Talk:Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm

Baron von Chofendorph?
Someone stamped this article as identical to the Baron von Chofendorph article. I don't know anything about German literature, but I put a redirect from the Chofendorph to here, assuming that it was the same person. I noticed that this article was named closer to the one on the German wikipedia.

In the future, editors, feel bold to make these kind of decisions or to discuss them on the talk page rather than putting some banner on the article itself! Worst case scenario, someone reverts your change. Portia1780 (talk) 19:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

birthdate
The article lists his birthdate as September 25, 1723, but the Persondata lists it as 26 December 1723. Which one is correct? I see that this was changed by 84.27.102.187 on February 6. Nick Number (talk) 19:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

off topic?
Who told you these articles are off topic? In each of them Grimm or the Correspondance is mentioned. Marie-Madeleine Guimard, Caffarelli (castrato), Antoine de Léris, Antonio Sacchini, Alexis Piron, Zoroastre, Daphnis et Alcimadure, La fée Urgèle, Conservati fedele, Arvire et Évélina, Henri-Lambert de Thibouville, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, Ceci n'est pas un conte, Marc-Antoine-Nicolas de Croismare.Taksen (talk) 18:24, 10 April 2014 (UTC) Who are you anyway? Taksen (talk) 18:25, 10 April 2014 (UTC) I forgot to mention two more: Marie-Charlotte Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon and Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes. Taksen (talk) 19:25, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I know that Grimm is mentioned in these articles, but plonking them into an existing sentence that deals with a specific issue makes them off-topic for that sentence. Here's the comparison before and after :
 * {| class=wikitable


 * For several years Grimm reported on the painters and paintings in the Salon de Paris, and was succeeded by Diderot; the architects Jacques-Germain Soufflot, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the case Jean Calas, the zoologist Buffon, Leonard Euler, the problems between Rousseau and David Hume, Condorcet and the Montgolfier brothers.
 * For several years Grimm reported on the painters and paintings in the Salon de Paris, and was succeeded by Diderot; the architects Jacques-Germain Soufflot, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the case Jean Calas, the zoologist Buffon, Leonard Euler, the problems between Rousseau and David Hume, Condorcet and the Montgolfier brothers.
 * }
 * If you think Grimm's connection to these articles needs to be mentioned and explained, some effort beyond just dropping them into the middle of an existing sentence is required; and before you ask, merely listing them in a future "See also" section won't do, either. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:29, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I dont like your changes. First of all the lay-out became bad, so I changed it again. Secondly the article was recently read by only a hand full of people. They must be experts; a pupil from high school does not arrive here. The names I gave were almost completely unknown for me. Grimm was quoted in these articles many times and I was surprised to find out people made an effort! Now all the information is gone, just because you are impatient or had never heard of them, am I right? The sentence you compared came both from me: I added a lot here within two days, the article grew with almost one third and I added a lot of references, after I added to the article in the German Wikipedia for two weeks and found out who he really was. That article was full of mistakes, copied and not studied very deeply. Are you a German originally than you could check yourself and help instead of deleting. Creativity is no longer appreciated, but the methods seems to have become decisive in all the Wikipedias. I can tell you Grimm believed in creativity and not in method. The links to many unknown operas and people was interesting. It tells more about the content of the Correspondance. Most of it is in French and some translated. It is quite surprising to find out what he actually wrote. Me and other people cannot take notice or add to those articles. You limit people in my opinion in broadening their view and knowledge. We don't want to die stupid, a saying promoted by the Encyclopédists!Taksen (talk) 08:33, 11 April 2014 (UTC). I am punished because I was tired after two days of hard working.Taksen (talk) 09:28, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with Michael's changes, which are in line with Wikipedia policy. See WP:INDISCRIMINATE: "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information." In the course of his career, Grimm probably reviewed most of the major operas performed at the Académie Royale de Musique. Other readers of Wikipedia are quite capable of using the "What links here" button too.--Folantin (talk) 08:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * "I dont like your changes." Seriously? Ever heard of WP:IDONTLIKEIT (which applies not only in deletion discussions). Your expansion to Grimm's article is welcome, but that particular edit above fails for several reasons, explained above. I can only repeat: if you think Grimm's connection to other Wikipedia articles deserves elaboration, it needs to be phrased more encyclopedical than dropping articles names somewhere without context. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

You did not delete f.e. the zoologist Buffon, Leonard Euler, and Montgolfier brothers, although they have no references, why is that? Is it just at random, or is it because you never heard of them, so they cannot be important? Taksen (talk) 17:29, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The original sentence made sense and was referenced with three source, which, assuming good faith, I took to be supporting the writing. Your later edit which is under discussion here robbed the sentence of all meaning and, given your edit summary ("details from Wikipedia"), is not supported by those sources. As I mentioned in my edit summary, writing that Grimm reported on, i.a., Mozart's aria Conservati fedele and some baroque operas in the same breath as mentioning his reporting on contemporary personalities, doesn't make any sense. If you think Grimm's connection to other Wikipedia articles deserves elaboration, it needs to be phrased more encyclopedical than dropping articles names somewhere without context. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:42, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Taksen, you seem to be going right off-grid on multiple articles (see WP:OR), and seem unable to discriminate between WP:FRINGE and encyclopaedic sources (WP:V & WP:RS). As per Michael Bednarek and Folantin, you don't seem to be able to focus on the topic WP:OFFTOPIC, plus keep introducing WP:TRIVIA. I've just had to trail and revert a number of your content changes to Rasputin, Alexander Blok, etc.

Sadly, I've understood that you are confusing the reversions and questioning of your entries, all based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, as being somehow punitive, elitist, and targeted at you personally. Your history demonstrates that you've been contributing here for a long, long time. I'd take that to mean that you are well acquainted with all facets of English Wikipedia... yet you continue to make fundamental mistakes surrounding article content. Your plethora of content additions to this article read as antithetical to WP:NOTEVERYTHING. On top of all of this, English is obviously not your native language therefore trying to take on the job of a copyeditor is making for a messy and incomprehensible article. Please try to take criticism on board as instructional rather than continue to take issue with other contributors. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:36, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Quotation of Grimm on Mozart's operatic future not really sourced
The note 25 reads " Notes from Mozart: The Concert Arias / Te Kanawa, Gruberova, et al." It refers to the text in the article saying "After hearing Conservati fedele and "Va, dal furor portata" (K. 21) written by the nine year-old Mozart, Baron Grimm predicted that "the boy would have an opera performed in an Italian theatre before he was twelve".[25]"

But this alleged source of Grimm's claimed prediction is not correct.

The note 25 is a link, which, in fact, refers to a CD review by a reviewer called "metalluk" on a Web page called Epinions (a horrible name). The CD box is the famous Decca collection of MOZART — The Concert Arias.

The quote is in metalluk's review of Mozart's second aria, "Conservati fedele" K 23, written in The Hague in Oct. 1765, by Mozart, aged 9. Metalluk says "After hearing this piece and the preceding one written by the nine year-old Mozart, Baron Grimm predicted that the boy would have an opera performed in an Italian theater before he was twelve! Grimm was almost right."

I have the booklet of the Decca CD box in front of me, and the Decca booklet does NOT mention this quote. This quote floats around in a lot of popular Mozart literature, but I doubt the authenticity of the wording, if it ever was pronounced. The accurate description of "before he was 12" seems to me to be highly suspicious.

Other versions of this Grimm comment drop the "Italian" specification and change the time into "within two years". Of course the prediction proved right, as early as the following year 1767, when Mozart, back in Salzburg, performed "Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots", which however was in German.

So, for the purpose of this Wikipedia article, the source of the quote is NOT the "Notes from Mozart: The Concert Arias", but the review of this CD box by Metalluk on Epinions.

In the event Metalluk ever reads my comment, I am asking him to answer us here by providing the effective source of his quotation, if he has one, and is not just repeating another floating quotation without any final attribution.

The final source must be a letter about Mozart by a well-informed person, or one of the early books written on Mozart's life.

It is not in the letters published by Emily Anderson.

Hermann Abert, in his encyclopedic work W.A. Mozart (1919, transl. 2007, ed. Cliff Eisen) does mention that, after leaving Holland, the Mozarts stayed in Paris with Grimm from May 10 to July 9, 1766, and that Grimm commented that the two children had "made remarkable progress" since their previous visit to Paris on their way to London. But in Abert's book, no mention of Grimm's comment on Mozart's two arias and his prediction for future operatic staging. Cliff Eisen, the 2007 editor of Abert's book, who usually adds in his footnotes any additional documentary material revealed since 1919, makes no mention either of this Grimm prediction.

If authentic, it could come from one late edition of Grimm's famous correspondence (Correspondance litteraire). Grimm did produce a full article on the Mozarts passage in summer 1766, and there is a passage devoted to Mozart's progress as a composer, and to Mozart's sister's progress as a player: "Mlle Mozart, now 13, who has grown very pretty, plays the keyboard in the best and most brilliant way imaginable; her brother alone can reduce her applause" (quoted by Arthur Hutchings, Mozart, 1976, who adds another prediction by Grimm, "which Leopold wished to come true — to his great irritation and disappointment it did not", but not the one on the operatic future,"Before long the princes of all Europe will be competing for possession of them.")

So, the best guess is that the Grimm quote, if authentic, should come from this Grimm article, because that is where it belongs. This calls for going back to the original article in Grimm's complete edition of his Correspondance litteraire for the period May - July 1766, and a bit later.

It is possible that this quote is mentioned in the 5-volume biography by French writers Wyzewa and Saint-Foix (1912-1946), not yet translated into English).

Until a reliable source is provided, Grimm's prediction must be presented under the form "it is said that..." --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 10:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 13:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * "It is said that ..." is very much frowned upon in Wikipedia articles. I suggest to remove that sentence. It would be nice if it could be replaced by a slightly more detailed description of Grimm's support and appreciation for Wolfgang and Nannerl; didn't he write a glowing piece in his Correspondance litteraire about them? If this section can't be sourced properly, then a corresponding paragraph in Conservati fedele should also be deleted; that's where I, assuming good faith on the part of metalluk (that those snippets were actually from the liner notes) introduced that material when I created that article and where an earlier editor, User:Taksen, it from. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

-- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I just added above the quotations offered by a real scholar of Mozart's work:

Grimm did produce a full article on the Mozarts passage in summer 1766, and there is a passage devoted to Mozart's progress as a composer, and to Mozart's sister's progress as a player: "Mlle Mozart, now 13, who has grown very pretty, plays the keyboard in the best and most brilliant way imaginable; her brother alone can reduce her applause" (quoted by Arthur Hutchings, Mozart, 1976, who adds another prediction by Grimm, "which Leopold wished to come true — to his great irritation and disappointment it did not", but not the one on the operatic future,"Before long the princes of all Europe will be competing for possession of them.")

So, the best guess is that the Grimm quote, if authentic, should come from this Grimm article, because that is where it belongs. This calls for going back to the original article in Grimm's complete edition of his Correspondance litteraire for the period May - July 1766, and a bit later.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 13:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Since Grimm's correspondance was in French, it was easily accessible to the French writers Wyzewa and Saint-Foix, and it is very possible that this quote would figure in their 5-vol. book on Mozart's biography (1912-1946) not yet translated into English. I read it all in French years ago, but can't of course remember the passage on Grimm. In those days I was more fascinated by the matter of Mozart's death.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 13:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Until proof of the contrary, I tend to assume that this Grimm quotation is a fabrication.

Grimm was a musical connoisseur, but as an amateur, not as a professional composer.

If this quote really was in his correspondance, it would have been quoted by all top experts on Mozart. Instead I have not been able to find it in any scholarly book I have on Mozart. And I have read it often repeated in various forms only in popular texts, and never with an exact attribution.

This prediction, so marvelously proved by the immediate future, is too beautiful to be true. Instead, look at the other prediction made by Grimm in the same article of the same period of summer 1766, which never was realized. No way to consider Grimm as an infallible oracle on the future of Mozart.

To get to the bottom of this muddy issue, I personally wrote to Cliff Eisen, who is an expert scholar on all Mozart documents, probably the leading one in the English-language world, for his final opinion. I sent him a copy of my argument. He is also the editor of the Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, and of Hermann Abert's book W.A. Mozart.

Usually real scholars don't like to get involved in Wikipedia issues, and rightly so, as they don't want to discuss matters with young inexperienced editors. But my request was for my own personal information, not for the sake of this article, which remains an essay by non-professionals.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 14:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Mozart and Grimm in 1763
Hello Mr. B., I am not an expert on Mozart, and Grimm is not an easy subject either. The idea is that other people, with knowledge on the subject, improve the article. (Some came here only to argue, express their knowledge of the rules or delete, a very popular occupation on Wikipedia.) The topic is very difficult for most Wikipedians, also for me. Besides there hardly visitors on this page.

This lemma was really limited when I started here almost half a year ago, and added information on an important man. I was surprised an expert came along to express his doubts on a certain phrase. This morning I deleted the the information on the arias and added a few new details. I hope you are more satisfied. In the next five years it could become more accurate. Taksen (talk) 10:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Taksen (talk) 11:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Grimm's prediction on July 15, 1766 about Mozart's future operatic success
The source of the Grimm prediction about Mozart's future operatic success located! Cliff Eisen, the supreme expert in Mozart documents, wrote me back with a scan of the document itself. It is the letter of 15 July 1766 in Grimm's Correspondance Littéraire. And a full copy of this letter is to be found in Otto Erich Deutsch, ''Mozart. A Documentary Biography'' (second edition: London, 1966), pp. 56-7. This book is posted online as a Google book, and, luckily for us, the two pages 56-57 are shown.

http://books.google.fr/books?id=e8AtwaddUW4C&q=15+July+1766#v=snippet&q=15%20July%201766&f=false

Grimm writes:

"He has even written several Italian arias, and I have little doubt that before he has reached the age of twelve, he will already have had an opera performed at some Italian theatre."

This whole letter by Grimm is a remarkable tribute to young Mozart's prodigious abilities. It rivals the famous testimony of 1770 that Daines Barrington sent to the Royal Society about his examination of Mozart in 1765 (which is online).

I was proved wrong to bet that the Grimm quotation was a fabrication. But I was right to insist that if it was to be found anywhere, it would be in Grimm's own letters of that 1766 summer. I have been trained as a researcher, and I was justified to have doubts. The prediction sounded too beautiful for the case, and it is a prediction that got realized! This is extremely rare in human affairs. Hence my doubts, my antennas were up, and set me off on my query. At least, this led to an identification of the real source.

In this case I am going to reintroduce the literal quote in the article and of course mention the source as being this fabulous letter.

Personally, only because I have been trained in scholarly research, I found it incredible to even think of writing a biographical article on Grimm, without having on one's desk a full set of Grimm's major opus, the Correspondance Littéraire. I would automatically start with a concise, but reliable bibliography, including of course this fundamental set of books.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 17:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Mozart and Grimm
Hello Mr. B. Your section became almost an essay. I don't really mind, because only people interested in Mozart probably visit this page. But, the topic should be Mozart and Grimm in my point of view and not Mozart in Paris. It is possible to start a new article Mozart's three visits to Paris, or make a link somehow on the Mozart page to this section. It has to look like this one

If you want your section read, then you could start a new article and add a link on the Mozart page, and Grimm hopefully will gain more attention. By the way. Mozart wrote he lived in a small room with a nice view, but did not mention it was in a "palace" with a private garden, chapel and theater, owned by the Duke of Orleans.Taksen (talk) 06:06, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I hope some music historian will add more on Grimm's part in operatic reform.Taksen (talk) 13:10, 28 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Taksen: What you have to appreciate is that everything that happened to Mozart in Paris and everything he did was effected under the patronage, guidance, and sponsorship of Grimm. Grimm was the person established in Paris, and Mozart could do nothing without Grimm's instigation, recommendation, approval, or critique. There is no Mozart in Paris, only a Mozart managed, controlled, and guided by Grimm. It makes no sense of speaking of Mozart in Paris as separate from Grimm. You do not realize the symbiotic relation between them both. Whenever Grimm wanted to rectify Mozart's plans, Grimm wrote to Leopold in Salzburg, and controlled Wolfgang through Leopold, whenever he felt he could or would not do it directly. Mozart could not have done one thing in Paris without Grimm's approval, sponsorship, and supervision. Mozart was Grimm's protégé, and the three visits of Mozart were the product of Grimm's desires, decisions, and actions. Mozart in Paris = Grimm's management of Mozart during his visits in Paris.--ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 21:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Bookaroo, I appreciate what you added. May be you could add a phrase "about everything that happened to Mozart in Paris and everything he did was effected under the patronage, guidance, and sponsorship of Grimm. Grimm was the person established in Paris, and Mozart could do nothing without Grimm's instigation, recommendation, approval, or critique" in the lead?Taksen (talk) 01:38, 29 August 2014 (UTC)