Talk:Levi Lovering

Plagiarism claims
There have been some anonymous claims of plagiarism on this article. I’d like to state that I wrote much of this article and I have cited where the information came from. Being attributed to the precise resource from which the information came is how one avoids plagiarism in the first place, which is what I have tried to do to the best of my ability. Also, for the record the anonymous user making these claims continues to post the claim in the body of the article, rather than on the talk page, which defaces the remainder of the article. I hope this explanation helps. Ryukin (talk) 13:47, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Comments by 72.230.179.113
Edit: Lovering and his sister did not "reportedly" scam the U.S. government for their father's Rev. War pension, they successfully accomplished it, as the NARA records confirm.

More edits: ". . .since he did not play the fife nor refer to fife tunes in his works, the drum beatings are not directly correlated to any precise version of the tunes they are based upon." This statement is misleading. A comparison of the titles Lovering applied to each beating coupled with an examination of the extant period fife repertoire does indeed identify all but one of the corresponding fife tunes in the Lovering Ms. To my knowledge, that tune, "Banestre Ben," has not yet been identified.

The author of this essay fails to state that Lovering's itinerancy extended as far south as New Jersey; indeed, it was in Bridgeton that Lovering managed to find a publisher for his work.

Regarding the notation system utilized by Lovering, its roots are historically well-established, mostly in aural method (see, for example, Thoinot Arbeau's "Orchésographie," 1589). This essay's author correctly points out that it is "quite similar to that of George Robbins, Isaac Day, and other sources from the. . .early 19th century." However, if the author claims an 18th-century example or even "other sources" of this notation system, s/he needs to document these claims -- the Day Ms and the Robbins publication are both early 19th-century productions. Furthermore, the Day Ms (which could be as early as 1797 but is more likely 1808) and Robbins' "The Drum and Fife Instructor" (1812) both postdate Lovering's "The Rule of the First Roll or Gamut for the Drum," which could have been collected as early as 1792 but more likely were written down ca 1805, the date of manufacture of the paper it is written upon, and used as a teaching tool during the height of Lovering's itinerant years. Therefore, if any borrowing was done, it was Robbins borrowing from Lovering and not the other way around, as this author suggests.

The mnemonic syllables ("tou" and "pou") are long established in aural military drum teaching since the early European Renaissance, so much so that they figured into aural tradition two centuries later. I would suggest that Lovering attempted to standardize "by ear" learning in writing and promoted his notation system as he traveled and taught throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey. However, given its limited circulation (which apparently died alongside its promoter) and later standardization of drum notation based upon an entirely different system, it was hardly "the standard practice of the time." -- Susan Cifaldi 72.230.179.113 (talk) 17:22, 9 November 2021 (UTC)