Template:Did you know nominations/Der Messias


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by BencherliteTalk 21:55, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Der Messias

 * ... that although Mozart adapted Der Messias, a version of Handel's Messiah in German with different instrumentation, for specific performances in Vienna in 1788, it is still played today?
 * Reviewed: to come
 * Comment: needs more expansion for the "played today" part

Created by Gerda Arendt (talk) and Francis Schonken (talk). Nominated by Gerda Arendt (talk) at 21:20, 24 September 2017 (UTC).
 * Please leave me out as a creator, I did some minor cleanup, tagged problematic explanations, and left some comments on the talk page (which have not yet been dealt with properly). --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:49, 24 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Not ready for DYK: as is this is more like a rip-off from the Messiah article, not making clear, as in not at all, why this version deserves a separate article, when there are already four five separate articles on this composition. One of the key points is that Mozart re-orchestrated the composition: how it was done is full of errors and inaccuracies, and *why* it was done, and *why that makes an important version* is still completely left out of the picture; similar for the German text version: the article doesn't make clear why this particular version of the German text was chosen, what its characteristics are, and to what effect. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:49, 24 September 2017 (UTC) (updated number of other existing articles on the composition, I had forgotten to include Structure of Handel's Messiah. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:37, 25 September 2017 (UTC))


 * I reviewed Template:Did you know nominations/Benty Grange helmet, fittingly also a work in progress. Francis, nobody said the article was ready, please leave it to a reviewer. I plan to fix and expand, but not right now. If you think the summary about Messiah (termed a rip-off) is too long, it could be shortened, but so far I understood you as requesting (in general) that an article has a certain completeness of its own. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Article needs fixing; needs to be clear in English in order to appear on the Main Page. Copyedit needed. MPS1992 (talk) 22:10, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * There's more content in German which I will try to get over tomorrow, and then call Corinne for help. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:22, 26 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest a hook of "... that Mozart adapted Handel's Messiah into German as 'Der Messias, changing the instrumentation?". Most people won't really care that he did it in or for Vienna, and the fact that he did it in the late 1700s is also rather unsurprising. I like the subject, though, it's interesting and hooky. The article needs some tidy-up, but it's really pretty good. HLHJ (talk) 14:47, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * It is surprising that what Mozart intended for just a few performances IS still played today. Actually it was, yesterday, when we sang it. According to a source, Mozart would expect us to make our own arrangement of the Handel music, not play his (now more than 200 years old). - Article: I started this like building a house, but now Francis took over to build a palace, which is unfinished. Should we wait? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:21, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Gerda, again, please stop leaving your innuendos about me in various places. I did not "take over". What a nonsense. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Suggest a better phrase if "take over" is no good translation of "übernehmen", - I meant it neutrally. What does innuendo mean? Sounds like nothing pleasant. - I confess that I had planned to present a small but "finished" article yesterday - for the performance. Right now, I can't show it to anybody with these one line headers with no content, not even talking about tags. Next time, how about doing construction in user space? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:36, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Please leave me out, I removed for the second time now. I did neither "take over" nor "übernehmen" or whatever else you want to imply. You did little work on the article lately (your latest mainspace edits were merely attacking tags without solving anything). Feel free to address the issues. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Most of the article as it appears today is by you. I feel more like leaving myself out from credit here. I think we made progress discussing. Please bring up suggestions for improvements on the talk, - edit summaries and tags are not transparent to other users. - As you may have guessed from the above, this article is now past my "due date", and thus at the bottom of my priority, - Reformation Day is the next deadline to meet, with many articles not yet written. So do with it what you please. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Feel free to withdraw this DYK candidacy, if that is what you're trying to say. As far as I'm concerned it is more a burden than being helpful. I'll post on the talk page when I feel like (like I did this morning), and I'll edit mainspace when I feel like (like when coming across the Franz version when looking for the Novello version at archive.org this morning). Re. "Most of the article as it appears today is by you": don't think so, I kept almost everything you wrote there, the table is about the same size as how you left it, with more or less the same content, and around 90% of the prose is still yours. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:22, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I would like to propose the question of withdrawing to the DYK project. It would help if you could tell us if you want to expand the single movements, and if yes, when, because at present, it looks like a construction site to me, not like an article. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Re. "when": without time pressure please, certainly now that your hidden agenda has expired (see below).
 * Re. "I would like to propose the question of withdrawing to the DYK project" – I don't quite understand what you mean: me withdrawing out of it? You withdrawing out of it? You withdrawing the DYK nomination? (to all extents and purposes the last two things would have the same effect, unless someone else turns up who wants, and is allowed, to take over). --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:02, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * (ec) Also, more than a bit disappointed to hear about the hidden agenda "due date" now: how many times did I suggest on the talk page to please take out the time pressure (if, like you said, you didn't have time to work on the article). Not once did you mention you were working for a date (yesterday), and that thus, knowingly or unknowingly, were trying to press that agenda through. Please don't do that ever again. If you have an agenda, be open about it, especially if someone else asks "please, can we take time pressure out of the equation?". --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:47, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Re. "... how about doing construction in user space?" – decline. Wikipedia is a collaborative project: collaboration works better in mainspace with the additional help of article talk space, than editors working on their own and then forcing their approach in mainspace without collaboration. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:35, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Nothing wrong with collaboration on an article in Main space, as long as looks like an article during the process. You could take the many almost empty headerss to user space, fill them, and bring it back, for example. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Again, decline: I was under the impression you were going to work on the article once you had time, so I added short sections (sections that were going to be there sooner or later anyhow), citing sources I had encountered, so that anyone could take it up. That is what I call collaboration. "Nothing wrong with collaboration ..." still sounds to me like not having collaboration really under your skin, I still feel no real conviction that you can work in that way, if it's only "nothing wrong with it", instead of really wanting to engage in it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * At some point in time, I decided not to write about each single movement, but only some of them, and handle other changes more summarily. Everybody interested in the details can look at the sources which go to the last detail of where slurs and trills were added. (Compare the German version.) I am afraid I repeat myself, feeling not understood, but try again: I planned a short DYK article, which it was when I nominated. What you do now is improving it towards GA. Fine, but that was not my goal, and not what I have time for, so please don't be disappointed that I don't help towards that end which isn't even clear for me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Re. "I decided": why did you never say so? How could others know when working collaboratively? You only suggested I should "delete", without explaining why. Also, your "I decided" (as if everything should bend to your decisions) is indicative of what I tried to say about missing something in the collaboration dynamic: if that is what you want, propose it, and I'll reply to it, not take an attitude of "my decision is what has to be implemented". --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:23, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * On the ground of the matter (if I translate your idea to a "proposal" instead of a "decision"): in de:Der Messias (Händel, arr. Mozart) I find the prose of the four bullets after "... zusätzlich einfügte.", starting with "Flöten werden eingesetzt in Nr. 2 ...", too terse. If translated to English there is the additional difficulty of either keeping the German movement names (makes it even more terse for an English-language reader), or using the translated titles (which would mismatch movement numbers and titles, because of the difference in numbering between the German and English versions), or using both (which would accumulate both previously mentioned issues). So, I'm not seeing it yet whether this would be the best way to go. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:01, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * My view is that while I proposed an article that may meet DYK standards, Francis calls it "substandard", has visions of his own, and has done a lot in that direction. Withdrawing. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Closing as withdrawn by the nominator. BencherliteTalk 21:55, 4 October 2017 (UTC)