Talk:O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60

Good article
This article currently has multiple orange level tags on it. This will prevent it from becoming a good article and makes it a candidate for immediate failure if not resolved soon. AIRcorn (talk) 03:56, 11 May 2018 (UTC)


 * No reception section is needed for GA. We know little about contemporary reception for most of Bach's work. Same for publication, but that could easily be added. I will look at the recordings, but not immediately. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:01, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Re. "No reception section is needed for GA" – in a strict sense that is correct: WikiProject Classical music/Guidelines is project level guidance – its recommendation to include a (separate) reception section is no "absolute" must.
 * On the other hand, the What Wikipedia is not policy has: "Wikipedia articles should not be ... Summary-only descriptions of works. Wikipedia treats creative works (...) in an encyclopedic manner, discussing the development, design, reception, significance, and influence of works in addition to concise summaries of those works" (my emphasis) – omitting to discuss reception, significance and influence of this cantata would thus make the article non-compliant to policy (which would be a GA impediment).
 * In short, whether or not the discussion of the reception of this composition is in a separate section is a futile topic. Whether or not the article has content on the composition's reception, significance and influence is a GAN topic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:37, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Re. "We know little about contemporary reception for most of Bach's work" – as for most of Bach's compositions, the bulk of the reception history of this piece is of course situated more than a century after the composer's death. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:47, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If there is no sources available for reception then I agree that it is not needed. If a reception section can be sourced then it should be included to meet the Broadness criteria. It doesn't matter what individual Wikiprojects say, this is a Good Article project criteria. AIRcorn (talk) 08:57, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There is reception history. A cursory glance at some of the pages linked from from the external links section shows there is reception history,
 * From the first half of the 18th century, i.e. "contemporary reception" (one movement adopted in Dietel manuscript)
 * From the second half of the 18th century (publication of said movement)
 * From the second half of the 19th century (BGA edition of the entire cantata)
 * From the second half of the 20th century (NBA edition)
 * Surely there is more. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Francis, if you have that "bulk of the reception histoy", you are welcome to add it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:07, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No time for the time being, sorry – I'd have to look it up like anyone else I suppose. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:10, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * So you put a tag on top of the article "This article is missing information about reception, significance, and influence of this composition. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page. (May 2018)" - I know hundreds of articles about classical compositions for which this will be true, many of them GA and FA. Why tag this one, and for whom? A reader who arrives at the article may not even care about that bit. - I believe that every piece by Bach is significant without writing an extra section. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:02, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As said, the "extra section" is a red herring. Nobody cares whether the info is in an extra section or not. But it should be in the article. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

I've removed the tag, which seems supported by only a single editor, from the front page; it seems supported by only a single editor. The arguments for the tag amount to little more than WP:JDL, especially in the context of general WP standards in articles of this sort. If there is any thing to be discussed on the coverage of this article, it would be better debated on the GA assessment, rather than by attempting to block the GA assessment in this way.--Smerus (talk) 17:44, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Good article nominations are not immune to tagging. In fact they help the reviewer identify issues. It is more disturbing that the article was tagged for four months and as far as I can tell no effort was made to fix them. This is what blocked the article from assessment. AIRcorn (talk) 19:50, 11 May 2018 (UTC)


 * (and other editors reading German): Zedler (2009), pp. 239–247, has quite some material on this cantata, including several pages on the closing chorale, which, according to Zedler, "... zu [Bachs] großartigsten Choral-Harmonisationen gezählt werden muss" (p. 244); Zedler sees another meaning in its Tritonus (different from "diabolus in musica"), p. 245; Further, on the same page, the Tritonus is "... insbesondere in Verbindung mit diesem Choral Gegenstand zahlreicher Kommentare" – so surely there are a lot more sources on this chorale, and surely not all of them in German, nor limited to a comment about Berg's adoption of that chorale harmonisation. For me, whether appropriately tagged or not, in its current form the article still falls short of the broadness criterion of GA. This has nothing to do with JDL, as Smerus's rather boorish comment suggests, on the contrary, I see no love, nor even respect, for Bach's music in that comment. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:43, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Some about the closing chorale is in Berg's Violin Concerto (because I put there). My mind is on Pentecost right now, not end of time, sorry. You are most welcome to add. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:48, 12 May 2018 (UTC)


 * please address issues not symptoms – all the time you put in combating symptoms (i.e. tags) would better be spent in addressing the issues that caused these symptoms. Thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:08, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I haven't put any tag, and don't plan to do so. (If I misunderstood what you meant, sorry.) I believe that "citation required" should be left for contentious claims, and one per sentence is enough. I believe that our efforts are always not complete, without a tag saying so. - I have to clean up the cantatas for tomorrow and Pentecost, and said so above. Add what you can, but don't press others, please. You used the term "combat", and I'd appreciate less of that. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:37, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This is the kind of combat I'm talking about. Please cease it. Thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:49, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This is of course "addressing the issue", which is appreciated. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Comments to Gerda
Gerda has asked my advice on the article. The segments in the infobox refer to Berg's Violin Concerto, so are not really suitable for the infobox. There is a lengthy discussion of BWV 60 by Whittaker: again this is not available online, so folks will have to use their "noggins" to work out how to get access. (I would just photocopy it in the South Corridor of the University Library in Cambridge.) Noggins can also be used for reading the reliable secondary sources on Berg's Violin Concerto. Perhaps it is available on-line through Oxford University Press. Parts of the high-res autograph manuscript on BWV 60 are available (although not through bad-faith trickery as has happened recently). There are also published prints from the younger Breitkopf of the chorale in BWV 60/5 from 1784–1787. There are also oodles of vocal scores available, some of them with English translations (e.g. Novello). I don't think the idea of "reception" was useful. I think "selected discography" and "transcriptions" might be a better idea.

The only acceptable reliable secondary source is from Alfred Dürr's book. The discogs, bach-cantatas websites, cd liners and the raw Bach archive listings are not really acceptable. A somewhat sloopy substitute for WP:RS.

Gerda's idea of expanding the content about Berg's violin concerto seems good. Not everybody likes Berg, but I happen to be partial to a little Berg and particularly to that concerto. Writing a paragraph about that, possibly in a different section (transcriptions, arrangements, etc) might be fine. Is there not an orchestral version of Schoenberg-Webern of BWV 552 and multiple British inter-war arrangements of "Wir glauben all' an einen Gott," BWV 680, that fall in that category? I think "Ich habe genug" falls into that category (also of course for BWV 82, which Gerda and I have mentioned a while back on her user talk page). Mathsci (talk) 10:58, 12 May 2018 (UTC)