Talk:Gustav Mahler/Archive 2

Most recent link addition
Seems to me the link contains too much information, and not enough about Mahler. (That, and in my opinion, it doesn't look very professional, but I can live with that, but the deluge of information is a bit too much for me.) Any opinions? What's the policy on external links? TheProject 17:27, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Your comment inspired me to take out the references that don't have to do with Mahler. It doesn't seem professional to me to have Wikipedia articles about composers to have references either to Grove's dictionary or to a general music appreciation textbook. When I have a chance, I'll add the La Grange biography and one or two other things. Jeremy J. Shapiro 05:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, if references were consulted during the writing of the article, those references need to stay there, as long as they do contain articles that are relevant to the material (both do). I think that policy is different for external links, but I'm not sure. I'd also point out that both Grove and Machlis are sectioned, as opposed to the link I pointed out. TheProject 14:34, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * This makes me realize that there are two things about the Wikipedia orientation to references that I don't understand:
 * A) Since articles change and grow and evolve over time and have things added and taken out and are worked on by different people, what does it mean to say that certain references were consulted during the writing of the article?  There are parts of articles that have been removed entirely.  Are references to stay there forever even if the parts of the articles for which they were originally put there aren't even in the article anymore?  How does one even know, after an article has been worked on over the years, what references were actually consulted for the parts of an article?
 * B) What happens when better or more up-to-date or more primary references supersede earlier, more secondary ones? To take an example, what if someone puts something in an article, using as a reference a secondary work, e.g. in a biography of Mahler somebody puts something in that they read in an introduction to music appreciation, which itself only got that information from the authors' having read a biography of Mahler.  Now let's say someone works on the Wikipedia article who has actually read a biography of Mahler.  Shouldn't that reference supersede the earlier reference?  To me it doesn't make sense to have both references as references.  For example, if someone who was a scientist in the area of plant physiology was familiar with the current up-to-date textbook of plant physiology, doesn't it make sense, in an article about plant physiology, to have that reference supersede an earlier one from the Cambridge one-volume desk encyclopedia, just because the earlier Wikipedian happened to have read it in the desk encyclopedia?
 * In any case, I would be grateful for clarification of these points by my fellow Wikipedians. Jeremy J. Shapiro 01:41, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I hope I didn't offend anybody when I suggested the link be removed -- I was almost going to call you out on WP:POINT, but I'm not half as experienced a Wikipedian as I would like to be. Personally, I believe such a link would be more appropriate on an article about 19th century Viennese music (or 19th century classical music) in general, as it contains much more information than is specific to Mahler (and call me a perfectionist, but one thing that really annoyed me about the link was that there wasn't a "section" on Mahler, but it was divided chronologically instead. The Grove and the Machlis both have a section devoted to Mahler, so it makes more sense to me that way).
 * In response to your questions... A) I put my references in when I did my overhaul of the article. (It's become a pet project of mine, you might say, and I'm a little protective. I apologize for that.) As for the general case, I'm not sure -- I've been here for a shorter length than you have, it appears. In my opinion, the references should stay there -- unless they are particularly outdated, which leads me to my discussion on B) I'm not sure why a more up-to-date reference would be a primary reference. Shouldn't it be the other way -- the more direct reference is the earlier one, which supercedes the later work?
 * I agree with you when you say that more direct sources should be included on Wikipedia. Having said that, it is often the case that encyclopedias are the most reliable source to depend upon. (By the way, if you haven't noticed already, I'm a big fan of books over websites as references -- for websites, I often rely on a very small, select list. I personally would not have a problem at all with adding another Mahler biography to the references list, at least not as much as I would with a website link.)
 * By the way, I would have suggested that you put the link under the references section, except that it doesn't appear that you've edited the article at all, except for adding and deleting some references. If there are references that bring new material to the article, then perhaps you might want to add that new material to the article first, and then adding your references into the references section?
 * But I'd love to get some more help from the top. I still consider myself fairly new here, too. TheProject 02:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * No, I am not an expert or long-time Wikipedian, I am still learning basic things about the culture and principles here, that's why I asked my questions. With regard to point B, I am just operating on the general principles used in the world of research and scholarship, which is that in general later works supersede earlier ones on the grounds that, if done properly, they will have incorporated and critiqued the results of earlier work and gone beyond them, in the case of history or biography will have consulted sources not used by or not accessible by earlier authors, and so on.  So in general I would expect a more recent scholarly biography of a composer to, in effect, supersede, although not necessarily invalidate an earlier work, although certain earlier works are classics and therefore should be in a list of references.  I guess my thinking about references is shaped especially by the idea that if a person were a novice about a topic in Wikipedia and the article were an introduction to the topic and the person were then going to do further reading and research, the references should include major or standard works about the topic and, in the case of composers for example, should keep up with the current state of writing, thinking, and research about that person (which is why I imagined that they then wouldn't want to go to something introductory, like a musical dictionary or a book about music appreciation or a general history of music, but rather for more specific and detailed stuff about Mahler, which is why I rather precipitously took out those two references, partly, I confess, because I mistakenly thought that's what you meant about the links that shouldn't be there).  So, for example, the biography of Mahler that I know best is by Kurt Blaukopf, and I added it as a reference.  But I know that the more recent (and much more extensive) one by La Grange is now considered the most reliable and standard biography.  So if a high school or college student were going to consult Wikipedia because they needed to write a paper about Mahler, I would consider it almost irresponsible not to inform them about the La Grange biography -- it's later, it uses materials that weren't consulted by or available to Blaukopf, and so on.  But in general the Wikipedia articles that I have spent time working on are scattered, inconsistent, almost random, and, frankly, of poor quality on the reference side, almost to the point of embarrassment, compared to any other really decent encyclopedia that I know or have or use.  And perhaps I just really don't understand Wikipedia's policy or culture about references, except that Wikipedia does say that it wants to be a really good encyclopedia, and to me that means having a responsible and reliable list of references for every at least substantial article.  I think that the Mahler article is terrific, you've obviously done very good work, that's in fact why I haven't really contributed to it, because most of my work on Wikipedia is based on my reading articles that I care about and know something about and then discovering things about them that seem wrong or unbalanced or missing or poorly written, and then feeling that I need to improve or correct them, and I care and know a fair amount about Mahler, but didn't find anything that seemed problematic about this article, so I didn't feel that need to add or change anything, but did want to simply round out the list of references to include things that I know are important or standard works about Mahler that someone wanting to pursue the study of Mahler would want to read. Jeremy J. Shapiro 08:43, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Hope you don't mind my formatting the comments so it's a little better to read. (I screwed up originally.) If you think the La Grange biography adds information, please, by all means, add that reference, and add the information that the biography contributes to the actual article as well. I'd love to see someone add even more relevant information to the article. It seems to me that it would be irresponsible to add the link and add no further information, although, some people often do not have the time to do that. Otherwise, it would seem that your reference adds nothing to the article, which I don't believe is the case at all; I'll try to check your reference out when I can.
 * The only real reasons why I don't like the link is that it seems to belong in a more general article, rather than a specific article on Mahler (as there is no section on Mahler, like I've mentioned, because it's chronologically ordered), and that it doesn't look like it's formatted very well. So if there aren't any objections, I'm going to be taking out the link fairly soon, but please, go ahead and add information from the La Grange biography and put it into the references page. Whether Grove and Machlis are completely superceded by La Grange and should be taken out is a decision I leave to someone who has read La Grange and edited the article on the basis of La Grange, which I take to be you, once you edit it. Hopefully that resolves whatever issue there is. TheProject 14:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Thrice homeless
I think that the quotation from Mahler about him being thrice homeless should be included in the article. It captures something important about his relationship to the world and to his different cultural backgrounds. And it is a well-known quotation from him. Jeremy J. Shapiro 18:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The original quote was never removed in the first place. The version that was removed was a duplicate of already existing material. Thanks for your contributions on the article, by the way. TheProject 03:59, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Not used at all nicknames, 4&5
I think I'm going to take out the "nicknames" for symphonies 4 and 5. If nobody uses them today, then it seems silly to have them there. If they belong anywhere, it's on the specific pages for the pieces themselves. 216.160.94.182 05:21, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I feel vindicated now.  Isn't it great how the obvious solution always gets there in the end, but might require a few meanderings and debates beforehand.  Cheers JackofOz 11:35, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds fair enough to me. I just wish the poster at the top of the page would have been a little less, um, emotional. Could we not have the accusations of low reading comprehension, please? I hope nobody's mad at me -- I wasn't even the person who posted those titles in the first place! ;-) TheProject 06:16, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Edit Summaries
There's no need to make personal attacks in your edit summaries. I understand what you're trying to say. Please refrain from shouting and making personal attacks.

As for the quotation marks: double quotes were used in the rest of the article, and I was trying to make it more consistent. This I think should be consistent across the entire page. TheProject 15:55, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Pfistermeister on names
I highly appreciate Pfistermeister's work and concern for accuracy on the Mahler article and various other music articles, and don't object to his point that some of the names, such as "Resurrection" and "Titan", don't appear on the scores and in the New Grove. However, the full story on these is more complicated, e.g. Bruno Walter says that Mahler himself used the term "Tragic" for the 6th. I don't know if readers of Wikipedia need to know such things, and I'm fine with Pfistermeister's framing of the status of the titles, my point is only that because Mahler kept working on his symphonies and changed his way of thinking about their programs over time -- and about the concept of programs in general -- some of these names have a history and aren't just either completely right or completely wrong. As I said, I am a fan of Pfistermeister's work. Jeremy J. Shapiro 15:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi, Jeremy. You raise a good point: these titles do 'have a history'. Why not just add the justification/origin for each title after the sentence where I explain where it *doesn't* come from...?!?!?  Bests,  Pf.
 * Well, this is where I get into an issue that I think deserves broader, "policy" discussion and where I think that I may differ from some other Wikipedia editors in general in my sense of just how detailed and scholarly a Wikipedia article ought to be. I notice in some of the music articles, for example, a level of detail about composers's biographies that I don't think would be of interest or relevance to a person just wanting a good general introduction to a composer.  I notice the same thing in other contexts.  For example, I was looking at a philosophy article today that has the kind of bibliography that would be relevant to a philosophy graduate student but not to someone wanting a few good general introductions to that philosopher, plus the works aren't commented, so a general reader might just throw up her/his hands in overwhelmedness.  Anyway, I don't know that I think that the history of these titles of Mahler symphones requires more comment than what you've put there, and I guess I was raising it more as a general issue to think about.  And I do wish we had more general agreement about criteria for such things as the level of detail in the music and other articles.  By the way, maybe there should be a short classical music article about titles in general, dealing with the whole issue of the differences among titles that appear on scores, titles that are known to have been used informally by the composer, titles that were changed by the composer, titles that just have gotten stuck on to pieces because of some external circumstance (like "Symphony of a Thousand"), and so on.  Perhaps there is such an article and I'm just not aware of it.  Then there could be a wikilink to that article...  Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud.  Jeremy J. Shapiro 15:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if such an article would be particularly useful, since these naming issues only really come up with a small handful of composers. It's simply not that big of a deal. Mahler just happens to be a particularly egregious and problematic example, which is why there's been so much wrangling about it. I think the article as it stands just now (on 12/13/05) does a good job of explaining his "titles" without getting too bogged down in details or making a mountain out of a molehill. Micro tonal ... (Put your head on my shoulder) 16:45, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Accusations of Vandalism by Pfistermeister
Pfistermeister, this is the second time in 24 hours you have accused me of vandalism. I resent that very much. After I made my edit to the discussion of the 10th symphony yesterday, and you reverted it, I sent a message to your talk page which referred to my edits being done in a serious-minded and conscientious way, in the spirit of continuously improving the quality of articles, which in some cases means removing unnecessary words. I hardly think that this displays evidence of vandalistic intent, but rather, inclusiveness and cooperative consultation, which is what Wikipedia is all about. Unfortunately, you have not had the courtesy to acknowledge or respond to that message.

My latest edit was about "Songs of a Wayfarer". You replaced that name with the literal translation (which is rarely seen in English speaking countries), and I restored the standard English title that everybody knows, and I took the trouble to explain my reasons. What do I get in return? - further slanderous accusations of vandalism. I’m not even going to debate you about the subject of that edit here and now, because unfortunately you’ve gone further by becoming very arrogant and high-handed indeed, and using personal abuse. For starters, I am not "sonny". Secondly, your claim to be a person who "knows far more than" me is preposterous and very juvenile. Both of these statements reflect very badly on you. Regardless of what you know or think you know about any given subject, we are all equals here. Any editor can make whatever edits they like, and common consensus will be the judge of whether they stay or go. Consensus is often arrived at only after considerable debate; it is certainly not characteristed by one person claiming to know far more than others. You’ve been in Wikipedia for only a relatively short time, and you have much to learn about courtesy, politeness, and cooperation. I suggest you start immediately. JackofOz 00:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Pfistermeister: 1) please learn to use the User:talk space.  You have no edits there.  People have tried to contact you on your talk page.  In the entire time you have been on Wikipedia, since August, you have only made four edits in the article talk space; this is a collaborative project, and conflicts and disagreements are ironed out on the article talk pages. 2) What JackofOz did is NOT vandalism by a long stretch.  "Songs of a Wayfarer" IS the common translation in English.  Please discuss here.  Thanks.  Antandrus  (talk) 00:50, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Not interested in your hot air or your chat page. I merely supply factual information, properly researched, and seek to correct the ludicrous rubbish that currently makes this site a laughing-stock in the outside world. You people clearly have different priorities; that's your business. P.
 * If you have such a low opinion of this site, you do both yourself and Wikipedia a disservice by being involved at all. If you want to get involved, please play by the rules, which includes not regarding yourself as somehow separate and apart from "you people".  Contributions from those who do not even consider themselves members of the community are inherently vandalistic.  As in any human community, crimes have their consequences.  JackofOz 04:19, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Isnt mahler born at may?
Nope. He was born in July, and died in May. JackofOz 14:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Did Mahler really say this?
from the article: "I am thrice homeless," Mahler once said. "As a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed."

I cannot find a source for this statement - which is uncannily similar to a note made by Anton Rubinstein in his notebooks in the 1860s or 1870s (see Rubinstein article). I would be grateful for information. --Smerus 14:26, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
 * See Alma Mahler: 'Memories and Letters', p.109. In view of Alma's well-documented unreliability on countless similar matters, I would treat this (and all her other uncorroborated stories) with suspicion. Perhaps a cautionary parenthesis might be in order? Pf.
 * The quote isn't from Alma, but from a letter that Mahler wrote to a long-term female friend of his. I don't have the text in front of me at the moment, but that quote is the one that appears in standard biographies, and is very much in line with Mahler's other comments (he even recalled wanting to be a martyr as a child!) Blintz 10:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

There is only ONE Mahler that people will recognize, and that is GUSTAV Mahler!
So I think that simply typing in "Mahler" in the search box should automatically bring up the composer Gustav and skip the list of other Mahlers.


 * Agreed. Done - Jon Stockton 22:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually no, Mahler isn't that uncommon a surname. Halfdan T. Mahler, Margit Mahler, Kurt Mahler, Nicolas Mahler, Rick Mahler, Horst Mahler Antidote 08:51, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * (see WP:REDIRECT &mdash; Turangalila (talk) 02:47, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Musical link between ninth and Rückert-lieder?
In the Mahler article, section 'Music' it says:

"No credible connections with free-standing songs can be demonstrated [in the 8th, 9th and 10th symphony]"

Is there not a musical link between the ninth symphony and Mahler's song 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' from the Rückert-lieder?

I am no expert in musicology, just following my ears...

Magic Neophyte
 * Do you mean the transposed (but intervallically exact) melodic reference to the 'On the heights the day is beautiful' line (from the 4th of the 'Kindertotenlieder') that appears on the last page of Mahler 9? Mahler is often over-interpreted as 'quoting himself' when in fact he's merely 'writing in the same manner'; but this seems a pretty unambiguous self-reference to me. Pfistermeister 21:16, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, there is indeed an unmistakable link between the concluding bars of 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' and the 4th (adagietto) movement from the 5th Symphony.

Opus numbers
Did Mahler's works even have opus numbers? The article, as it stands, gives none of them if they exist. —This unsigned comment is by 65.185.213.33 (talk • contribs) 16:33, 14 March 2006 UTC.
 * No, Mahler's works do not have opus numbers. Microtonal 22:51, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)