Talk:Hugues Cuénod

Mélodie / melody
Please do NOT edit "mélodie" to "melody" AGAIN. A mélodie is NOT a series of notes, it is a French poem set to music. The word cannot be translated any more than its German counterpart the Lied. S.Camus 19:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

His recent birthday
We seem to be having some trouble agreeing on a form of words that everyone's happy with, about his recently becoming 107 years of age

Prior to 26 June (his 107th birthday), it had been:


 * Cuénod celebrated his 106th birthday in June 2008.

On 26 June, an anon updated the age and the year:


 * Cuénod celebrated his 107th birthday in June 2009.

I changed it to:


 * Cuénod turned 107 on 26 June 2009.

I had 3 reasons for this:
 * it gives a more specific date
 * it's the idiomatic and normal way of reporting the age of very old people. At this age, every birthday could be their last.  In fact, every day could be their last.
 * "celebrated" seemed to be something we don’t actually know.

Objecting to "turned", TFBCT1 changed it to:


 * As of 26 June 2009, Cuénod is now 107 years old.

To me, that's ungrammatical, mixing "as of" and "now". I asked TFBCT1 to explain his edit, and he said "[Turned] might be used in the colloquial vernacular, but it's just not proper English". He provided a very long technical explanation that I was not prepared to read. I asked him to point out exactly where it said my phraseology was "not proper English", but he declined and simply deleted the discussion from his user talk page. So I reverted it back to my version.

TFBCT1's latest version is:


 * Cuénod is age 107 as of June 26, 2009.

I'm not at all happy about that. It should be "aged 107", and the date format should be "26 June 2009", to be consistent with the lede. But the main objection is that it's a completely unidiomatic way of reporting that someone has recently had a birthday.

Can we come to a consensus about this matter, by discussing it here rather than continuing to change it? -- JackofOz (talk) 21:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Oldest musician - OR?
Firstly, vale Hugues Cuénod (26 June 1902 – 3 December 2010).

Now, according to List of centenarians (musicians, composers and music patrons), Cuenod seems to be the oldest notable composer/musician ever. He was a few months older than Leo Ornstein, who also got to 108. Is this something we could state in his article, or is it OR because it's from another WP article? --  Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   10:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Date of death
Currently, we have the Telegraph plus one other source saying he died on 3 December, and the NY Times plus one other source saying he died on 6 December. Obviously they can't all be right. I guess we'll just have to wait for someone to come along who knows for sure, and is able to specifically refute the wrong date. --  Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   16:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation
I think an IPA transcription of his name might be helpful for readers. What about:
 * Hugues-Adhémar Cuénod (26 June 1902 …

Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:00, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Spelling of his name
Huguie (a friend) did not spell his last name with an accent. I tried to correct this, but Jack of Oz deemed the correction "utterly irrelevant" and undid the correction in multiple instances. So now Wikipedia joins the New York Times and others misspelling Huguie's name.

Here's a photograph of a wine label that Huguie gave me from his vineyard, with his name spelled correctly. Note that the other words on the label have all their diacritical marks where they ought to be: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8_tgPop9ryg/TP8HlE0OI5I/AAAAAAAAAQQ/J5VqKrdUf-A/s1600/wine.jpg

I'm puzzled why the correct spelling of an entry's name is considered irrelevant.

Paulfesta (talk) 20:46, 27 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Why? Because you want the label on a bottle of wine(!!) that could have come from anywhere, and has no obvious connection with the singer, to dictate how we spell his name.  He's been given an accent in multiple reference works going back to at least 1954 (Grove's Dictionary, 5th edition).  Maybe they're all wrong, but I'd rather be guided by those sources than by a wine label.  Also, you may well have known him, in which case I'm very jealous - but with the greatest respect, who are you?  An anonymous editor is not a reliable source.  The French WP article uses an accent, so they're all misguided as well, apparently.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  20:58, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * PS. Of the 7 other-language versions that WP has, only the Polish article dispenses with the accent.  The Poles know a thing or two about diacritics, so one assumes it was conscious choice - but maybe it was just a typo.  Poles are no more immune from such things than others are. --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  21:11, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

1. The wine label is on a bottle from Hugues Cuenod's own vineyard, which the photograph demonstrates in multiple ways ("H. ET D. CUENOD, PROPRIETAIRES," and it pictures his chateau, which you can see pictured with him right out in front if it in several pictures I took here (http://blog.paulfesta.com/2010/12/long-lived-hugues-cuenod.html). The wine label is an example of his name that he printed and published. There is no accent on it. This is irrelevant?

2. None of your answers above address whether the spelling of Huguie's name is "utterly irrelevant." They just denigrate evidence provided by the man in question in favor of a longstanding error perpetrated by the likes of the New York Times, whose fact-checking track record is well know.

3. With equal respect, hearing "Jack of Oz" call "Paulfesta" anonymous is a bit much.

4. One of my edits that you undid was to the title of a book - Hugues Cuenod with an Agile Voice - which was created with Huguie's participation and which does NOT use the accent. So in referencing that title, a Wikipedia editor introduced an error where there wasn't one, and I corrected it, and you made it wrong again.

5. I gather that my personal association with Huguie is of no value in this discussion, but in any case I asked Huguie why there was no accent on his name (because it is pronounced as if there were) and he answered that he had no idea - but that the family had never used one.

6. The amount of time and effort this has already taken, to correct and then defend the correction of the spelling of a friend's name, is a powerful disincentive to be involved in Wikipedia. Maybe you intend that. Paulfesta (talk) 22:06, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Responses:
 * 1. No, the photo demonstrates no such thing. For all anyone knows, this could have come from a vineyard owned by a Henri or a Hector or a Herman Cuenod, no connection with the singer Hugues Cuénod.  It is no value whatsoever in deciding how his name was correctly spelled.


 * 2. This isn't about the NY Times and what they do or don't do. All 7 of the newspapers we cite in the reports of his death use the accent. My mistake: 5 of them do; the Washington Post does not, and the Daily Telegraph has a foot in both camps.


 * 3. Wikipedia relies on information published in reliable secondary sources. Personal information supplied by sincere, genuine and presumably trustworthy individuals on a private basis does not qualify as a reliable source for WP's purposes.  That would apply to me supplying privately obtained information about notable people in my personal acquaintance, just as it does to you and anyone else.


 * 5. Did he ever attempt to have the voluminous reference works and other citations of his name stop using the accent? Or was he happy enough to let them misspell it?  Was he billed in his professional performances as Cuenod or Cuénod?  I've not seen any reference to any dispute about the matter, until now.  I have an LP of him singing a group of Italian madrigals, and it's definitely Cuénod there.  That doesn't prove anything, but the question remains: why would he permit an error to be perpetuated in this way?


 * 6. Absolutely not. I aim to foster involvement in Wikipedia from all comers. But there are rules about how information gets its way into articles.  Otherwise, some well-meaning or maybe not so well-meaning editor could come along and say "I knew him personally and he told me XXXXX" and that would qualify as reliable material, which would be a disaster for the integrity and quality of the encyclopedia.  I mean no disrespect to your knowledge of and friendship with M. Cuénod, and everything on your blog appears absolutely genuine, but at the end of the day it could have been contrived, or you could be mistaken, which is why blogs are generally not accepted as reliable sources.


 * But what's of much greater import than whether he spelled his name with an acute or not, is exactly when he died, 3rd or 6th December. Four reliable sources say one date, three others says the other date.  If you could supply anything (apart from your own personal anecdotes) that settles that issue, that would be of great value.

--  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  23:52, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Huguie had better things to do with his time than argue with people like you over the spelling of his name. So have I. You seem utterly committed to this error. Paulfesta (talk) 01:22, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I am not. I will happily and immediately accept what you say if you can verify it.  The threshold for Wikipedia is not truth but verifiability - please read Verifiability if you want to get an idea of how the rules apply here.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  02:44, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Paul Festa does make a prima facie convincing case. However, I have to agree with JackofOz regarding Wikipedia principles favouring verifiability over truth. Wikipedia will follow the spelling in accepted reliable sources. I don't even know how a footnote mentioning the alleged alternative spellling could be phrased. "According to private communication by Paul Festa, his name was spelled 'Cuenod'."? That would never survive. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:39, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

As often happens, I come to a discussion several years too late. I came here because I was intrigued to see the accent on his name – I have never seen it spelt with the accent before, and I have often wondered why, since it is pronounced as though the accent is there. None of his recordings for Nimbus Records use the accent, as far as I am aware. But I see accents in most of the reliable sources cited in the article, and we have to follow those. I am now even more intrigued. --Deskford (talk) 23:36, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Any suggestion how this intriguing treatment could be incorporated into the article? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:12, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how we can incorporate it without a source. There seem to be plenty of sources that spell his name with the accent and plenty without, and quite a few that mix both spellings, but I haven't seen any source that discusses the spelling or explicitly claims one spelling to be correct. --Deskford (talk) 22:18, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Deate of death (2)
Regarding by 62.235.146.48 and  by JackofOz: I also almost instinctively was about to revert those edits until I came across the his family's death notice in the first source added by 62.235.146.48 where it unequivocally states: 6 December. Maybe this will settle the matter.

By the way, the family's death notice spells the name without an accent – Cuenod – but the obituary itself, the Geneva Opera, the City of Vevey and the well-wishers spell it with an accent. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:16, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Vocal character
The article fails to say what was special about Cuenod's voice – and it certainly was special. "Unique vocal registry" is not enough. Was he an example of an haute-contre? If so, the link should be made. If not, how should his voice be characterised? (Cf. the Russell Oberlin article.) EEye (talk) 17:02, 31 January 2015 (UTC)