Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 34

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Portal:Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

I'm creating the portal: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The portal is located in User:« CA »/Sandbox. Suggeriment, please :) « CA » ^Talk 15:17, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Claudio, great idea. You might want to look at Portal:Opera (one of Wikipedia's Featured Portals) for ideas on sections and guidance on the wording used for the section titles and links. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 15:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you could change the header? This sort of typography would be fine on a website selling lingerie, but it doesn't really seem right for Mozart. Also, we already have a navbox at the bottom of many of the Mozart articles--do we really need both, or could we remove the navbox and link to the portal? Both of them have the unfortunate side effect of reducing the usefulness of the What Links Here button.

Lastly, I really hope you won't take this on unless you've done a certain amount of reading on your own (like, a couple biographies) about Mozart. That would help you in deciding which topics in Mozart biography are central and which are peripheral. Sincerely, Opus33 (talk) 16:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Uhm no, the Edwardian Script ITC is the best for Portal...! « CA » ^Talk 17:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by « CA » (talk • contribs)

The script used might be best for those who still associate Mozart with Salzburger Mozart Küglen and roccoco galanterie, and do not take his music seriously, but it looks inappropriate for an encyclopaedia. Best of luck. --Francesco Malipiero (talk) 17:53, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Hold on

After a little investigation, I find that « CA » aka User:Claudio Asaro has also registered accounts on the English Wikipedia as User:Windask and User:Dr Claudio plus the automatically registered accounts from other language Wikipedias User:Komorosky and User:Kaiodviskok. He has been indefinitely blocked from the Italian Wikipedia for repeated vandalism and sockpuppetry to evade blocks. [1]. On this talk page he asks the help of another user to post a picture of him on Commons because the admins on Italian Wikipedia don't believe his claim that he is 10 years old. I think it's a waste of time giving further advice on this proposed portal. Voceditenore (talk) 19:04, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I have vandalized en.wiki? I have created the new life in en.wiki, why in it.wiki went to evil. (The socks were created for vengeance for the blocked indefinitely) Yes, I have eleven years old. « CA » ^Talk 11:13, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• This topic can be archived. The above user and all his socks have now been blocked indefinitely on the English Wikipedia too. Voceditenore (talk) 07:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Cat for new table

A new table on the (differing) numbering of movements in the St Matthew Passion, Matthew Passion/NBA BWV table (not by me), needs a category, I don't know enough in that area, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:34, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Dates for the Classical Music period

The article Classical period (music) gives 1750 to 1820 as the dates for the Classical period. This seems sensible enough, though Oxford actually has 1750-1830.

Unfortunately someone(s) has been changing the start date on other articles to 1730. What do other people think about this? I've raised the issue here. --Kleinzach 03:58, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

The Template:History of European art music has said 1730 dating back a few years. There certainly are grey areas for these boundaries and there's no universal agreement for these. 1750 makes sense for a boundary between the two eras because that's the year that Bach died, but Handel and Telemann were still active after that and galante music (what was to become the classical era) was being developed in the 1730s and 1740s (see Daniel Heartz's books). It depends on whether you want to allow the eras to overlap or whether you want a boundary.DavidRF (talk) 05:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

To my understanding it is difficult to mark a certain year (whichever), because Bach certainly wrote Baroque until the end of his life in 1750, as some composers still write Romantic even today. It depends much more on the individual composer than on chronology. Plus there are transitions in style even in one composer. Do we have one piece that stands out as a "first piece in classical style" and a year for that, to give a reason for a date? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:00, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

The article says that 1730-1760 represents "The phase between the Baroque and the rise of the Classical . . . . sometimes called Galant, Rococo, or pre-Classical, or at other times early Classical." That implies that it is a distinct period in itself. (The section is completely unreferenced so that's another problem.) Half the section 1760-1775 deals with the 1750s, so the 1760 date there is also problematic. I'm going to make some edits to try to rationalize the text. Please feel free to clarify anything that looks unclear and inconsistent. --Kleinzach 08:49, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Contemporary music

Given the ongoing decline of Wikipedia (not to mention the infobox-related shenanigans suffered by the music projects at the beginning of this year), a lot of music projects are unsurprisingly inactive. CM's daughter project Contemporary music is one example of this. I've suggested that it should be made into a task force here (see here). Making it into a task force will preserve discussions etc in a more accessible location and perhaps protect them from deletion. --Kleinzach 03:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've had no responses to my suggestion so I will be implementing the move. --Kleinzach 06:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done --Kleinzach 08:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Infobox shenanigans is directly proportional to how active Andy Mabbett is feeling. I haven't dared to open a Pandora's box by touching the hCard microformat Andy has put into a handful of the classical composition navboxes. Also I note you tagged the compositions task force as semi-inactive. I'll go ahead and remove that. We are still active, about as much as the WP:CM. It's just the volume of traffic here is no longer excessive and its better if we keep discussions one central talk page rather than the task force talk page. Centy – reply • contribs – 05:18, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It's fine to remove the 'semi-active' banner - that's how it is supposed to work. I hope this leads to a genuine revival of the collaboration. Many music projects are completely inactive now, so we've been trying to clear them out, marking them as {{semi-active}}, {{inactive}}, {[historical}} or deleting them via mfd. --Kleinzach 09:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It looks like it's already been moved over here. But it's OK because clicking on the link in the {{Contemporary music}} talk page banner will still take you to the CCM project page and talk page. One thing has to be fixed though, if the new home is to stay, the following 4 sub-pages must be moved too as they are now producing red links on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Contemporary music task force:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Scope
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Work in progress
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Articles with issues
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Unreferenced BLPs

– Voceditenore (talk) 07:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done. I hope these are the last of the pages. (Quite a lot of work.) I'll fix the project banners presently. --Kleinzach 09:39, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Just a note about the Unreferenced BLPs page - the way the bot works, you needed to also change the destination of where the bot writes the list to - which I have now done. However, it will now only detect articles that have been marked as "contemporary=yes" in the {{WikiProject Classical music}} template, and not ones still marked with {{WikiProject Contemporary music}}.The-Pope (talk) 06:47, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Throughout 2010, the WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (UBLPs) has been working to reduce the number of unreferenced BLP articles, primarily by enabling WikiProjects to easily identify UBLP articles in their project's scope. There were over 52,000 unreferenced BLPs in January 2010 and this has been reduced to about 15,000 as of Dec 30. A bot is run daily to compile a list of all articles that are in both Category:All unreferenced BLPs and have been tagged by a WikiProject. Note that the bot does NOT place unreferenced tags or assign articles to projects - this has been done by others previously - it just compiles a list.

Your Project's list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Unreferenced BLPs. As of Dec 30 you have approximately 195 articles to be referenced, only 27% down from the highest value, 266 in June (the full list has almost halved in that time). The list of all other WikiProject UBLPs can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects, and all music related project lists can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/UBLPs by music and Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Unreferenced BLPs.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at WT:URBLP or at my talk page. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 06:32, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

AFD of Louise Bertin

Notable but amateur composer, friend of Victor Hugo, up for deletion here. There's a decent article in the New Grove we can use for one source; I've already added a reflist. Antandrus (talk) 15:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

AFD's been withdrawn. Happy new year fellow CM members. Antandrus (talk) 15:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Listing off all performances

From everything I've seen, unless performance is very rare (on the order of under maybe five), we don't list every performance. At Trombone Concerto (Shilkret), there was a large list of performances, not apparently referenced, which I removed, but was reverted with the edit summary "undid possible vandalism of material referenced by legally binding contracts." I can't be in the wrong here, can I? There's no inline references for these, and it doesn't seem to fit out normal guidelines anyway. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:12, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that table looks a bit excessive. Separate rows for each night of a concert series, too. It looks incomplete as well. No rows between 1945 and 2003... so it could possible grow very large as the author does more research. If this was a discography table, we'd split it out as a child article. I don't know about a "list of performances" child article, though. It would seem highly likely that someone would nominate it for deletion.DavidRF (talk) 16:58, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

More than a little excessive, I would say. One presumes that the "legally binding contracts" are not between Wikipedia and the Estate of Nathaniel Shilkret to publish such a list, but rather simply refers to the note about "music hire agreements". Niel Shell, as the executor of the Shilkret Estate, is in a position to access such agreements, but does not seem to understand that they do not constitute a reliable source if they are unpublished. Still, if such a list is acceptable in the case of the Shilkret Trombone Concerto, then certainly similar lists should be compiled for all musical works. I think I'll start with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or maybe the Pachelbel Canon?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:18, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Good luck. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 19:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've already got a list for the Beethoven longer than the one for the Shilkret concerto, and I'm only up to 1811 ;-) Seriously, it would take much less time to compile a list for the Helicopter String Quartet.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:51, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, obviously, but such a list would have no merit. A listing, on the other hand, of the 35,000 or however many performances of Beethoven's 5th there have ever been - now, that would qualify for a pat on the back and a hearty "well done", followed by immediate trashing (probably followed by you cutting your throat. Hmm, perhaps better not go down that road after all ...)  :) -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Fortunately, I'm way too squeamish for that but your estimate is probably way low. Supposing that Beethoven's Fifth has been performed on average only once daily since its premiere in 1808, the number must be closer to 74,000—74,001 if you include the "asa gohan" version: http://www.flixxy.com/beethoven-fifth-symphony-breakfast.htm.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

It is common for wikipedia articles on musical compositions to list their usages. The frequency of usage and the stature of the artists, motion pictures and other users of the work provide documentation of the importance of the composition. For an example, in 1931 in music (the year chosen at random from a period with which I am somewhat familiar), the links to many of the songs listed, e.g., Dream a Little Dream of Me, Heartaches, and I Don't Know Why give fairly extensive lists of recordings (with no references). These are not isolated examples.

For the Concerto for Trombone, the most extensive modern usage is in concerts, where it has been performed by noted soloists and concert orchestras worldwide, and the list of performances thus provides useful documentation of the importance of the composition and belongs in the article. My stated source is, indeed, music hire contracts. Again using the 1931 in music article for comparison, I followed the link to Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D to find the premiere performance was listed with no reference.

The table is complete. From the article, one finds that there were no performances between 1945 and 2003, a fact that was publicized on radio and in newspapers before the 2003 performance. The three 1931 songs listed two paragraphs above all have listings in excess of forty recordings, so that a listing of about sixty performances is not out of line with what appears in wikipedia articles, and a comparison with a song having thousands of performances seems unfair. Furthermore, the utility of having such a list depends on how well known the composition is. If for example I were trying to make a case to the general public that Thomas Edison was a great inventor, I would feel much less necessity for a detailed explanation of the importance of his inventions than if I were trying to make a similar case for Edwin Armstrong, the radio pioneering inventor of the superheterodyne and the FM method radio transmission.

There is a difference between "reliable reference" and "accessible reference." For example, the unpublished Victor log sheets in the Victor archives is the ultimate source, that which is used by every careful researcher, for most Victor recordings. It is verifiable, but (though this is now changing) only by looking at the Victor sheets. Disallowing any information for which the Victor logs is the source would radically change wikipedia's popular music project in a bad way. If, in the end, referencing becomes the only issue, I will work at improving this. In some case the performing organizations may have programs in their archives or some pre-concert publicity. Neither of these is, in my opinion, more reliable than the hire contract, but where available would be more accessible.

Also, if ten lines of space is a problem, I can list all performances of an organization on one line. Niel Shell (talk) 21:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

As a reader, I would prefer details about three to five important performances with links, - the complete table in small print is hard to read and takes too much of my time. I suggest that the author places it as an external link for the few specialists for whom the details are of additional value. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

First of all, "usage" of musical compositions depends on a number of factors. Popular songs are not measured in the same way that classical chamber music is, for example. If they were, almost no popular song would measure up to the standard of any moderately successful string quartet, which depends in large measure on the number of different high-profile ensembles who take it into their repertoire—or the name of one towering figure who championed the work (e.g., Vladimir Horowitz in the case of Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata), either by performing it in numerous concerts or by enthusiastic recommendation. A popular song, by contrast, is measured usually by the number of "units" (that is, recordings) sold by a single important performer (that was less true in 1931 than it is today, of course). Second, in the world at large it is certainly true that "reliable reference" and "accessible reference" are two different things. On Wikipedia, however, there is a specific definition of a reliable source that links the two things: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources". Unpublished archives do not, as such, fall under this definition—though naturally they may be mentioned if they are documented in a published article or book. Either way, it is not normal in Wikipedia articles on so-called "classical music" to compile long lists of performances (by all means prove me wrong by pointing me to other articles on symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas, etc. that contain such lists). If the notability of a work depends on such statistical information, reference to a source where the data may be verified should be sufficient.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I realized after writing my response that I should not have addressed "reliable resource" in the normal language usage sense, but my response was posted while others were still responding (I got an edit conflict message), and I was hoping to express my views before being tried in absentia by ridicule. I didn't go back and correct my edit later, since it was clear that the list was not going to be reinstated. Niel Shell (talk) 21:05, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

St Matthew Passion, choir size

Contributors added to the St Matthew Passion discussion about the size of the choir in Bach's time. I would like to place that at a more general spot because it is not specific for the work. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:12, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Or perhaps link to Joshua Rifkin. Opus33 (talk) 19:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Not quite what I mean. I think the general arguments concerning the choir size should be somewhere else rather in than in a specific work's article. Rifkin is one of different views. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not an expert so I can't contribute, but I'd like to see an article about performing forces that Bach had at his disposal in general, and choirs in particular. The St Matthew Passion is an interesting case because it seems Bach was deliberately trying to transcend previous works. One dimension was the use of a large performance space, spatial effects, and a larger than usual number of performers. If such a separate article was created, we could refer to it in appropriate places like the St Matthew Passion ("Choir size: see main article") Woz2 (talk) 14:36, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Classical work articles listing every usage and influence

Yes, sorry, this is almost bound to be an FAQ but I haven't found it yet, so please feel free to point me at it. My Q, whether FA or not, is "does this Project have a policy or guideline on lists of 'this influenced that' or 'this was used in that' in classical works?" I hate seeing these add-absolutely-anything-possible lists in main articles as I feel they are mostly pointless and unmaintainable - like trying to mention every even vaguely notable person with any connection with Muswell Hill or whatever, it's hopeless. My guess is that these things, if not just deleted, are best dealt with as separate lists, or maybe could become some kind of category, an area of woeful ignorance for me, I'm afraid. If you want to see the example I'm thinking of right now please see Pines of Rome and Talk:Pines of Rome#Uses in film and elsewhere... - admittedly this isn't (yet) in a horrendous state but I do think it's a good example of one with the potential to become a rather silly list in a while. What do you think, and what (if anything) does policy say? Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 08:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Classical_music/Style_guidelines#Uses_in_popular_culture Here's the guideline. Centy – reply • contribs – 11:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That's great, thank you very much. And what would you do with the current content of this sort at Pines of Rome? Just zap it, or try to preserve it in a sub-article (which I fear would be immediately AfD'd) or what? Would it involve the loss of worthwhile content, into which some effort had been put, to just delete it? I see that it already has the Fantasia 2000 category but I am not sure that categories could be the way to go for this - would you have a "Pines of Rome" category or do it the other way round and have (probably stupid and trivial) cats for "every piece of music played at this football game" and "every piece of music that inspired this composer..." and so on? - that way, I fear, would madness lie. I'd be very interested in others' thoughts on this. Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Pines of Rome reads like transcribed liner notes with a dollop of trivia. I'd trash the IPC section. Eusebeus (talk) 17:59, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Editors at Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven) have found a creative way to add pop culture references... footnotes. What do people think of that? I guess it removes the clutter from the prose of the article but the footnotes section now looks like a trivia list and that appears to encourage additions.DavidRF (talk) 20:28, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I have always felt that material important enough to be kept should find a place in the main text. Shunting it off to a footnote is tacit acknowledgment that it is not significant, and should be deleted. I think that is effectively what you are saying, as well.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I was just marveling and how this happened. Long, ever-expanding lists of trivia are removed. Anon's complain on the talk page that the article doesn't contain pop culture references. The reason that these turn into long, ever-expanding lists of trivia is explained to them. Someone thinks that a reasonable compromise is to just mention that its popular and widely used. Someone else then adds a fact tag to that statement. Then someone provides and example, which is reverted, someone else moves the example to a footnote. Someone adds another example as a footnote. Now, with seven footnotes added in the past couple of months the footnotes themselves have turned into the ever-expanding list of trivia that we've been trying to avoid.DavidRF (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It is clearly the case that a small but significant number of editors like trivia. In fact, I would guess that a good-sized fraction of these are incapable of dealing with anything else, and feel excluded when such reasonable arguments are presented. Every so often, a surprising fact may emerge in this way, but it is a bit like hoping for a single particular snowflake in a blizzard. Fortunately, we do have the twin snowplows of editorial consensus and Wikipedia guidelines to wield.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

One person's trivia is another person's passion. In a non-wikipedia setting (a conference) a respected worker in non-archimedean analysis arrogently stated that all research except in his sub-area, accounting for perhaps twenty per cent of the total, was trivia. The portion of the subject he called trivia extends to a few hundred refereed published articles by quite a few different authors in quite a few journals over a period of more than sixty years. Evidently his opinion was not universally shared. I would urge being conservative with editorial chopping, especially in cases of material of moderate length in a separate section that a disinterested reader can simply skip over. If an editor just FEARS a list might become long, why not wait until the fear is realized before chopping due to length? Niel Shell (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Trivia farms have been a problem here for years. We've hashed this debate again and again. I usually do let it slide if its not a common work and its usage in one particular film is somehow iconic but in this particular instance (Beethoven-7) the number of references had grown from two to seven in about a month... and it was beginning to accelerate. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the trivia was farmed off into separate "XXXX in popular culture" articles, but every time one of those articles gets created, they end get up being deleted by editors from outside WP:CM.DavidRF (talk) 03:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

A remark by Jerome Kohl, made above in the section on the listing of performances, enlightened me enormously. He explained the different quality of fame of classical music as opposed to (most) popular music: the fame and success of popular music is largely determined by units sold/played of a single performance; for classical music, the yardstick is the number of performances by by different artists. I feel that this difference in the quality of fame somehow makes many people who appreciate a certain work more determined to mention its occurrence in pieces of popular culture.

I find myself in two minds about the appropriateness of such lists. Sometimes, they may indeed contain surprising nuggets, but mostly they are (largely) unsourced and trivial. I usually tell editors who contribute to such lists that a better place for it is in the article on the film, album, etc. Take the Beethoven 7th: instead of adding a list of 74,000 performances to its article, mentioning the symphony in the articles where it is used seems much more sensible to me. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)