Talk:Max Steiner/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: JohnWickTwo (talk · contribs) 11:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Initiating assessment for biography. JohnWickTwo (talk) 11:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

0 Lead section
 * Lead section is well-written though it might be nice to include a passing mention of his stand-out scoring of the theme of Gone With the Wind, and perhaps also the fact that he did not score the famous "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca. You might double check that all of the comparison composers you list are mentioned somewhere in this article for them to be included in the lead section. The citation for your quote as well as its exposition should be moved to the main article, and then the footnote itself is not needed in the lead section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

1 Early years
 * Could you give some thought to re-organizing these first 4 sections under a section title called "Biography" for purposes of enhancing structural organization in this article. Also dating of the first two sections as you have already dated in parenthesis sections 3 and 4. Then bring up your section on Personal life and death and integrate the information there into the new Biography section into the time frame that they belong in. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

2 Beginning music career
 * Add years for this section in parenthesis. Section format per above. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

3 Broadway music (1914–1929)
 * Refactor section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

4 Hollywood film music (1929–1971)
 * Some of the subsections here are short and some a more developed. It might make sense to regroup some of them and date each regrouped section accordingly. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

4.1 Symphony of Six Million (1932)

4.2 King Kong (1933)

4.3 The Informer (1935)

4.4 Composing for Warner Bros.

4.5 Gone with the Wind (1939)

4.6 Film Noir

4.6.1 The Letter

4.6.2 The Big Sleep

4.7 Award-winning Scores
 * "More comments on the above film sections after you give a try at refactoring them into the new Biography section and date the chronology in them in the new section headings. Should this be a separate short section, or should the individual sentences be refactored into the new outline. For example, state that Casablanca was nominated for an Oscar when you discuss Casablanca in 1942 in his Biography section above which goes with 1942. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

4.8 Westerns
 * This short section might be assimilated into the sections of the biography which deal with the time frame which corresponds to each of these Westerns. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

4.9 Later works
 * Assimilate this short section into the new refactored version of the biography by year of chronology. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

5 Musical Influences
 * Two choices here. Either the Influences can be assimilated into the biography sections above as to which influences predominated in any particular biographical period, or, move this section into the Methods section directly below it in the current outline. Its hard to tell which one of these works better until you try it and see. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

6 Methods of composing
 * See comments for individual subsections. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

6.1 Techniques
 * Leitmotifs are strongly associated with Wagner as an approach he used in his operas. Should Wagner be mentioned in this section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

6.2 Character themes
 * "Every character should have a theme" is very, very closely associated with leitmotifs; should these discussions be separated as they are currently. Can they be combined in some way. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

6.3 Scene and situation themes
 * "The music underscores" needs a capital letter added at the start of sentence. This section appears again thematically very close to leitmotif discussion and might be more strongly delineated from the leitmotif section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

7 Personal life and death
 * Refactor this into the new Biography section as discussed above. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

8 Awards and honors
 * This material might look better in narrative form, for purposes of consistency with the rest of the article. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

9 Influence and legacy
 * Don't over-read my next statement, though didn't Steiner have much more of an influence on the legacy of film scores than the 3-4 sentence summary you give here. Did film scores become a forgotten legacy the day Steiner died, being replaced by the "pop" hits collection approach of films like Forrest Gump and others. Or, did Steiner plot a course for the scoring of films on the shoulders of classical composers such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Mahler. John Williams is one composer who comes to mind. There are other composers I could mention here. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree it's a little short. This has been a work in progress. When I took this article on, there was no legacy section at all as I can recall. I have been slowly adding things as I find them, because I have wanted to be as specific as possible, actually naming names that he influenced instead of just stating that he influenced composers without naming them. I will keep looking for more stuff to expand this section. Although I have spent some time on this article, it hasn't been my pet project like Scarface is, so I still have some work to do.Skyes(BYU) (talk) 22:39, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

10 Filmography
 * The filmography main article should take care of most of this. Switching to div col 2 may help here as well. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

That should get things started. Ping me when ready or if clarification is needed on any of the above comments. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the detailed review. I won't be able to finish today, because my shift ends in about an hour, but I should be able to get things done by tomorrow. One of your suggestions also made me realize that I should probably give Casablanca its own section, so I will work on that as well. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 21:42, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * ok I took a look at your suggestions and did my best to implement them. I'll be honest, it was a lot of work, because the organization of the article was kind of a mess. Hopefully, I understood what you were asking for and the organization is more to your liking. I'm happy to make more changes, just let me know what you're looking for. In the meantime, I'll be looking for more things to add to the legacy section. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 18:06, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Results in the article are looking much enhanced after your overnight edits. There is actually a small cottage industry of articles comparing John Williams to him in the press. Just type in their 2 names next to each other on Google search and the list should show up. Regarding the music score for King Kong, do you know if he was involved in the scoring of the tribal chanting used to conjure King Kong to appear at the start of the film, or was that someone else. Separately, the re-organized biography section looks much improved with the years added to section titles. JohnWickTwo (talk) 18:16, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
 * , I tried looking for those articles you mentioned about Williams. I don't know if I found exactly what you were referring to, but I found some stuff regardless and added that in the legacy section. As far as your question about the chanting in Kong, I did some research and he did in fact score the tribal music. I added a sentence in that section to reflect that. Thanks for that question! Is there anything else I can do for you? Skyes(BYU) (talk) 20:00, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Closing assessment
A remarkable effort in the last day or two has really enhanced the article. If further enhancement is intended then I would suggest that the Techniques section currently has an orphan section. That's easily addressed by either dropping the sub-section heading for 'Techniques' or possibly refactoring its entire parent section into 3 sections such as (I) Music as background to dialogue, (II) Leitmotifs, and (III) your current closing paragraph there introduces a third topic which could optionally be titled accordingly; or something like that to get around the orphan section you currently have in the article. The other optional improvement might be to re-organize a new Influence section to include your current Influence section along with its Accolades section as both under the same section title with 2 sub-sections. Awards sections are often titled as "Industry recognition" sections. The other section there might be titled as "Legacy among composers" Otherwise for the article as a whole, the images are informative and have instructive captions. The writing is well-organized and well presented. The article is neutral in tone and does not appear to have original research. The citations to the article are fully formatted and well researched, and the article is passed. JohnWickTwo (talk) 21:18, 14 August 2018 (UTC)