Talk:Genesis Suite

Recent Edits
The 21:16:22 January 2010 edit by Jerome Kohl is a reversion of a previous edit. I am the author of that previous edit. My edit was made to correct factual errors and provide additional information to the version I corrected. The most important of these errors is that the previous edition perpetuates a statement from the NAXOS album liner notes: "It was thought that only Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's movements were extant, the master score having been burnt in the fire that destroyed Shilkret's home in the 1960s." Although it may be true that someone may have had THOUGHT there were no extant scores, scores of all movements, prepared by Shilkret, do exist; and concealing this information is harmful to potential future performance of the work. The claim that the suite was performed in public only twice is also incorrect, and I provided a source of verifiable documentation that this is incorrect: news clips and letters from the conductor, Janssen, of performances in Salt Lake City and Portland.

As to the comment by the editor of the current version that the reversion was made because of "mangled resequencing of narrative that rendered much of the article unintelligible," I invite all readers to look at my edit in the article history and decide for themselves if it is understandable. Before revising the Genesis Suite article again, I invite a response to my comments from user Jerome Kohl and any other interested parties. 74.65.243.109 (talk) 17:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell, grandson and archivist of Nathaniel Shilkret


 * It would have helped had you indicated some of this in an edit summary. As it happens, there was none. The problems with the edit were too many and too sweeping to be dealt with piecemeal, so I was forced to revert the whole thing. A few examples should suffice. The first paragraph in your revision began with a dismissive-sounding "Shilkret conceived of the Genesis project…", without identifying this mysterious "Shilkret" person. Even once his first name is given, there is no indication what his credentials might have been for initiating such a project. Second, you added a lengthy quotation from "a personal letter dated 26 November 1945", without indicating a source where this material could be verified. Citing unpublished correspondence on Wikipedia does not satisfy the verifiability and reliable source criteria. Third, although I appreciate that you take issue with claims made in the Naxos album liner notes, deleting the claim rather than keeping it but refuting it with better data looks suspicious. Your superior information is of course welcome, but more thought needs to be put into the way it is presented. I would be happy to assist you with a careful edit of this article, if you would like to carry this out via discussion on this talk page.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! Thank you! If you are willing to have a dialog here, perhaps my comments staying at no indent, yours at one indent and proposed text by either of us at two indents would make for easy reading. I am a relatively inexperienced wikipedia contributor (but author of about 30 refereed journal articles and four books), and this is the first time I have been able to contact a knowledgeable wikipedia person.

As to your comments, first, my failure to identify myself in the edit description box was an error. Having failed to be able to make the references come out alpahabetically as a I wanted, I had fits reordering the footnone markings so that they were listed in ascending order, due to the intricate markup language. I must have scrapped the whole thing and started over, forgetting to reinsert "additions and corrections as grandson and archivist of Nathaniel Shilkret." Second, omission of the double bracket to link to the Shilkret article is an embarassing oversight on my part. I went through the entire article thinking about what would be appropriate to link, and I missed Shilkret. Thank you for the correction. Third, I had considered adding a copy of the handwritten letter as media to the article, but, most importantly, I don't know how, and, also, I know Shilkret's handwriting, but someone turning to the media for verification probably would not. I think that a first hand explanation of the motivation and evaluation of the result of the creator of a product is useful information, but I am willing to omit quotation of the letter if you suggest this. On the subject of verifiability, I added a reference to the unpublished autobiography of Werner Janssen. I am fortunate enough to have gotten a copy from his son several years ago, and I know enough about Janssen to be reasonable convinced that the autobiography is genuine, but I can not give absolute proof of its authenticity. I believe it would be a shame not use this chance not only to reference Janssen's input, but to make the world more aware of the fact that the document exists.

Finally, I do not wish to delete from the article that the liner notes indicated that those producing the CD said that the original scores were lost, and my reverted edit did mention the liner note statement. However, it is important to me that the statement be put in proper perspective: Namely, that "the producers said they thought this," not "it was thought that," incorrectly suggesting that this is the best available knowledge. Also, the statement should not be in the introductory paragraph, since their incorrect belief is not part of the most basic information about the suite. Furthermore, I want the statement to say that "they said," not "they believed," since I am not completely convinced that the Milken Archive, the producers, were convinced that the scores were lost. About the time that the new recording was made, they contacted my mother (then owner of the Shilkret archives) and asked about copyright information and later about images and information for the liner notes. They never asked if she had scores, or at least I have no copies of such a request, and my mother never mentioned it to me, even though I was the one researching the answers.

I suggest that the outline for the edit be as described in the contents for my reverted edit. Below is my suggested revision for the opening paragraph, which now tells Shilkret's role in the work and links to the Shilkret article. I would be happy to include some information in this article about who Shilkret is, but I believe the link is sufficient. Thank you for your offer to help. I await your response before continuing.


 * Genesis Suite is a 1945 work for narrator, orchestra, and chorus. A musical interpretation of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, the suite was a collaborative work by seven composers located in or relocated to Los Angeles writing film music. The project was conceived of by Nathaniel Shilkret, who wrote one of the seven pieces and invited the remaining composers to submit contributions as work-for-hire. Two giants of western twentieth century music, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky wrote, respectively, the first and last parts. The Biblical text used in the spoken word narrative is the American King James Version. It was intended to be a crossover from art music to popular music. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.65.243.109 (talk) 74.65.243.109 (talk) 20:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)Niel Shell


 * For an experienced author, writing for Wikipedia can be a frustrating business at first. The main thing to keep in mind is that you are always an anonymous editor. In the present case, this means your proposal to have "additions and corrections as grandson and archivist of Nathaniel Shilkret" is, unfortunately, out of the question. The problem is that some imposter could come along tomorrow claiming to be the real archivist of the Shilkret legacy, and there is absolutely no way of proving who is whom. This is why reliable third-party sources must be provided.
 * Regarding the unpublished letter, it is a trivial (though not necessarily uncomplicated) matter to have it scanned and uplinked to Wikimedia Commons, where you can add the appropriate Free Licensing information. From there, the image can be linked to the article. I think it is possible to provide authentication of the document at the same time, but I have no experience of this. I would think that, if this letter were displayed in the article, it would be sufficient demonstration for documentation purposes (that is, in the absence of a published source), though perhaps this is a question to take to the village pump. Unpublished archival materials are extremely difficult to verify according to Wikipedia standards, and this would be especially problematic for a large manuscript such as the Werner Jannsen autobiography to which you refer. I am aware of three Wikipedia articles that attempted to appeal to such sources. In each case other Wikipedia editors (including myself in two of the cases) were able to help find suitable published documentation to cover the relevant material. You may care to look at footnotes 85–93 in the article on John Serry, Sr., to see a possible solution to one particular kind of problem of this sort (I cannot claim to have come up with this myself).
 * The proposed revision to the opening looks fine to me, though I might suggest some small changes to the text you left untouched. In particular, Stravinsky, Milhaud, and, especially, Schoenberg were not engaged in composing film music as far as I know (though Stravinsky had made some attempts to do so). I also wonder whether the claim of intention to be a crossover work is supported in the main text of the article, or if it can be amended so to do. I also see no reason why the reader should not be assisted by adding "composer and music-businessman" (or something similar) before the name of Nathaniel Shilkret, though of course the inter-wiki link will take the reader to that information, should he need it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Again, thank you very much for the generous amount of time you devoted to responding to me. I will be happy to comply with your request to remain anonymous. I note that as a wikipedia user, I would very much appreciate an editor who identified himself (or herself) and why their knowledge was special. The edit summary is like a brief preface. It says what the author has (or at least says he has) in mind. On other websites I have traced and contacted people who have made what I considered questionable statements and satisfied myself as to their correctness.

I will comply with a specific directive to omit mention of Janssen's unpublished autobiography. However, including the listing makes a researcher reading the article at least aware that such a thing may exist and allows him to track this down for himself, but one can not trace what one is not aware exists. I also note that someone determined to include a fraudulant reference can make it much more difficult for a wiki-editor to spot: For an entry listed "Janssen, Autobiography, Sparks Publishing, 1988," listed among several correct references, would an editor check to see if there really was a Sparks publisher, and, if so, did they really publish the stated manuscript? One last thought is that if two people claimed to be, for example, Janssen's son, I believe I could eventually trace the son and, indeed, determine who the imposter was.

I propose to leave the Janssen document in my edit. If you ask me to remove it again, I will do so without further discussion.

When I read the version of Genesis Suite that I edited, I also thought that perhaps not all of the authors were connected with Hollywood, but I do not claim expertice on them except insofar as their connections with Shilkret. When I edit an article with one set of statements I question but do not have the time to research and a second set of statements that I am reasonably convinced that I know the corrections for, I change only the second set. My reaction at the time of my reverted edit was to leave this part for someone more knowledgeable. However, your comment reminded that in the published Shilkret book (p 205) he says, "There was a chance to hire Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Prokofiev in Hollywood, but they never scored a picture for one reason or another." A footnote of mine notes that Prokofiev scored Lieutenant Kije in Russia. I will rely on Shilkret and change the statement. Thank you for another improvement to the article.

The only statement that I am aware of that says what Shilkret's intent was when he wrote Genesis is the letter to his wife that I quoted. Certainly I am not aware of all sources of information on Shilkret, but have traced all I can for over ten years now, so I would be (happy to have an additional reference but) a little surprised if you found such.

As to adding media to the article, I have scanned the three letters that I used as the basis for my section on the background. If you are interested, I could email copies to you for your perusal if you send me an email at nielshell@aol.com from the address you wish them sent. I see that images in media list from whom permission to use the images is obtained. I am the owner of the letters, so that permission would list me. I would think that this would be something in the way of documentation. There is another discussion from the original edit that I can not verify, but have no reason to question: I do not know exactly what parts of the bible are quoted or if the King James version is the only one used.

If you could direct me towards information on the procedure for uploading to wikipedia, that would be helpful.

The changed sentences in the introduction are listed below. The listed durations for the Angel album tracks 4,5 and 7 are incorrect, but I could not find the "wikitable" to correct it. Except for this I would leave the table as it is.


 * Genesis Suite is a 1945 work for narrator, orchestra, and chorus. A musical interpretation of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, the suite was a collaborative work by seven composers, some of whom wrote film music in Hollywood. The project was conceived of by Nathaniel Shilkret, a noted conductor and composer of music for recording, radio and film. Shilkret wrote one of the seven pieces and invited the remaining composers to submit contributions as work-for-hire.74.72.37.65 (talk) 00:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell


 * First, let me correct a misconception I inadvertently caused: It is not necessary for you to remain anonymous on Wikipedia. In fact, you are encouraged to register as an editor, and at that point you may decide whether to use an alias (as most editors do) or your own name (as I do). I only meant to say that editors are not allowed to sign articles, or even parts of them.
 * A second misunderstanding seems also to have arisen. You speak of an "edit summary" as if you believe it is the lead (or lede) paragraph of an article. On Wikipedia, and edit summary is the brief note you leave in the edit summary window that appears just below the edit window. As the legend on it says, this is where you "briefly describe the changes you have made". For example, I have entered "Correct some misconceptions, etc." as my edit summary for this message.
 * Regarding your hypothetical case of a bogus source, I cannot answer for other editors, but I check sources frequently, and have only rarely discovered spurious ones. One thing that draws my attention to a source entry is incompleteness. In your hypothetical example, I would notice the lack of a place of publication, and ISBN. When an ISBN is supplied, that is the quickest way to find any other missing information, and would also instantly discover a fraudulent entry.
 * For uploading and licensing images, editor R. Baley has a very clear and useful guide at User:R. Baley/Acquire a free image. Since you are the owner of the documents in question, there should be no difficulty with licensing.
 * You are of course absolutely right not to meddle with statements that you cannot be sure are incorrect. (FWIW, Prokofiev wrote several film scores beside Lt Kijé, but since he isn't one of the composers involved here, this isn't important to this discussion.)
 * The wikitable with the timings you wish to correct is simply embedded in the article, immediately following the heading "The Suite". When you are in edit mode, it displays as
 * {| class="wikitable"
 * ! Movement
 * ! Title
 * ! Composer
 * ! Bible text
 * and so on. You can learn more about WikiTable syntax at Help:Table.
 * I like the new version of the lede paragraph. Let's make the changes.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the new version of the lede paragraph. Let's make the changes.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

At risk of becoming repetitive, I express my gratitude again for your help. It seems that you have already made the agreed on changes, but that they do not yet show when the article is opened.74.72.37.65 (talk) 05:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell

Again I left an edit summary blank. Sorry.74.72.37.65 (talk) 05:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell


 * I'm not sure I understand what you mean about the changes "not yet showing". I see them when I open the article. I see you have figured out how to fix the timings in the table. Remembering to supply an edit summary may take a little practice. A registered editor can set preferences for a reminder upon saving the edit, in case a summary has not been entered.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought what we agreed on was that the introduction (lede) would in its entirety be as per my comments belatedly signed "20:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)Niel Shell</span," and amended as I commented on "00:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell." I.e., I was expecting the lede to end with the statement about crossover music. My goal is to have the article look like my reverted edition, but with improvements as per our discussions. Was my appeal to keep the Janssen reference persuasive? If so and if I upload (and register) the promised images, can my reverted edit section on "Background" be reinstated with minor revision?

Finally, I am hoping that the section I labelled "Recordings and Performances" can replace the last two existing sections, again with minor revisions. One revision I would like would be to have clauses like "reproduced in the archival edition of the Shilkret autobiography" replaced by "reproduced in [3]," where the number in the bracket would automatically change in a future edit if the list of references changed the number assigned to the archival Shilkret autobiography (which by the way is copyrighted).

I have a question on an issue that affects all wikipedia articles: The boxed table of contents is formatted


 * 1 Part 1
 * 2 Part 2, etc

but the sections are not numbered. I.e., I see a title "Part 1" where I expect, and would be helped in my scrolling down, to see "1 Part 1" (or "1. Part 1"). I really think all the articles should be changed to show the number of the section, but I doubt that my opinion will sway the powers-that-be in wikipedia to change all articles. Is there at least some way that my edits could be changed this way? 134.74.154.13 (talk) 16:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell

Testing my registration. Niel Shell (talk) 16:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I misunderstood your intentions for the lede. Now that I look at it, I see that everything following your revision is redundant, and too detailed for use there, in any case. I'll have to spend some time looking at the rest, but supposing that there are no continuity problems (as there were before), then the only thing left to worry about is whether or not proper sources can be found. I really can't see how the Janssen manuscript can be cited and, as I said before, I've never seen a case like the unpublished letter that you propose to publish as a facsimile accompanying the article. It seems like it ought to work, but other editors may disagree. I'd say go with it and see what happens.
 * Table of contents formatting is automated (subheads as well as main heads), so if you add numbers to the section headers, they will be duplicated in the TOC or—worse—may not match. The TOC can be suppressed, but that is about the only option.
 * I'm not sure what went wrong with your signature, but once you have registered as an editor, the way to sign messages on Talk pages is to use four tildas: ~ . This will automatically add your user name, the date and time.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The letters are the original source, better than any secondary source. I guess the problem is that in the brick-and-mortar world someone making copies of them for publication would find the Shilkret archives for themselves, and hence be satisfied that no one but the Shilkret archivist had given them a fraudulent document. For extreme care, even fraud on the part of the archivist would have to be ruled out by a handwriting expert (possible even in for this wikipedia article) or carbon dating (not possible on wikipedia). Upon uploading the images, the "Background" section from my reverted edit should be changed only by changing


 * According to Werner Janssen, Serge Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith (described in correspondence in the Shilkret archives as an alternate if Stravinksy declined) and Heitor Villa-Lobos were also contacted.

to


 * Paul Hindemith was considered as an alternate in case Stravinsky declined. [cite the uploaded Shilkret letter]

I will try to upload my images, and then deal with the problem of how to cite them. My sign-in was not accepted, even though I am confident that I used the correct user id and password. 74.72.37.65 (talk) 18:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell

I got a temporary password from wikipedia, and it said "wrong password or confirmation code." There was no catchpa and no box to enter a confirm code. I reconfirmed my email address and tried to log in through this. Still no success, even though I tried both passwords and entered the catchpa letters.

I looked at the R. Baley article and some links therein. The "request for permission" forms I saw asked for permission from the copyright owner. I own the personal letters to or from Shilkret, but they are not copyrighted. I will modify the form to say this, but can not do it tonight. 74.72.37.65 (talk) 05:27, 28 January 2010 (UTC) Niel Shell

Three images supporting Bartok's involvement in the Genesis Suite are uploaded and request for permission sent to permissions-commons@wikipedia.org. I am not sure how I will know if my submissions were accepted. Niel Shell (talk) 19:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The images documenting Bartok's participation in the Genesis Suite now appear in the commons in category Nathaniel Shilkret. The remaining images necessary to document the revised revoked edit will be added 8 February (Monday) Niel Shell (talk) 09:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Referencing of Genesis Suite Article
These comments are in response to a note at the beginning of the 18 April, 2010 edit of the Genesis Suite article asking about the addition of further references. I am the author of the recent edits and I believe have referenced all statements I made, either with verifiable secondary sources or with copies I placed in the commons of documents that I quoted. If something more needs to be docoumented, please indicate specifically what must be referenced.

These comments are directed, foremost, to the 18 April 2010 editor, Shirt58, and, accordingly, I am placing a copy them in this editor's talk page.Niel Shell (talk) 22:50, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Above comments refer to the 21 April 2010 edit, not 18 April 2010. I added the citations of documents already in list of refernces and deleted the "original research" warning. If further, referencing is needed, it would help this article if specific mention of WHAT needs to be referenced is added along with a warning.Niel Shell (talk) 20:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

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