musical note). --Kleinzach 14:37, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

OK. "♯" vs. "♯ vs. "sharp" vs. "-sharp" is a reasonable difference in preference that could be discussed, but "#" is a definite no-no. Same with "b" for flat's. I'll clean those up ASAP.DavidRF (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I haven't been watching this discussion for a while due to other duties, which gives me fresh eyes, perhaps! Regarding quotemarks: the AmEng usage simply reverses the BrEng usage so that in Br we have He said, "John said 'Hello, and as Sally says "Welcome"'", while in Am we have He said, 'John said "Hello, and as Sally says 'Welcome'"'. Note the potential clash with the wiki markup, however: if I want to highlight an example with italics (as above) I might be forced to use BrEng: Hello' said John, 'and welcome will render in bold so I either have to use Nowiki ('Hello' said John, 'and welcome' or use Br punctuation ("Hello" said John, "and welcome").

Sharp/flat signs cannot be used at all in titles AFAIK, so we have to write in B-flat. The Music template is essential for proper rendering: the problem has nothing to do with which browser you use, nor even which OS you use, it is to do with which character sets you have installed. {{music}} simply trancludes the signs without worring about which character set every single Wiki user has installed. Note that not only are sharp, flat and natural included but also double-flat and double-sharp and half-flat and half-sharp ({{music|halfflat}} = and {{music|halfsharp}} = ). Other signs are available too, eg the note-values (eg {{music|minim}} = ) and clefs (eg {{music|gclef}} = ) as well as two important chord symbols ({{music|dim}} = ^o and {{music|dimslash}} = ^ø) and scale-numbers ({{music|scale|1}} = ).

Obviously, we cannot ignore these essential stylistic issues and need to bash out the basics using Grove et al as well as noting the potential problems of following the norms (eg Wiki-markup clashes, search terms etc). I hope my thoughts help. --Jubilee♫clipman 01:00, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW, B♯ (musical note) as a title has multiple issues: some users won't see the unicode sharp sign; WP:MUSTARD explicitly precludes the use of any form of sharp/flat/natural in titles; the dab appears to be superfluous unless there is another B♯ that could be meant (though I can see the need for consistancy given that A, for example, already discusses the letter so we need to specify A (musical note) for the note). Just a thought! --Jubilee♫clipman 02:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I notice that Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles) has a fair amount to say about italics vs quotation marks. In particular, the following should be in italics according to that article:

• Cantatas and motets
• Musical albums
• Musicals
• Operas, operettas, oratorios
• Orchestral works

It goes on to say: "Italics are generally used only for titles of longer works. Titles of shorter works should be enclosed in double quotation marks..." How do we distinguish long and short, and what about the distinction between generic name, unique name and nickname? --Jubilee♫clipman 18:35, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Found the answer to the italics vs quotes problem: the music MOS explains it all very nicely (though nicknames actually have 5 possible solutions). However, there is a clash with the info in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles).

According to the latter (apparently) we should write

• Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, Eroica

However, according to the Music MOS we should write:

• Beethoven's Symphony No.3, Eroica

I think might we need to clarify these general MOSs before worrying about project based ones. --Jubilee♫clipman 22:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to see the process we have started succeed. I don't think that will happen if we open multiple discussions in different places. IMO the most appropriate place for this is the CM Style guidelines talk page. Present participants are all knowledgeable and there is a considerably goodwill here. If we have a clear process of (1) drafting, (2) proposing and (3) agreeing well-written and unambiguous guidelines, then we will have good rules than can later be ported up to MUSTARD and the MOS (wherein lie evil dragons etc) without too much bureaucratic resistance. --Kleinzach 02:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)