Talk:Schenkerian analysis/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 13:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Starting first read-through. More soonest. Tim riley (talk) 13:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry to say that this article needs a lot of work before it satisfies the GA criteria. It is well written, and very interesting, but it is poorly referenced. There are whole paragraphs without a single citation in:
 * Goals
 * Harmony
 * Counterpoint, voice-leading
 * Ursatz
 * The fundamental line
 * The arpeggiation of the bass and the divider at the fifth
 * Techniques of prolongation
 * Voice exchange
 * First order neighbor note
 * Articulation of the span from I to V in the bass arpeggiation
 * I–III–V
 * I–IV–V or I–II–V
 * I–II–III–IV–V
 * Interruption
 * Mixture
 * Transference of the fundamental structure
 * Legacy and responses

In the remaining paragraphs there are many individual sentences that also lack citations.

The Good article criteria require that material is verifiable. I have no doubt that the opinions and technical points in the article are faithful reflections of material in your listed sources, but you need to say inline which source each comes from.

There are other objections, such as whether the article is supposed to be in American or English spelling, but they can wait until the key matter of the referencing is addressed. I am putting the article on hold for a week to give time for this to be done. – Tim riley (talk) 16:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your interest in this article. I began adding references as you suggested. This led me also to displace several of them: my usage had been to give references immediately after quotations, if any, while in fact they also concerned the paragraph as a whole; displacing them to the end of the paragraph makes things clearer.


 * I must confess being puzzled by Wikipedia's position concerning "original research". Even fully referenced, an article like this, summarizing and vulgarizing about four thousand pages by Schenker himself and a Schenkerian literature that may count hundred thousands of pages, seems to me an original research already by its very existence. This was my reason to think that the result was good and, therefore, to imagine that it might be recognized as a GA in Wikipedia. But I may very well be wrong on this point, and the subject matter may be too complex anyway to ever form a GA.


 * I have a slight problem with the "Legacy and responses" section, because it is a remnant of an earlier version of the article. I feel very uncomfortable removing the work of others and I do not consider this article my property, even if in its present state I wrote most of it. I will reconsider this section, unless its original author wants to review it himself (some of his or her statements refer to things unknown to me, about which I'd like to know more). But the history of this article is way too complex to allow me to find who wrote that section...


 * As to English vs American spelling, this is a matter that fully escapes me (English is not my mother language). If it merely is a matter of choice, perhaps American English would be the best choice as most of the literature is American. On the other hand I appreciate your concern for English English. My problem is that I cannot enough differenciate the one from the other.


 * If you think that the way to transforming this into a GA is too long, just tell me. My concern mainly is that the article be good, but I realize now that Wikipedia's categorization is not merely about quality in the ordinary sense.


 * Thanks again for your interest. -- Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No, really, if I thought this article had no chance I'd have failed it immediately. But it is a very fine article and definitely of GA quality provided the citation problem is rectified. There are minor tweaks needed ("neighbor" or "neighbour" - both are used) but I see no problem of original research as Wikipedia understands it. Boiling published sources down to an encyclopaedia-size article is what we are all about. Of course there is an element of interpretation entailed in that process, but what we look for is as neutral an interpretation as is humanly possible. It is only the lack of citations that prevents the promotion of this fine piece of work. If I may add a personal note, as a contributor to many WP classical music articles, I have never got the hang of Schenkerian analysis, and this excellent article has helped me considerably. I hope very much you will find time and inclination to undertake the task of adding the many citations needed. I'd be happy (and I don't think it would be ultra vires as the GAN reviewer) to run an Anglophone eye over the prose to check for UK/US inconsistencies. To write such an article in a language not one's mother tongue seems to me a superb achievement. If you would prefer to take more time about adding the citations, we can conclude this present GAN and you can renominate the page when you have done. Either way, I expect to see the article recognised as a GA in the not-too-distant future. Tim riley (talk) 20:13, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Did you have a look at the article as it is now? I added quite a few references and I am somewhat at loss to see what I could add -- unless in the "Legacy and Response" section, of course, for which I need to do some research, and probably some changes. It would be somewhat exagerated, I feel, to have a at the end of each sentence.
 * Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 08:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Tim, and Hucbald: There are more problems than that. Some of those citations are not proper citations at all. For example: "The analyst is expected to develop a "distance hearing" (Fernhören),[6] a "structural hearing".[7]" FN7 merely mentions Salzer's book in toto. Having read it three times, I do not believe that Salzer ever says that Schenker required the analyst is expected to develop "a" structural hearing. It's the other way round: Salzer uses Schenker's concepts to help students develop structural hearing; he doesn't use structural hearing to help his pupils do Schenkerian analysis.

The article in its present form is overloaded with editorializing. For examples:
 * "The theory of the fundamental structure is the most criticized aspect of Schenkerian theory: it has seemed unacceptable to reduce all tonal works to one of a few almost identical background structures. This is a misunderstanding: ..."
 * "One fascinating aspect of Schenkerian analysis is ..."
 * "The most interesting case is when ..."
 * "Even though he never discussed them at length, these elaborations occupy a very special place in Schenker’s theory. One might even argue that no description of an Ursatz properly speaking is complete if it does not include IV or II at the background level."


 * (And that last one makes my jaw drop. There are pieces with no predominants at all!)

As for the Legacy and responses section, I don't think you need to fear to improve it, Hucbald. It has been tagged for expansion for over 5 years, is improperly cited, and contains stuff like "the fierce philosophical opposition between Oswald Jonas and Felix Salzer set the stage for a conservative–liberal split among Schenkerians that persists to this day". I would say go ahead and make something better. The article would hardly be complete without adequate coverage of the legacy.

There is still loads of original research. For example: "Linking the (major) triad to the harmonic series, Schenker merely pays lip service to an idea common in the early 20th century.[10]" FN10 reads "The same link is made, for instance, in Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre, Wien, Universal, 1911, 7/1966, p. 16." That is not justification for saying "... merely pays lip service ..."

Citations are inconsistent as whether they are given in full in the footnotes or refer to the references. Those in the footnotes are presented inadequately: no ISBNs even for books that have them. No authorlinks or journal links. No doi's or links to abstracts ...

Sometimes the tone lapses from encyclopedic into lecturing. For example: "Schenker's project may be compared with that of Gestalt theory, contemporary to his theories, and, more genreally [sic], which the development of phenomenology and structuralism.[8]" You can say that in a lecture if you want, but in an encyclopedia (tertiary source, remember) you can only say "... has been compared ...", and only if your sources really make those comparisons. But perhaps, unless you're going to elaborate on what the comparisons tell, it's not quite nice to raise the subject in the first place, since many readers will be left behind by a sentence like that. --Stfg (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * (P.S. Hucbald, although it isn't relevant to this GA review, perhaps I can help you on the Original Research policy. When you say "Even fully referenced, an article like this, summarizing and vulgarizing about four thousand pages by Schenker himself and a Schenkerian literature that may count hundred thousands of pages, seems to me an original research already by its very existence", you are using the words original and research in their everyday senses, whereas the Wikipedia term has a specific meaning that is defined in the opening paragraph of the policy page No original research: we aren't allowed to "advance a position not advanced by the sources". We are, of course, positively mandated to research the sources to discover what position they advance, which we then ourselves advance by citing them. One last point: your use of "vulgarizing" worries me. It would be vulgarizing if we were to pretend that readers would gain a comprehensive understanding of S.A. just by reading the article, when obviously they won't. But an overview that avoids that pretence is not a vulgarization, surely?) --Stfg (talk) 18:47, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I am most grateful for your comments. I think -- and I say so without animosity nor regret -- that my nomination for this article as a GA should be removed. Not that it won't reach the standards, but because I don't want it to. I am perfectly aware that the article is full of personal opinions (let's call them "original research" if you want, although I trust that they are for the most part documented in Schenker's own writings). I am fully satisfyed with what you wrote, that "this excellent article has helped [you] considerably". I would hate to edulcorate it, removing precisely all that helped you, merely because of Wikipedia's policy. I don't think that the article (or what I wrote in it) ever advances "a position not advanced by the sources", at least not by the primary sources, i.e. Schenker's own writings; it does advance ideas that may not be found in (American) secundary sources, though. But I can't share Wikipedia's conception of an Encyclopedia as "tertiary": happily for us all, this was not Diderot & d'Alembert's conception! I don't think it possible to convey "a comprehensive understanding of S.A.", something that nobody ever achieved (even not Schenker himself); I trust that "vulgarizing" means "making accessible by the people" (latin vulgus) and that is what the article achieved, at least in your case. I am content with that, more happy, as a matter of fact, than by any recognition or the article as a "GA" by Wikipedia's standards.

I began rewriting this article following a suggestion made by the American Society for Music Theory that "specialists" should see to the quality of the Wikipedia articles. I don't know now whether it was a reasonable suggestion, but I am glad to have helped produce the article as it is. I have been teaching Schenkerian analysis for many years (but not in the United States and, therefore, not subjected to some American misconceptions), and the article is an indirect result of that teaching. I'll leave it now to live its own life on Wikipedia, until anyone feels it necessary to improve or merely to correct it. In the meanwhile, it may still help people unterstand S.A. (And, for my part, I have enough possibilities to make it available on Internet otherwise.)


 * PS.
 * -- I am perfectly aware that there are many tonal pieces without predominant chord. I think, however, that they do not form an Ursatz properly speaking, i.e. that they do not completely, "structurally" affirm their own tonality.
 * -- I trust that by titling his book about Schenkerian theory Structural Hearing, Salzer did mean that Schenkerian theory was about structural hearing; but I reckon that it is a personal opinion.
 * -- My reference to Gestalt theory is in response to an argument wether Schenker considered auditory perception. This discussion is active whithin Schenkerian circles that I know and should probably not appear on Wikipedia before it was settled in these circles. Yet...
 * -- Naturklang does not seem to me synonymous to "primal triad", for reasons that should be (more or less) clear in Klang (music).
 * -- I am afraid I made a mess of several Wikipedia articles, but I regret none of it :-)).

One again, this all said without any animosity nor any regret. I enjoyed the whole affair enormously, up to our present discussion. I leave it now to others (possibly to SMT members) to go on.

-- Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:57, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Hucbald, for that magnanimous answer. I don't accept that you have "made a mess" of this article, which, as I said above, I found really helpful to me personally. But I have to accept that Wikipedia's way of doing things differs a bit from your own modus operandi, and therefore this article is not going to be promoted to GA at this stage. I hope very much indeed that you will continue to contribute to Wikipedia. Such quibbles as one may have about referencing etc do not detract from the value of your contributions. You will be a loss to our project if we can't persuade you to keep editing here.


 * As for the formalities of this GAN, I shall reluctantly post it as "failed". – Tim riley (talk) 10:09, 14 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Tim. I cannot refrain thinking that a topic like this ("Schenkerian Analysis") raises fundamental questions about Wikipedia's "encyclopedic" policy. It would be almost impossible to reduce it to a quotation of (often conflicting) secundary sources, if the author were unable to make his own choices. And, obviously, if the author is to express personal choices, how can he do so anonymously? I am aware that these questions have caused a lot of debate on Wikipedia, and I can understand the position chosen by its editors. They, in turn, should be aware that this makes it extremely difficult to include matters that remain the object of (scholarly) controverse. The New Grove, for instance, did not take such a position and did not exclude controverse; but all its articles are signed. The whole problem, in the end, is of reconciling controverse with anonymousness.
 * Let me add that my references are more often to primary sources, i.e. to Schenker's own writings, which I read as much as possible in the original German. But Schenker left about 4000 pages of printed texts, and more than 100.000 (!) pages of manuscripts. Any summary of that is bound to be "personal".
 * I will of course go on "making a mess" of Wikipedia articles, especially on Schenker. By "making a mess", I merely mean "publishing personal opinions". If competent Schenkerians have other opinions, they are welcome, of course, and I'll read them with pleasure.
 * A last point: I will remove "primal triad", it is indeed a bit farfetched...
 * Thanks again, -- Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 11:43, 14 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Hucbald, I'd like to echo Tim's closing comment: I, too, very much hope you'll stay and use your expertise to help Wikipedia. And I hope your colleagues in the SMT will help too. Just one more comment, please. The way we handle legitimate controversy is by summarising all sides -- we don't take sides. That doesn't mean we have to publish fringe theories (and if we do, we identify them as fringe theories), but we don't omit mainstream views just because they are not our views. This is important, because we only have one article on any topic. The relevant Wikiedia policy is Neutral point of view (NPOV). It's one of the five core pillars of Wikipedia. Best regards, Simon. --Stfg (talk) 14:53, 14 November 2013 (UTC)