Talk:Wer da gläubet und getauft wird, BWV 37

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Application of a uniform template for Bach's Cantatas[edit]

I am going through the pages currently existing on Wiki for Bach's cantatas, after editing a Bach Cantata Pilgrimage section, and thought I'd make an effort to standardize their presentation inasmuch as possible.

Consequently, I've created a few sections: a general intro that contains the German title, alongside a literal translation to English, BWV number, and type of cantata (sacred vs. secular).
This section also contains the prescribed readings and the authorship of the texts, when known, as well as the authorship of the chorale theme.
The articles are completed with a scoring and structure section, followed by the complete German text, in three columns, and a list of complete recordings (as I can find online, obviously. I'm sure there are many more recordings).

I plan on applying this template to all articles (existing or to be created) on the cantatas. Any advice/recommendation would be greatly appreciated and surely taken into account. Campelli (talk) 15:56, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox[edit]

This infobox - as others on Bach's cantatas - should show to which degree the text is based on contemporary poetry / Bible / chorale. Poetry will (almost) always by listed, Bible and chorale only if they are present. Lack of chorale means: there is no chorale. In this cantata, that would be wrong, two of the six movements are chorales, in movement 3 Bach used an unusual setting for one of them. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:51, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Changes in citation style...[edit]

...I would consider WP:CITEVAR to apply in this instance, based on previous discussions on the policy page. Either way, it would be better to have the conversation here. Hchc2009 (talk) 14:42, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • A bit of history:
    • 2009/01/13 Article creation by Campelli, two standard references, the same for all his Bach cantata articles
    • 2010/03/04 Move by me, from then on the main contributor, inherited five references, four of them standard for all Bach cantatas, one specific to the article
    • 2013/05/04 format most references as cite templates and move to separate section, as in most articles on Bach cantatas, start of expansion more than 5* for DYK
    • 2013/05/09 Afernand74 formats the remaining refs as cite templates
    • 2014/05/25 I add one reference and move those templated by Afernand 74 to the separate section
    • Nikkimaria moves ALL references back in the body.
I fail to understand what that is good for (nothing was broken, there's no difference for the reader), what it has to do with CITEVAR, and why we have to return now to a state I left behind a year ago, while I only cared about a bit more consistency now. All my recognized Bach cantata articles have the references in a separate section. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:27, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Gerda, you asked for my thoughts on my talk page. The article, as 27 April 2013, seems to have consistently used long citations, with the text formatted in the relevant text paragraphs; there is no use of citations being named and placed in a separate section. In May 2013, a number of citations were then added in a separate section, creating an inconsistent model. The recent edit seems to have then altered the format of the remaining long, embedded citations, effectively altering/removing the previous citation style completely.
WP:CITEVAR is designed to prevent needless edit wars (such as this) over how citation styles should operate, and has been usually interpreted to include the way that the wiki-text functions as well as the visual effect it produces (which is why the removal or addition of templates requires prior discussion, for example). I think that Nikkimaria was within their rights to challenge it, although I think it's a shame that the discussion didn't make its way onto this talk page sooner.
My advice would be to just to start a new section with the proposal to establish the citation style in the format you're suggesting. Hchc2009 (talk) 16:02, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts: I don't know why you refer to the article of 27 April 2013 which had little content and references that are no longer needed, - the general ones went to Bach cantata. The article developed in May 2013 is practically a new article with new content and new references. Note that not even Nikkimaria askes to change back the reference style to the one before. All we talk about is reference placement. I prefer them separate, she doesn't. That seems to be all. Why was it changed, why now, for whom, these questions are open. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:25, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The style with citations at the end dates back to at least the end of 2013, the changes to put them inline only occurred this month; clearly the CITEVAR of having them toward the end has been around for quite some time and is the somewhat more stable version. I see no link to anything in WP:MOS that says the inline version is preferred, and usually deference is given to the person making the most edits, we all have individual working styles, and this method does have the benefit of not having citations get "lost" if someone moves around material later. Absent some policy that says we CAN'T do them this way, why go in and change them around so that the person doing most of the work on the article also has to do a CITEVAR that she prefers not to use? (Full disclosure: I usually write with inline cites, personally, but that's solely because I'm lazy; I have a found that when collaborating with several other people, particularly when there are books and video citation where page numbers of timestamps are needed, the end-of-article format does work better and I have used it with success on at least two FAs and a GA. Montanabw(talk) 17:58, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, in 2013 the citations were inline, Gerda added some non-inline creating an inconsistent style, but inline citations persisted until 24 May 2014. A mixed version was stable, so in a move to consistency the original style is preferred pending consensus to change it - under CITEVAR, deference is given to the original style, no matter who edits the most. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:07, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Gerda was the original and main contributor on this article. It might have been respectful to notify and discuss with her of your desire to make changes. You are edit warring with multiple editors who are asking you to discuss this rather than continue to revet to your preferred changes. I'd say this is an implied consensus unless you can get agreement here to the contrary. Please discuss and get agreement.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:08, 26 May 2014 (UTC))[reply]
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Gerda was not the original contributor. Gerda attempted to change the existing inline citations to LDR, and I objected per CITEVAR; we did discuss the issue on my talk page, but she declined to raise the issue on article talk as required by CITEVAR, which calls for actual consensus based on reasoning rather than "implied consensus" based on who knows what. So if you want to discuss let's discuss, but until you get actual consensus for LDR, inline citations should be restored per CITEVAR. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:17, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) In 2013 the references were collected together in the References section. On 27 April 2013, the article was stubby with a mixture of reference styles; on 4-5 May 2013 Gerda then made 25 edits completing a considerable re-write which included upgrading the references and she doubled the size of the article. The references were at that point in the References section and stayed there for a year until Nikki decided that she wanted some of them mixed into the text - a clear downgrade of the referencing.
Decluttering the text, converting to a consistent cite template and keeping the refs together in the obvious place are improvements to any article and CITEVAR - which is only concerned with changes to style - is being used as a red herring for Nikki's confusion over the style of references and their placement. @Hchc2009: You're mistaken; the article has only had a consistent citation style since May 2013 - the version you refer to was little more than half the size it became a week later and had a mixture of bare urls and hand-crafted references with no clear style: you can find colons, commas and periods used as separators in that version of the article. It is not a good idea to try to use that as a "model" and you really ought to look again at what you are suggesting as "... consistently used long citations":
  1. bach-cantatas
  2. Christoph Wolff (Eds.): Die Welt der Bach-Kantaten, Metzler/Bärenreiter, Stuttgart und Kassel, 3 Bände Sonderausgabe 2006 ISBN 3-476-02127-0
  3. C. S. Terry and D. Litti, Bach's Cantata Libretti, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 1917 44(1):71-125; doi:10.1093/jrma/44.1.71
  4. R. Wustmann and W. Neumann. Johann Sebastian Bach. Sämtliche Kantatentexte. Unter Mitbenutzung von Rudolf Wustmanns - Ausgabe der Bachschen Kantatentexte herausgegeben von Werner Neumann. Leipzig: VEB Breitkopf & Härtel. 1956. xxiv, 634 p.; 1967, xxiv, 643 p.
  5. Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder, aus den Quellen geschöpft und mitgeteilt von Johannes Zahn (6 volumes), Verlag Bertelsmann, Gütersloh (1889–93). [further edited by the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Edition des deutschen Kirchenlieds. Hildesheim, New York: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1998. 6 volumes. ISBN 3-487-09319-7]
  6. C. Sanford Terry: "A Note on the Tune, 'Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern'", The Musical Times, Vol. 58, No. 893 (Jul. 1, 1917), pp. 302-303.
Compare that with the current version - based almost entirely on Gerda's May 2013 re-write - which is consistent in style, easy to maintain and has wiki-text that is uncluttered with huge references in the middle of article text. Surely you can recognise that an improvement has been made here? --RexxS (talk) 19:19, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This version of the article from immediately before Gerda's changes of 24 May 2014 show a mixture of inline and LDR refs. On 24 May Gerda moved to make all references LDR, and I objected. Hchc2009 is correct that CITEVAR applies to this conversion, per consensus at WT:CITE. Had Gerda started this conversation here after the initial objection, making actual arguments based on the merits of inline vs LDR, as CITEVAR suggests, she might have been able to achieve consensus for the change by this point. Instead, she and others opted to continue trying to impose LDR without any kind of consensus here. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:30, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That version from January 2014 had LDRs in it - just as it had since May 2013. Any editor may add references either as LDRs or within the text - so what? It just takes a small clean-up at some point to regularise all of the citations to LDRs. List-defined references are clearly an improvement over the system of scattering citations throughout the text, so why do you insist on edit-warring to remove those that had been there for over a year? I expect you'll be opposing named references next on the grounds that the article started out without them? It's just as logical after all. --RexxS (talk) 21:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nikki. Gerda's edits on this article not this issue preceeded yours by a long shot. Her contributions are extensive. You know she was here. I'm saying that if you wanted to make changes you might have discussed it with her.

When three editors are disagreeing with you that is an implied consensus. It means you don't have carte blanche to keep reverting them but rather that you might consider that you are in a situation where what you want should be discussed (Littleolive oil (talk) 19:27, 26 May 2014 (UTC))[reply]

Olive. Consensus is based on arguments, not who can conjure up the most supporters. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:30, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nikkin every editor who reverted you provided legitimate discussion points. That means, discuss this. Even as there is discussion here, you are still reverting. I seldom jump into these discussion between you and Gerda but when I do, I do it because I have real concerns about what is going on, not because I am mindlessly reverting. Please consider Rexx's points above.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:37, 26 May 2014 (UTC))[reply]
On this one, Nikki, I see nothing in CITEVAR that justifies your actions. Your logic fails to be convincing; it seems to be nothing more than IDONTLIKEIT. There are four people here telling you that you are wrong on this one, and I most sincerely suggest you drop this particular stick. The initial changes were made in May 2013, without objection. I further saw that in January 2014 the refs were still at the end and stayed there until you changed them this month without discussion or consensus. Some days I really have no clue that you think you are doing other than to try and discourage productive editors. Montanabw(talk) 21:57, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You might be more convinced if you read the edit history more carefully: some refs were at the end in January because Gerda chose not to follow the existing inline referencing; she then moved the inline refs to LDR this week without discussion or consensus, and I objected per CITEVAR. Had Gerda simply posted here with her reasoning before trying to change the style, that would have been a much better discussion. As it stands, only Rex has presented here any rationale to support LDR, and any chance of discussing those points and reaching consensus on the issue is getting lost in the attacks and arguing over who is or is not right, not to mention your edit-warring to restore a "stable version" that was neither stable nor supported by CITEVAR. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:09, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong; I can trace refs at the end to May 2013, it's just that they clearly have been at the end of the article far more and more extensively than otherwise. I basically agree with RexxS and have no need to repeat his arguments. Nothing in CITEVAR grants you authorization to do what you are doing, which is to duck consensus. Montanabw(talk) 17:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I understand the issue here in the format of the citations, but Gerda has been working on all the Bach cantatas for a number of years now, expanding them significantly, and trying to put them into a consistent format. Neither she nor anyone else, either preceding or following behind her edits, "owns" the articles. But her attempt to format the entire series so that it is consistent from one to the next is certainly useful and very worthwhile. When she makes changes of any kind to any one article, these are always subject to reversion, of course, but I'm not understanding if the contention is that she must first ask permission on the talkpage for each one, when it may have been in a format inconsistent with the rest of the series for some arbitrary length of time. The cantatas together form a largely coherent grouping - as is evidenced by their BWV numbering and by their internal structure and intended use, with some few exceptions. It is much more useful to an interested reader for the entire series of cantatas to be treated in Wikipedia as a coherent series with as much uniformity in presentation as the individual pieces may allow. But granted, I may be misunderstanding the issue in contention. I do know that Gerda's very hard and dedicated work on improving articles in general, especially Bach, and the cantatas in particular, has been uniformly praised by very many Wikipedia editors; and I have never before seen any criticism of her efforts. Milkunderwood (talk) 10:29, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

👍 Like Montanabw(talk) 17:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifications: I was busy elsewhere, couldn't deal with the topic, and can't yet, as stated below. However I want to to clarify that I did NOT work on all the cantatas. Praise should go also to Dr. Blofeld who surprised me by creating stubs on all those missing, and to Nikkimaria who not only expanded several of those stubs, but made some useful splits where there are alternatives, such as BWV 120 - BWV 120a. Yes, I try to apply my quality standards to those for which I feel responsible (which includes to have the references where the heading is, - I personally find it frustrating to find only "reflist" when I want to edit a reference, and then having to search in the article ...), but I don't interfer with the others. I believe that I am not in conflict with the spirit of CITEVAR, - let's discuss that later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:31, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Text of article[edit]

I've made two very minor edits to the text, removing an unnecessary comma, and restoring a missing word "it".

This is the first cantata article of Gerda's that I've tried reading, and I have a few questions:

What does this mean?: "The cantata was appreciated already in the 19th century." Aside from its rather clumsy English, I suppose a music scholar would recognize that J. S. Bach was largely ignored as being old-fashioned, from about the time of his death or even before, until he was "rediscovered" around the mid-19th C by Mendelssohn and others - to whatever extent this cliche may be true. Presumably it means that of the entire Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, Cantata No. 37 was one of the works that did achieve some degree of popularity around that time. But I suspect that a general reader, even one interested in the cantatas, will be thoroughly puzzled by the sentence.

In the preceding paragraph, the relationship between the text by an unknown poet and Bach's musical setting is not at all clear to me. Is it reasonable to assume that a number of religious texts had been written some time earlier, either as unaccompanied devotionals or perhaps with an intention of being set to music, and that Bach may have perused printed collections to chose specific ones that would suit his purpose? Maybe I'm just confused because the cited Gardiner PDF talks about Bach's "librettist".

There appears to be a problem in the infobox, where it says "Chorale Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern by Johann Kolrose". But there are two chorales, not just this one. Finally I realized that this seems to be a misattribution anyway, conflating Kolrose's hymn with that of Philipp Nicolai, according to the article. Next, I'm confused by the term hymn, which implies a musical setting. Did Kolrose and/or Nicolai write music of any kind, which Bach either expanded upon or rewrote in its entirety, or did they write only the poems in a form that could be called a "hymn"?

That same paragraph discusses the structure of the cantata, as being divided into two parts, I and II. But there's no mention of these two parts in the following section, Scoring and structure, leaving it up to the reader to decipher the division apparently occurring between movements 3 and 4.

I'm sure that Gardiner's description as "a corporate statement ..." will cause some headscratching. Perhaps the quote could start with the word "statement" instead. You really don't want to get into explaining his use of "corporate".

"In movement 3 Bach treats the chorale to the older form of a chorale concerto, a form that Johann Hermann Schein had used." In this sentence the word "to" doesn't really work there; would either "in" or "as" be preferable? And then J. H. Schein suddenly pops up. What is the context (without making your reader click to go look him up and read about his use of a chorale concerto, and when)?

I apologize if it sounds like I'm being too picky here. I'm very much a "general reader" who likes and is interested in Bach, but with no musical background whatever. And, Gerda, I fully understand that your attention has been diverted from this article by what strikes me as an extraordinarily silly argument. Noli te bastardi carborundum. Milkunderwood (talk) 09:22, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]


  • Milkunderwood, my thinking on your comments is that, following Gerda's replies that may clarify the nuance she intended, I see no problem with looking at the source material yourself and seeing if there are ways to make assorted minor phrasing edits to make things flow better; I think that so long as you don't exceed what the source material will support, Gerda will most likely welcome friendly eyes who have a sincere interest in helping improve the article. That said, things like your comment about Schein may be an example of why we DO have wikilinks and it is important to not over-do the explanatory stuff to the point that the flow of the narrative is diverted. Montanabw(talk) 21:15, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I understand that when anyone sees what looks like problems in an article, you're supposed to jump in and help out with edits. I did that with what I felt competent to do. If you click on Schein, the WP article doesn't mention chorale concertos, and I have no idea what the context might be from the original source used here. My point is that any article ought to be relatively self-explanatory to an interested reader. This means that you can't just throw in tidbits from original sources without also providing some explanatory context. The Schein comment is a perfect example of this - if the explanation would be too long, complicated, or off-topic, then it would be better to simply take that reference out. About who wrote which chorale, I have no way of knowing whether the text or the infobox is correct; I don't have access to these original sources, and wouldn't be able to read them even if I did. I'm sure my questions about whether Bach's poetic source material may also have included any music are hopelessly naive, but I myself have no idea of the answer. I'm familiar with the story that Mendelssohn "discovered" Bach and performed some of his works for the first time since his death, but I've also read that this is a vast oversimplification of the status of Bach's music throughout that period of time.
I assume Gerda is not yet finished with her edits to this article, and I was hoping to give her suggestions for improvement. Or anyone else who might feel inclined, and who is more knowledgeable about cantatas, Bach, or music in general than I am. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:13, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to sit tight as well; the other debate above sort of shortstopped her substantive editing of this article, I am sure. Such silliness is distracting vfrom actual article editing. Montanabw(talk) 22:28, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was on an unplanned trip with no internet - which is kind of a blessing - and I don't typically "work" on a feast day such as Ascension, but now the cantata was written for the feast, and content questions deserve a prompt answer. (I will deal with the reference question later, perhaps much later, - it doesn't change the slightest bit for our readers and can wait. I think it requires a centralized discussion of CITEVAR, and I encourage everybody to assume good faith.)

Chorale in infobox[edit]

The following is general for the infobox template {{infobox Bach composition}}, but I think this page has more watchers at present, - we can move it to the template talk later. Chorale in the infobox, that reads misleading, I agree. It is short for a long entry, and I would like to find an acceptable way to shorten that better. The long information is (not even including the first line of the stanza and the year of publication):

Stanza 5 of "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" by Philipp Nicolai as movement 3
Stanza 4 of "Ich dank dir, lieber Herre" by Johann Kolrose as movement 6

Infobox information should be concise but not misleading, as the present rendition of {{plainlist}}:

Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern
by Johann Kolrose

The reason is obvious: for one of the two chorales we have an article, for the other, not even an article for the author. We need to show somehow that these are two entries. One possibility would be some kind of a bullet, but I have not seen such a thing in an infobox. Another would be the separator created by {{hlist}}:

Wie schön leuchtet der
Morgenstern · by Johann
Kolrose

Another short distinction would be to add the number of the movement, long or shortened:

Wie schön leuchtet der
Morgenstern (movement 3)
by Johann Kolrose (movt. 6)
Wie schön leuchtet der
Morgenstern (3)
by Johann Kolrose (6)

Ideas welcome! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:01, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:26, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

19th century[edit]

General questions, such as the lack of appreciation of Bach's music until Mendelssohn and others "revived" selected works, including this one, and the relationship of Bach and his librettists, are not repeated in every cantata but should be covered by the general Bach cantata. Please see if you miss it there, and if yes, improve, being bold! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:21, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that regardless of whether something is fully discussed and explained in a different WP article such as Bach cantata, you never want to make a reader go to any different articles to understand what is being said cryptically in this present article that is being composed and edited; every article must be at least relatively self-explanatory. This reminds me of User:Ravpapa's wonderfully ironic comment, Remember, the reader is the enemy. Milkunderwood (talk) 20:51, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
He is right, of course, but then we would have to include most of Bach cantata into most Bach cantatas, and explain in every of Haydn's more than 100 symphonies what a symphony is, - no, there are limits. I followed the source which found it worthwhile to mention in one sentence that this particular work was revived early, while the whole context is explained in an introduction of 72 pages. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:00, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't looked at any of these, but I hope the situation isn't quite as dire as you suggest. Or if so, then I think it will be better to just remove this interesting but unnecessary reference, since otherwise it's confusing. In any case, this one sentence structure ("The cantata was appreciated already in the 19th century.") is awkward in English, sounding written by a German speaker (unlike most of your excellently rendered English). Milkunderwood (talk) 21:16, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In other words, it will always be preferable to leave out little factoids if they are not self-explanatory, because you never want to make the reader wonder what the hell does this mean? If this cantata was popular and recognized as being of special importance in the mid-19th C, and thus worthy of mention rather than being a random factoid, then you should say so clearly. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:40, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two parts[edit]

The structural division is given in this case by the middle chorale and the content, not - as in other cantatas and the St John Passion and St Matthew Passion - by Bach actually writing Pars II. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:24, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've edited - looks OK now? Milkunderwood (talk) 21:25, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Schein[edit]

I changed the wording. Schein doesn't "pop up", he is mentioned (in the source) as an example for those familiar with him. There's a link for those who are simply curious, and an explanation of the way it works is supplied in the following sentence. In case I feel inclined to make this article a GA, I will expand, otherwise I trust in the magic of links. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:34, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that my changes to Schein, which I interpreted from his WP entry, could be considered OR. Milkunderwood (talk) 20:29, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

corporate statement[edit]

The term is part of the quote, meaningful, I thought, - perhaps my understanding of the "phrase" is (too) limited. I like Gardiner's writing and use every chance to point to the original ;) - I am aware that I didn't answer all your questions but have real life requests now. Thanks for thorough reading and good questions. The Latin phrase was introduced to me in 2011, in sad context, and I remembered it recently, reading (by an editor leaving): "Maybe Wikipedia will again one day respect those that know, write and cite as much as it loves the minutiae of its rules." --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:48, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gardiner's use of "corporate" is not wrong - it can (very obscurely) mean United or combined into one body; collective [1]; but I'm convinced it is very confusing in that context. Milkunderwood (talk) 20:22, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If you find it confusing, drop it, rephrase it, be bold ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:03, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I did, q.v. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:05, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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