Talk:Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543

In-use
There is an in-use tag on this article. That has been disregarded through that tag, where disruptive edits have occurred. Mathsci (talk) 21:27, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Bach's Prelude BWV 543
"Bach's Prelude BWV 543" (as it is in the source) is not the same as "Prelude and Fugue in A minor" (as the Wikipedia article currently has it – my emphasis). As I said (and repeated): the source doesn't mention the fugue – thus: failed verification. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:44, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * BWV 543 is a clear identification of this piece. If someone says "Concerto K.482" by Mozart, they clearly are talking about piano concerto no. 22, even if they didn't write the literal words "Piano Concerto no. 22". &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:49, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Incorrect. What you propose is WP:OR. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:30, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hardly. BWV 543 is clear about what piece this refers to. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:34, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Wikipedia follows sources, not some editor's OR, so this will have to go. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you even know what a BWV number is? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:39, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I wrote the BWV page. But linking to that page does not make a reliable source (see WP:CIRCULAR). We follow external reliable sources. The external source says "Prelude", not "Prelude and Fugue", and it is OR to expand one to the other, because, for some unfathomable reason, a Wikipedia editor erroneously thinks that that is what the external source intended (but didn't write). --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:47, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * If you think BWV 543 refers to anything other than Bach's Prelude and Fugue in A minor, you really have no business editing this article. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:15, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

In Morricone's own words: he didn't make an "arrangement", neither of the Prelude, nor of the Fugue (and certainly not of both), but derived the theme of the film music (besides, also that of Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion) from the Fugue (not the Prelude). See end of this page and first paragraph of this page. Now, that is a primary source (thus not necessarily reliable), but to be frank, neither does the France Musique website seem all too reliable. So, maybe just remove the entire paragraph as trivia (if no other sources can be found) or relate it in Morricone's words with an in-text attribution? I haven't heard either film music, so I can't confirm by my own hearing which description (Morricone's of France Musique's) would be most to the point. --Francis Schonken (talk) 00:01, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * FM is a reliable source, and is clear
 * "The influence of 'serious' classical music is present throughout Ennio Morricone's musical output, and the composer often amused himself with these serious references, often citing and arranging works from the classical repertoire in his film scores: for example Wagner's famous Ride of the Valkyries for the theme of the 'Wilde Horde' from My Name is Nobody (1973), and Bach's Prelude BWV 543 for the main theme of The Sicilian Clan (1969)."
 * Your tortuous reading of this passage does not invalidate it. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:04, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "Citing" and "arranging" are two entirely different categories. "Bach's Prelude BWV 543 for the main theme of The Sicilian Clan" is clearly a "citation" (deriving a theme from a composition is at best a citation, and not the same as arranging the entire composition); also a "citation" would in this case likely be either from the Prelude or from the Fugue (it could, at least theoretically, also be from both): as the sources are unclear on the point, it is OR to claim Morricone's film music is an arrangement of both the Prelude and the Fugue, as the Wikipedia article currently does. --Francis Schonken (talk) 00:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not claiming to be an arrangement of both parts of BWV 543, it's an arrangement (i.e. "a musical reconceptualization of a previously composed work") of BWV 543, which on Wikipedia, we call Prelude and Fugue in A minor and which is known by a variety of names from the more casual to the more formal. If you want to be specific, The Sicilian Clan's Theme only deals the with the prelude section. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:38, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Listened to Morricone's film music now (had heard it before but must have been a long time ago since it took me a bit before I remembered):
 * it is not an "arrangement" (please also, again, don't quote Wikipedia as if it were a reliable source: afaics Wikipedia's definition of the term "arrangement" is OR). Anyhow, Morricone's film music is not an arrangement of Bach's music, not of the Prelude, not of the Fugue.
 * The (main) theme of Morricone's film music is loosely based on part of the main theme of Bach's Prelude (the Fugue is not involved). counter-subjects, secondary themes (etc) of Bach's Prelude are also not involved. Morricone's film music has a nice counter-theme played by slow strings, which is repeated a few times, but is completely unrelated to Bach's music.
 * The France Musique quote says that Morricone does "citing" and does "arranging" of works from the classical repertoire. It does not imply that what he does with Ride of the Valkyries and with BWV 543 would both be arrangements of "works from the classical repertoire" – in the case of BWV 543 he does "citing" of a limited part of a work of that repertoire.
 * In sum, the current content and presentation of the Morricone-related topic in this Wikipedia article is OR. It doesn't belong in the "Arrangements" section for starters, and the way it is formulated (pretending to be an arrangement of Bach's composition which it definitely is not) is OR of the most objectionable kind. I still propose, since not many secondary sources seem to be available on this, to remove it entirely as trivia. --Francis Schonken (talk) 01:41, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Musical theme
Further suggestions: --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:00, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) Insert " Morricone borrowed material from the Prelude." before the France Musique reference (currently footnote 18).
 * 2) Use File:BWV 543 PRELUDE THEME.jpg to illustrate which melody of Bach's composition appears in Morricone's film music. (note however that Morricone adopts a different rhythmical pattern for the tune, so the formulation of how Morricone adopted & adapted that material must avoid misleading statements, e.g. Morricone did not merely "copy" Bach's musical theme).
 * The WP:RS from the Oxford University Press book is explicit about the material.
 * On page 67 there is a quote: "After reflecting further on this resemblance, I then realized that the other theme as well was derived from my own idealization of Johann Sebastian Bach's Fugue in A minor BWV 543." Nowhere is there any mention of a prelude. On the contrary, on page 66 of the OUP source, Morricone sketches the "ambiguous tango" which indeed resembles the head-motif of the Fugue in A minor, BWV 543, as stated. There are currently excellent sources for BWV 543/1 and BWV 543/2 from Commons. Mathsci (talk) 23:13, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You have to realize that the piece is divided into two parts, and that since it has no formal name, people refer to it by a plethora of variation on Praeludium et Fuga Organo de Pleno. Listen to the piece, and it's clear as day it's a take on the prelude section. France Musique says Prelude, Morricone says Fugue, but really both of those are casual names for BWV 543, rather than a specific reference to either sections. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You have to realize that the piece is divided into two parts, and that since it has no formal name, people refer to it by a plethora of variation on Praeludium et Fuga Organo de Pleno. Listen to the piece, and it's clear as day it's a take on the prelude section. France Musique says Prelude, Morricone says Fugue, but really both of those are casual names for BWV 543, rather than a specific reference to either sections. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)


 * (ec after a pause) There is still no evidence that Morricone used the prelude. Your statements about Bach's organ works do not seem to be correct. The standard and oldest edition of Bach's complete organ works is that of C. F. Peters: Orgelwerke II has 10 preludes and fugues, all with the title, "Praeludium et Fuga." There are many other versions. The Urtext edition of Kilian is marked "Praeledium et Fuga in a." The Breitkopf version of Rust has the title "Praeludium et Fuga VIII." And so on.


 * As for Reger, this involved edits to a small segment. The content about Philipp Wolfrum was not so straightforward, because there were several sources which duplicated imprecise variants of the material. The Reger section was marked "in-use", so it was inconsiderate to cause edit-conflicts while edits to new content were happening. Distinguishing between "citation, "cite book" and "cite journal" is not important in the grand scheme of things. Locating secondary sources that are actually available for reading is important. It is the first step in creating content, which is the main purpose of wikipedia. Mathsci (talk) 07:11, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The evidence is theme itself, you have to be deaf not to hear it. As for the name, again, there's a varying degree of formality involved. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:58, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * BWV 543 PRELUDE THEME.jpgsal →
 * Anyhow, I think Headbomb is right: if it's all straightforward, and anyone capable of assessing would see (or, in this case: hear) the same, like assessing similarities and differences between the plot of a novel and that of the film or opera version of the same novel, then there's no WP:PRIMARY problem whatsoever.
 * --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:46, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

The edit to the article prominently adding a musical quotation from the Prelude, BWV 543 (or is it BWV 543a?) is WP:UNDUE, WP:POINTY and WP:OR. The musical analysis of the prelude has not yet even been completely summarised from the 2003 book by Peter Williams (for the fugue, that has mostly been done). Proposed edits have been discussed ad infinitum on this talk page; similarly on the talk page of WikiProject Classical Music, where an attempt to delete the report by Headbomb was attempted; and in Headbomb's report on WP:ANI, where administrators commented on disruptive edits to the article talk page. I have agreed with Headbomb on his suggested modifications to the short Morricone segment. The recent edit on the actual article page, adding a huge musical quotation, was purely disruptive. The edit was a way of unbalancing the article in a controversial way.

The actual article concerns: sources used in BWV 543 and its variants, including high-resolution images, created by me on Commons. The sources describe in detail how the prelude for BWV 543a and BWV 543 differ in the beginning bars; musical analysis of BWV 543 (mostly from Williams and Jones); Bach reception, from books of Stinson, Little, Anderson, et al, still on-going.

This is one of the most famous preludes and fugues of Bach. The segment on Morricone was an anecdote concerning a very well-known film composer. The edit pushing the undue and prominent musical quotation into the article "in the voice of wikipedia" was disruptive. It is quite out of keeping with the article itself.

I would also point out that, as explained in detail in the article, there are two completely different versions of the beginning of the prelude, i.e. BWV 654a/1 and BWV 543/1. So choosing which prelude is being used is arbitrary. It is WP:OR with reference to Morricone, etc. For the Morricone segment, any attempts to assess WP:CONSENSUS have been ignored. The edit here as well as previous edits arbitrarily tagging the article do not help readers of this encyclopedia.

Since my comments have apparently been ignored, I am repeating them above. The recent edit summaries have been clear enough.

The edits on the article and this talk page are original research. Versions of the notated musical score are available, e.g. here in an excerpt. The score of Morricone is not available. The original audio score of Morricone is not available on wikipedia and third-hand reports about them cannot be sourced. The scores are under copyright. The musical sketch in the English book or the Italian book, "Ennio Morricone: inseguendo quel suono — la mia musica, la mia vita," bears a resemblance to the musical quotation above. (The guitar figures in Morricone's score are similar and there are implied suspensions; but the original version of the sheet music score with the instrumentation used in the film does not seem to be available.) The text section in the current article, however, seems quite adequate at the moment. The edits concerning the image and caption are WP:POINTY; unlike the current accompanying text in the article, they do not seem to have been written to help general readers of wikipedia.

The caption combines a Breitkopf & Härtel annotated score with a vague France Musique reference to Morricone's theme. This doesn't seem properly sourcable or verifiable, just guesswork. Also Morricone's autobiographical book, published at around the age of 90, is informal so can't be taken completely literally (why should it be?). The problematic edit—an image of a one-stave fragment with a questionable caption—seems to be an attempt to insert unbalanced content "in the voice of wikipedia." Edits of this kind are disruptive (cf the recent report on WP:ANI about this talk page). As the edit history shows, while a large amount of properly sourced and relevant content is still being created on the article about BWV 543, for about a fortnight, endless arguments on the article talk page have continued on matters which have almost nothing to do with the article. The recent edits to the article at the moment have no WP:CONSENSUS and seem to be disruptive. Mathsci (talk) 10:46, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Report on WP:NOR

 * See listing at No original research/Noticeboard. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:10, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Interview/book
Other suggestions: --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:59, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) Use cite interview instead of citation or cite book for the Morricone/De Rosa interview book:
 * 2) Current article prose speaks about this book first as De Rosa's book, and then, after mentioning Morricone, it follows in the next sentence that it is his book, even implying that the composer did the writing. Could be formulated clearer (for which the "interview" format of the reference might help). Afaics De Rosa does the writing (Morricone does what every interviewee does: speaking, not writing), but otherwise it is Morricone's book (the raison d'être of the book is Morricone's words, as it is indicated in the title, not De Rosa's questions, nor his work of transforming the spoken words into readable copy).
 * Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words is a book, so it should be cited as a book. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:24, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That it is an interview, and thus should be cited as an interview is an as valid approach (within the limits of what is possible with cite templates for formatting the ref). See also the information page of the book which identifies the authors and collaborators as "interviewee", "interviewer" and "translator" respectively. Anyhow, whatever helps best to make the phrasing clearer about it being De Rosa's or Morricone's publication, and avoid the erroneous indication that Morricone did the writing. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:41, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * De Rosa interviewed Morricone for the book, but the work cited is not an interview. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:53, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * re. "... is not an interview" – I have no clue why you would say that... can you explain? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * These things are books, not interviews. They may contain interviews, but are not interviews. What is being cited is the book titled Ennio Morricone: In his own words, as written by De Rosa. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This might be in order then: The semantic discussion whether the book contains a collection of interviews or an interview spread over multiple sessions has little relevance to the matter at hand, I suppose. Also, the mode of publication (whether it is published in a journal or in a book) seems to have little relevance to the issues at hand, which are still that in current article prose it is called De Rosa's and in the next sentence Morricone's (which is suboptimal as article text), and suggesting that Morricone did the writing (which he didn't, and so is also confusing article text). --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * No, because that implies Morriconne is the author of the book, when he isn't. That's De Rosa. The article has this text In Alessandro De Rosa's 2019 book, ... Morricone describes the main musical theme for the 1970 movie Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion as an "ambiguous tango.", which makes it crystal clear the book is De Rosa's, but the words "ambiguous tango" are Morriconne's. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Then your problem seems to be with the cite interview template, where the "interviewee" is presented as the main author of any interview. That template's talk page redirects to Help talk:Citation Style 1 – maybe raise the issue there, if you think that it should be possible that the interviewer (and/or editor, publisher) of an interview be listed as its (main) author in an "interview" citation template. Again, my main issue is not with reference formatting, but with "... In his book he writes ..." (quoted from current article content, with my emphasis), where in the article's current context "his" and "he" in this phrase clearly refer to Morricone, being the only person mentioned in the preceding sentence. Either the book is De Rosa's (in which case the phrase I quoted should be reformulated), or it is Morricone's (in which case other parts of the paragraph, and the presentation of the reference, should be modified). Or, as a third solution, two authors may be indicated for the book (De Rosa and Morricone), in which case some updating of the prose also seems indicated to make the paragraph easier to follow for a casual reader (instead of the somewhat unclear phrasing it has now). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:23, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * If your issue is with the text, then address that, not the citation. E.g. . &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * See #2 of the two points in the OP of this subsection. How could I have been more clear there was an issue with the text? How to resolve it was dependent on the reference format (#1 of the two suggestions in the OP of this subsection): since that is sorted as "no change", then the direction on how to sort #2 was clear too, of course. Thanks for doing it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Those are were two completely independent issues. One concerns how to cite a work, the other is how to attribute a quote. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Mendelssohn and family
The Reger material is now more or less complete. So I am starting the Bach reception section on Mendelssohn. As early as 1812, versions of BWV 543–548 become available for purchase: the earliest seems to be through the Viennese publisher Josef Riedl (1788–1837). Mendelssohn acquired his copy in 1817 and performed it in St Paul's Cathedral, London. He had only 3 organ items amongst his regular repertoire: BWV 552 (the so-called St Anne from Clavier-Übung III), the Passacaglia BWV 582 and BWV 543, "The Great". Mathsci (talk) 15:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE quotation for section on Morricone film scores
The edit to the article prominently adding a musical quotation from the Prelude, BWV 543 (or is it BWV 543a?) is WP:UNDUE, WP:POINTY and WP:OR. The musical analysis of the prelude has not yet even been completely summarised from the 2003 book by Peter Williams (for the fugue, that has mostly been done). Proposed edits have been discussed ad infinitum on this talk page; similarly on the talk page of WikiProject Classical Music, where an attempt to delete the report by Headbomb was attempted; and in Headbomb's report on WP:ANI, where administrators commented on disruptive edits to the article talk page. I have agreed with Headbomb on his suggested modifications to the short Morricone segment. The recent edit on the actual article page, adding a huge musical quotation, was purely disruptive. The edit was a way of unbalancing the article in a controversial way.

The actual article concerns:


 * Sources used in BWV 543 and its variants, including high-resolution images, created by me on Commons. The sources describe in detail how the prelude for BWV 543a and BWV 543 differ in the beginning bars.
 * Musical analysis of BWV 543 (mostly from Williams and Jones).
 * Bach reception, from books of Stinson, Little, Anderson, et al, still on-going.

This is one of the most famous preludes and fugues of Bach. The segment on Morricone was an anecdote concerning a very well-known film composer. The edit pushing the undue and prominent musical quotation into the article "in the voice of wikipedia" was disruptive. It is quite out of keeping with the article itself.

I would also point out that, as explained in detail in the article, there are two completely different versions of the beginning of the prelude, i.e. BWV 654a/1 and BWV 543/1. So choosing which prelude is being used is arbitrary. It is WP:OR with reference to Morricone, etc. For the Morricone segment, any attempts to assess WP:CONSENSUS have been ignored. The edit here as well as previous edits arbitrarily tagging the article do not help readers of this encyclopedia. Mathsci (talk) 11:49, 30 October 2020 (UTC)