Talk:Triple Concerto, BWV 1044

BWV 1044 sourcing
Please see current discussion at Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Please discuss there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:22, 3 November 2016 (UTC)


 * No. This is the proper place to discuss sourcing for the article. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:32, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Problems with the article
The tagging relates to the current form of the article. The creator has provided no book or article that directly discusses this concerto in any detail: the article lacks any substantial properly sourced content. Such sources exist in profusion. Paragraphs and pages have been written about this work. It is not a composition that has been ignored by Bach scholars. Wikipedia policy requires that editors find those sources when writing an article.


 * The Concerto is discussed in another article where proper sources have been provided (book, article). No such sources have been provided here.
 * Content has been concocted using primary sources many of which come from the Bach archive. Creating a synthesis from those primary sources is original research and results in unusable and unreadable content.
 * This article is not written in grammatical English.
 * The incipits with German annotations and titles are not useful. The idea of musical quotations is not to help readers find their place in a 19th century volume (which is what these are for) but to give a reader—presumed to have a rudimentary knowledge of musical notation—information about the themes and motifs in the composition, not just the opening notes.
 * Sources date this concerto to 1729-1740. They're easy enough to find, but no effort has been made here.
 * The description of the movements is entirely unsourced. It is useless for the reader.
 * No reference to the Collegium Musicum.
 * There is no description of the prelude and fugue and no possibility of discovering anything about them on wikipedia
 * The most sourced sentence had no relation to this article. The sentence was also ungrammatical and has been removed. A discussion of the single movement might be relevant.

I know a list of reliable sources in books and journals that can be used for this article. Perhaps the creator of this article will attempt to find them themselves. Do they claim they do not exist or that their own synthesised content from primary sources is better than peer-reviewed content written by top Bach scholars? Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014–1019 was created as an exercise in an undergraduate music class. In its initial form, written by someone with no prior experience of editing on wikipedia, it was a reasonable effort. The same cannot be said of this article. Mathsci (talk) 16:15, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Apart from the third bullet above all of this belongs in the general discussion at Reliable sources/Noticeboard (see previous section above). --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:49, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

It belongs here not there. Please don't copy-paste any content that I write here anywhere else on wikipedia. You do not have my permission. If I wanted to post something, I would do it myself. Please don't do anything like that again. It's highly discourteous and obviously disruptive. Please reply here on the talk page of the article. After all that is its purpose.

Please take a little time—four or five hours should suffice—to gather some proper references. They exist and are relatively easy to find. In books, journal articles, etc. You could even look in a library if you cannot access material on the web. That could take longer. Mathsci (talk) 12:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I am still perplexed why the two articles on BWV 1044 by Eppstein and Wollny were omitted. There are several others. It was inaccurate to write that the last movement was recomposed by "adding tutti sections". In other published articles I can read about how the piece was recomposed by the addition of an opening ritornello, devised using the fugue subject. But here I have no idea how long the opening ritornello lasts, what form it takes, or even whether the fugue subject is transformed. (That is described quite well in some of the published articles.) In addition there is no wikipedia article on the keyboard prelude and fugue BWV 894 on which the first and last movements are based. That will further confuse the reader. The wikilink goes to a list. If the reader follows that link, they might feel that a hoax has been played on them. Mathsci (talk) 15:47, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

This talk page
Please use this talk page for discussing edits to the article. Using WP:RSN amounts to trolling, given what is under discussion (a poorly sourced and poorly written sub-stub). The main articles by Wollny (1997) and Eppstein (1971) are easy to identify. Having been told about their existence, it would be foolish to dismiss them. There is also a master's thesis by David James Douglas (written under Gregory Butler I think) which is useful for gathering references. The structure and method of composition of the third movement is discussed in detail by Ido Abravaya in "On Bach's Rhythm and Tempo". Given that the last movement is a fugue, there is not even a quotation of the subject. When was BWV 894 written? Surely David Schulenberg discusses it. Mathsci (talk) 10:48, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

FS is refusing to use the talk page of this article. I don't know why he has been unable write any coherent content about the first and third movements. Is it because this was just intended as a fork article, not intended to help the reader in any way? This work is mentioned in "Introduction to Bach Studies" by David Melamed and Michael Marrissen (OUP). They refer the reader to Eppstein (!971) and Wollny (1997) as the principal sources. That material is available on the web here. In particular they write:

"There has been much discussion on the origins and authorship of the Triple Concerto (BWV 1044), touching on a host of other issues as well. The most important studies are"


 * Hans Eppstein. “Zur Vor- und Entstehungsgeschichte von J.S. Bachs Tripelkonzert a-Moll (BWV 1044).” In Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preufßischer Kulturbesitz, 1970, 34–44. Berlin, 1971.


 * Peter Wollny. “Uberlegungen zum Tripelkonzert a-Moll (BWV 1044).” In Bachs Orchesterwerke: Bericht ilber das 1. Dortmunder Bach-Sympo-sion im Januar 1996, edited by Martin Geek and Werner Breig. Dortmund, forthcoming.

Before that they write:

"Because virtually no composing scores survive, issues of chronology are much more vexing for Bach’s instrumental works than for his vocal works. For studies that consider various genres, see"


 * Christoph Wolff. “Bach’s Leipzig chamber music.” Early Music 13 (1985): 165–75. Rev. in his Bach: essays on his life and music, 223–38. Cambridge, Mass. 1991.


 * Martin Geek. “Köthen oder Leipzig? Zur Datierung der nur in Leipziger Quellen erhaltenen Orchesterwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs.” Die Musikforschung 47 (1994): 17–24.

Mathsci (talk) 13:16, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

The prelude and fugue BWV 894 are discussed in detail in David Schulenberg's "The Keyboard Music of J.S. Bach"; the connection with BWV 1044 is discussed. All of that is available on the web: The Kilian/Breig NBA volumes are not available on the web; the lack of actual page numbers and the external links to purchasing pages suggests that many of the listed "sources" have not in fact been used for creating content. Mathsci (talk) 13:33, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Re. "... Michael Marrissen ..." – I suppose the spelling of this author's last name is Marissen. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:10, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * A typo. Please try to improve your completely inadequate reference instead of making trolling comments. Mathsci (talk) 11:51, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

The text from Melamed and Marissen was reproduced here. It made no statement about the content of these articles. Yet FS added something to the article which suggested something completely inaccurate. It did not help the reader at all and I have reverted it because it was so misleading. It read like arrogant and musically ignorant editorialising. I suggest that if Francis Schonken (FS) wants his editing to be taken seriously, he goes to a library and finds Wollny's text. Otherwise he is wasting other editors' time on wikipedia. Could he also please not mix up talk pages of articles between themselves or with noticeboards. It is disruptive and only creates confusion. One of the main purposes is to add high quality content for the reader. It is not for playing silly games. Mathsci (talk) 12:14, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Equally dodgy was the sentence about BWV 525–530, which was irrelevant to this article. One of the sources used by FS (Dirksen, 2010) states that BWV 525–530 were probably completed in 1731. Other more recent sources (e.g. an Urtext edition and an article Bach Perspectives X, "J.S. Bach and the organ") give different dates. But if FS was insisting on using that source, he was misrepresenting what it said. In any event the content was irrelevant. Other sources in the literature say that BWV 527/2 and BWV 1044/2 were probably both written as reworkings of some common lost composition. (It concerns the playability of the bass line on the organ pedal and workshop adaptations of trios.) Proper sources have been ignored so far. Christoph Wolff dates these works to 1729-1740 in 1985 and later in 1994. That is easy enough to summarise. It's equally easy to give the reason for that dating. But so far I see no discussion of the Collegium Musicum or any reference to Wolff. Is Wolff (1985, 1994) considered a poor source? It is carefully argued prose, in coherent sentences, written by one of the leading living Bach scholars. Mathsci (talk) 12:52, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

FS should learn to write proper content. He appropriated one of the sources I've produced above (like a magpie); but then seems his edits show no WP:COMPETENCE in using it properly. He has been given links to each of the three pages, but has made no attempt to summarise them in any coherent way. An editor with a reasonable knowledge of music—preferably including the ability to read and play music—who aims to communicate something to the reader, would find the original fugue subject (in BWV 894) and then the fugue subject as it appears in this reworking and produce short musical quotes and/or miniscores. It requires a mild degree of musical understanding: not very much. One of the sources I have produced has proper excerpts (from BWV 1044) and it's simple to make clean excerpts for BWV 894. It requires a modicum of musical literacy (knowing when the fugue subject ends) and a little initiative. Otherwise the article is not helpful to the reader. Mathsci (talk) 15:25, 5 November 2016 (UTC) The score was used as a source. Content was created using the score. That is not the way wikipedia content is written.

The date of 1731 for BWV 525–530 is not in agreement with Stauffer's Urtext edition nor the 2016 article he has written in Bach Perspectives 10. Why ediorialise in wikipedia's voice if it does agree with sources?

Why is there no discussion of the music taken for reliable sources?

Kilian's 1986 version of the score contains the 54 page critical commentary, according to Cambridge UL. Same for the organ works. Given that, I find it highly unlikely that any of the material from Kilian has been looked at in any form at all. Why then is it being used a source? Mathsci (talk) 19:59, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Re. "...appropriated one of the sources I've produced above (like a magpie)" – see WP:OWN: as this source is not "owned" by anyone (neither by an editor mentioning it on a talk page, nor by an editor using it in mainspace) this sort of language is divisive and not helpful for building an encyclopedia. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:33, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Re. "The structure and method of composition of the third movement is discussed in detail by Ido Abravaya in "On Bach's Rhythm and Tempo"." – I suppose there is no further objection to use this source in Wikipedia's mainspace. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:37, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Misleading original research
FS invented this piece of prose thinking nobody would notice it was his "original research":

the flute and violin share the melody and accompaniment, switching roles on the repeat of each half.

The statements here are simply not true. The flute and violin do not share the same melody. The movement is binary. In the first half the flute and the harpsichord play the upper keyboard and lower keyboard parts of the organ trio respectively with an accompanying non-melodic figure in the violin. In the repeat of the first half, the harpsichord takes the upper keyboard part and the violin the lower keyboard part, with the accompanying figures in the flute, adjusted to suit its range, so mostly an octave higher. In the second half, first time round the flute takes the lower keyboard part and the harpsichord the upper keyboard part; second time round, the violin takes the upper keyboard part and the harpsichord the lower keyboard part, but with octave shifts; the accompanying figures are treated as in the first half.

FS's self-concocted prose is unhelpful and inaccurate. If he doesn't understand the score, why inflict his misguided ideas on the reader in wikipedia's voice? I think that complaint applies to the whole article which seems to be POV-pushing: in wikipedia's voice he attempts to provide an editorial commentary on Bach scholars; on the other hand, he passes over Bach scholars like Wolff, Wollny and Stauffer. Why would anybody do that? I believe that any potentially useful content exists in appropriate sources. It takes a little bit of initiative to find the sources. Mathsci (talk) 22:30, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The quoted phrase can also be found at Keyboard concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. I propose to find a place where this phrase can be discussed for both articles. Of course the phrase is "self-concocted prose" (otherwise it would be WP:COPYVIO, not allowed in Wikipedia) – 's assumptions about who "self-concocted" the phrase are however erroneous. Please see WP:NPA. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:18, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Your edits were abysmal. The content you concocted yourself was devoid of musicianship and hhoplessly misleading. That is a not a personal attack.On the other hand the title "Triple concerto" is obviously incorrect and is not used in any modern Bach scholarship (or even on wikipedia). It might be a popular title, but this is primarily a harpsichord concerto. This is a fork article and I assume it will be deleted in due course. Mathsci (talk) 07:32, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

This fork article was created by copy-pasting and then faking references
The original unsourced content can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keyboard_concertos_by_Johann_Sebastian_Bach&oldid=630925493#Concerto_in_A_minor.2C_BWV_1044

It was not written by Fracis Schonken. Francis Schonken copy-pasted that content to this article page and rearranged the content. He did not change any of it, but reordered it without bothering to check any of it. However, he found a series of primary sources which he attached to various phrases to make it look as if the content was now sourced. That was not a responsible way to edit wikipedia and was unhelpful to the reader. The rightful place for any content is in the other article. I cannot imagine a lot being written. Since Francis Shconken has disregarded the sources, created a bogus title, produced low grade incipits and produced unreadable content, I am going to rewrite and source the original article (in a brief form). This is a Concerto in A minor for harpsichord, flute and violin, BWV 1044. It is not called a Triple concerto in the literature. Like the reworking of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, it is primarily a harpsichord concerto. I intend to put this article up for deletion because it is a fork and such an irretrievable mess. (What content there is can be sourced and summarised in the main article.)  Mathsci (talk) 08:08, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Copying what I am creating elsewhere
I found that a particularly disruptive thing to do. Unable to create coherent content himself here, Francis Schonken can only copy the process of creation going on in the main article. That process is more or less complete now. There are still one or two sources I might look at, but I don't imagine changing much.

I have reverted the content Francis Schonken created because it was parenthetic, telegraphic, totally incomprehensible and garbled. That content is written properly and carefully elsewhere (in the main article); so there is no need for some garbled aberration of it here. The source was already described on this talk page in some detail. But I provided a link to a pdf file there.

The word "trice" does not mean what Francis Schonken thinks it means. The word he might have meant is "thrice", but it is archaic. It is something the witches in Macbeth would use ...

The whole article here is written in a way that is unhelpful to the reader. I cannot imagine how any reader could find it useful in any way. They would be confused. A fundamental problem is that the article has almost no relation to music. The listing of sources is of no interest whatsoever and no historical perspective is given. No other wikipedia article on a composition by Bach is remotely like this one. It just looks like a set of arid and dusty footnotes.

The article differs radically from any other article on concertos by Bach. I am contemplating nominating this article for deletion because it is so poorly written in an irretrievable way; it seems to have been created as a fork article; and because, without a separate article on BWV 894, I do not believe that a stand-alone article is justified. Mathsci (talk) 17:26, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I suggest that portions of Keyboard concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach be split out into this article. Rationale:
 * Afaics none of the reliable sources list the Triple Concerto among the keyboard concertos. Even the less reliable sources, such as complete recordings of the keyboard concertos, don't include the Triple Concerto afaik. For finding content on the Triple Concerto in reliable sources, one gets an almost completely different set of sources as the set of sources on the keyboard concertos.
 * Whether BWV 894 has a separate article is unrelated to the issue of whether or not the Triple Concerto deserves a separate article.
 * The amount of content already in the Keyboard concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach section is disproportionately large to the treatment of the other concertos on that page. This certainly warrants a separate article, in WP:Summary style fashion.
 * Without prejudice about other concertos on that page possibly sooner or later meriting a separate article (BWV 1052 seems a likely candidate)
 * There is no prejudice about reusing content & references (with proper attribution), see Terms of Use ("You are free to ... Share and Reuse our articles and other media under free and open licenses", etc.); See also my comments in the section above. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:46, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

I disagree strongly. I have already explained the problems with the content you have created. You chose not to reply here to any of the comments. So quite clearly your suggestion is made in bad faith. What can be found in the article is just arid, dusty and irrelavant content concocted by you, useless to the reader and irretrievable. Certainly suitable for deletion.

The content I wrote elsewhere is a unity. Yet here are you are, trying to discuss content elsewhere that has not even been finished. Do you realise how disruptive that is?

It would seem at the moment that you are doing your utmost to prevent the ongoing process of that new content being created. Or have I missed something?

Given your misuse of noticeboards and your general disruptive conduct, at this stage it would be a net positive for wikipedia if you were topic banned from editing all articles and their talk pages related to Bach or his compositions. Unable to find sources or create reasonable content yourself, you set about bullying other editors who can. The only intention seems to be to create a poisonous atmosphere to stop editors like me from editing. Or have I missed something? Mathsci (talk) 07:13, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Re. "The content I wrote elsewhere is a unity" – Apart from it not being a unity yet (otherwise a in use tag there would make no sense), this reinforces my argument for the proposed transfer to this page: the content you contribute to Keyboard concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach, on the Triple Concerto, forms a unity in itself, but doesn't blend in with the descriptions of the other concertos at that page. These contributions on BWV 1044 disregard the unity of that page, and it would be better to transfer that unity here, leaving only a short summary of that unity (similar to the content presentations on the other concertos) there. I hope for your collaboration on this point.
 * That being said, whether the unity proposed by a single editor works for this concerto is subject to the discretion and scrutiny of all editors interested in the topic.
 * Re. "I disagree strongly" – are we to read this as implying that you strongly disagree with the Terms of Use quoted in the last paragraph of the comment you replied to? I've been wondering about this: as mentioned before you seem to have developed as strong sense of ownership, not allowing others to share and reuse whatever you contribute. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:49, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Given your inability to create content appropriate for a reader (except apparently by copying me), I cannot see how you can judge any of this. Trying to guess how I am going to edit is impossible. You created a fork article here which from my point of view is of no use to any reader. The content I wrote in the main article belongs in the main article. I wrote it for that purpose and it fits that article like a glove. I simply took the raw text and improved it in my usual way.

I don't see the point of this article when there is no article on BWV 894. You certainly haven't explained that. I suppose you could try to quote back what I've written in the main article (as if you had written it yourself), but that would be intellectually dishonest.

Of course you will disagree because that's what you do all the time. It's a knee-jerk reaction. You tried that on WP:RSN, but everybody disagreed with you.

Your comments here are designed to stop new content being created. Nobody can guess what I intend to do in the main article; I'm looking at 3 German sources in the Cambridge UL today, so even I don't know. How can you know? Certainly bullying another editor while they're in the middle of creating complex content using almost inaccessible sources is against every tenet of wikipedia. What on earth are you thinking of? Are you just bullying for bullying's sake? A kind of war machine? Mathsci (talk) 10:04, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Re. "I don't see the point of this article when there is no article on BWV 894. You certainly haven't explained that." – What is there to explain? The two are unrelated – see my answer above: "Whether BWV 894 has a separate article is unrelated to the issue of whether or not the Triple Concerto deserves a separate article".
 * Re. content creation – Please go ahead and create content, there is no impediment whatsoever to content creation (as said before). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:07, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Writing in this WP:IDHT way is not helpful. You are speaking as a loner, not representing wikipedia policy at all. Unable to create appropriate content yourself, you are doing your best to antagonise the editor who is still in the process of creating that content. That is an extraordinary thing to do: it is against every policy on wikipedia, just disruption for the sake of disruption.

You created this article as a fork to contain your own a self-concocted commentary on BWV 525—530 (an inaccurate atatement that was irrelevant to the article). That is clear from the initial way the article was created: unsourced content was copy-pasted here and rearranged and then fake sources were produced.One of the sources has not even been looked at (Kilian). The article was written does not serve any useful purpose for the reader. If a new article is needed, it is for BWV 894 and its companion pieces for harpsichord.

You were unable to create any coherent content related to the music; you made no effort to find sources—all you could do was copy what I found elsewhere. But the section in the main article—still in the course of being written—is a unity despite your constant WP:IDHT comments. As the creator I conceived it as a unity: it was completely divorced from what you created b the methods criticised on WP:RSN by all editor who commented. Nevertheless you seem to be trying your utmost to force your unacceptable standards of sourcing on others. That is to the detriment of wikipedia.

The amount of time you spend on wikipedia pages—agitating and misquoting wikipedia policy—is completely disproprtionate to the amount of time you expend on improving articles wih actual edits. Your proposal is purely disruptive and amde in bad faith. Unable to create content yourself in this fork article, you seem to be having some kind of emotional reaction the content has been improved in the main article.

I still have to get the three library books from Cambridge UL. As I say I have not finished writing the section in the main article. You can agitate here as much as you like with your misquotations of policy; but that does not help me use those sources. Can you please control yourself? Mathsci (talk)

Wollny's 1997 article
I am having problems with the brief text Francis Schonken has put together from diverse primary sources. His text contradicts recent articles written by actual Bach scholars.


 * I have looked at Kilian's 1989 critical commentary in the reference section in the library. It is a slim paperback sized volume on the concertos explaining different readings of the scores from various extant manuscripts. There is a brief discussion of the possible ways in which the work might have been composed, including questions of authenticity. The text of FS seems to be disjoint from that of Kilian. Given its inaccessibility and highly technical nature, it seems unlikely he has ever looked at it. Nevertheless he has used it liberally as a reference.


 * I have taken out the 1997 Dortmund conference proceedings wich includes the article by Wollny on BWV 1044. The dating and content seem completely at odds with FS's essay. His essay asserts "facts" in wikipedia's voice which are actually just competing conjectures; in addition what he has written does not seem accurate—just original research which ignores recent Bach scholarship. That can only confuse the reader.


 * I also took out the two thick volumes of the 2013 Handbuch published by Laaber and edited by Siegbert Lampe. These cover the orchestral and chamber music of Bach. The article on BWV 1044 spends considerable space summarising Wollny's article.

Mathsci (talk) 23:18, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Having read the account of Wollny, my view of Francis Schonken's recent edits on wikipedia is the following. Unconcerned with accessing any recent Bach scholarship, or deliberately ignoring it, he has attempted to use wikipedia as a means of simulating being a Bach scholar himself, comparable to Peter Wollny, the director of the Bach Archive. Francis Schonken does not have the necessary skills or musical background to interpolate content from bare or raw lists. That has resulted in unusable content. Nevertheless Francis Schonken has insisted that his original research is valid and has agitated on noticeboards to push that point of view; he has ignored advice given on WP:RSN and elsewhere about his very individual method of creating content; and he has threatened me when I have created content elsewhere using secondary reliable sources. His conduct in pushing this method of original research has been frustrating and exasperating. It has been without let up. When I read sources like Wollny's 1997 article (which I mentioned on this page a while back), I find it hard to believe that Francis Schonken has put himself forward as a rival commentator speaking in wikipedia's voice. That Francis Schonken wants to appropriate content created elsewhere to rescue this fork article—for which there appears to be no justification—seems like another of his time-wasting ploys to misuse wikipedia's procedures to cause disruption. It seems to have nothing to do with creating encyclopedic content to help and inform the reader. He is just pushing his own brand of original research, trying to force it on others. Mathsci (talk) 10:23, 10 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I have the article above. At the moment Francis Schonken is creating original research on the reception using primary sources. I just took a fresh look at the masterly article of Wollny that I still have out on loan from the university library. It contains an account of the reception written by an expert. Francis Schonken's self-concocted narrative is completely at odds with the article of Wollny. If Francis Schonken wants to write content on the reception of this work, he should use the existing secondary sources instead of forcing his own erroneous narrative on readers of wikipedia. Is there a reason why he has made no attempt to gain access to the article of Wollny? Is it just laziness? Mathsci (talk) 12:01, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You seem confused about primary and secondary sources, and how to use them in mainspace. I recall giving you some explanation about that in a now archived discussion, and am prepared to do so again if that would be of any help here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:37, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Merge from keyboard concertos page
Reboot. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)