Template talk:Infobox Bach composition

Restart
Proposal: move composer to above the image; combine current "genre" and "type" parameters into a single parameter that also appears above the image, on the same line as the composer (neither bolded); link BWV to the appropriate article in the header. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:32, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree to move composer & combine type & genre. What would be an example of "the appropriate article in the header"? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:42, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Read as (link BWV to the appropriate article) (in the header) - Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. In that case, I support that also. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me as an outcome on all counts. How do we want to combine "genre" and "type"? One way would be deprecate "genre" in the documentation and drop it once it's unused in the 168 transclusions. Moving "type" to display in the subheader would then be an easy job. --RexxS (talk) 19:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes; deprecate genre. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure: type is far more common than genre, given that most transclusions of this template are on articles for specific cantatas. There are AFAICT only six instances of the genre parameter. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I've created a trial version in Template:Infobox Bach composition/sandbox. You can try it out by editing one of the articles to change to and then previewing, rather than saving of course. --RexxS (talk) 20:19, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not bad. It's unfortunate, though, that many of the values are in lower case; for (sub)header text sentence case looks better. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:28, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed - I'd much prefer "Church cantata by J. S. Bach" to "church cantata by J. S. Bach". Let me have a think about a Lua module to fix that. By the way, the documentation for Template:Infobox implies that subheaders should not be bold - should I return the BWV line to normal font? --RexxS (talk) 22:54, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK - I have written a simple Lua module at that naively changes strings to sentence case (i.e. doesn't cope with Proper nouns)
 * if there's consensus for it, I can add it to the template sandbox for display of the "type" parameter. Any thoughts? --RexxS (talk) 23:46, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Bleh - it works for "church cantata" but fails for church cantata as I should have anticipated. I'll have another think about it. --RexxS (talk) 00:53, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Bleh - it works for "church cantata" but fails for church cantata as I should have anticipated. I'll have another think about it. --RexxS (talk) 00:53, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

First: thank you all for your efforts! Second: I suggest to have the second line, "BWV xy", the same font size as the third "... Bach", because the catalogue # is not part of the title, more a disambiguation. I suggest to link only Bach, as the most important information, not "BWV", not the type, - that is done in the lead ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:20, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * BWV should definitely be linked; type we could take or leave, but as they are almost all already linked, unlinking them would take much more effort without much benefit. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:26, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As a compromise, how about: (1) the BWV nnn line in normal font; (2) link BWV in that line - as the casual reader, for whom the box has most value, is the least likely to know what BWV means; (3) simply display "type" in the second subheader line, but sort out the capitalisation and linking on an article-by-article basis later as I'm too busy at present to write and test a Lua module that would guarantee to convert the text following a piped link to sentence case?


 * Could we all live with that for now? --RexxS (talk) 16:23, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I could live with the box, just not with the caps in the title ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:33, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, if we can use that image ;-) Nikkimaria (talk) 18:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I am sure we can use that image for BWV 999. Too sad that the music is lost, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:26, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

As it's been 10 days without any dissenting opinion, I've implemented the changes I suggested above from the sandbox. I've checked the first few articles from 'What links here' (clear browser cache & purge page to see changes) and they look OK to me. I even don't mind the uncapitalised "church cantata", etc. type, but you may wish to capitalise the word after  in each article. There probably isn't any rush. Just revert if you find any bugs and I'll try to fix them. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:34, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:43, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

instrumentation
I've been puzzled by lists of instruments preceded by the adjective "instrumental" (where I might expect "instrumentation"). Does this have a different function from "instruments"? Sparafucil (talk) 07:30, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

If we choose "Instrumentation", the matching term would be "Voices", right? "Vocal" was chosen to avoid the arguments about choir size, one voice per part etc. - "Instruments" and then "2 violins" would tell me that two violins are playing, while it should say there are two violin parts, which can be played by 2 people but also by 6 or more, depending on orchestra size. "Intruments" of "Instrumentation" and then "organ" would look strange, no? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:33, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I'd propose to merge this infobox with the more general Infobox musical composition. Don't see a reason why this separate one would be needed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:42, 19 August 2017 (UTC)


 * History: this came first. Differences:


 * Many Bach titles are long and German, therefore presenting a catalogue number above the image would be good to make a piece recognizable. This is often not a good position for catalogue numbers of other music.
 * A link for the instruments to Baroque instruments spares us the trouble (and a sea of blue) of having to link the instruments.
 * It has a parameter for cantata cycle, not used much because many critics want to keep infoboxes short, but could be.
 * Often merges are suggested for too few elements in a template, but this one has more than 200.

Therefore, mostly by the first argument, I'd not merge. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:12, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Re.
 * "long and German" — applies to many Lutheran hymns too: "Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns den Gotteszorn wandt", "Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der den Tod überwand", yet the hymn infobox was successfully merged to the Infobox musical composition some years ago: I'm sure it is better to treat concerns centrally. For instance, a "catalogue" parameter was recently added to the general compositions infobox, only it can't be used in this template. Other "long and German" article titles (no hymns, nor related to Bach) include "Auf dem Wasser zu singen", "Der Tod und das Mädchen", "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen", "Als Luise die Briefe ihres ungetreuen Liebhabers verbrannte", ... and do we have to exclude "long and Italian" like Agrippina condotta a morire or Dunque sarà pur vero or "Or che il dover – Tali e cotanti sono" (recognisability near zero)? ...or "long and English", e.g. Adagio and Allegro in F minor for a mechanical organ, K. 594? ... or Latin, e.g. Vesperae solennes de confessore (Mozart) and Vesperae solennes de Dominica (Mozart) — so, no I don't think this argument will stand if this merge is proposed more officially.
 * "Baroque instruments", again: something to handle centrally: Didn't Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann (etc) also use baroque instruments: so if that is available for Bach compositions, why shouldn't it be for compositions of other Baroque era composers?
 * "cantata cycle" parameter: I'd discuss a "cycle" or "series" parameter centrally, e.g. might come in handy if and when "Der Doppelgänger" gets infoboxed, or if and when Vltava (Smetana) would get a separate article.
 * "this one has more than 200" — do you mean parameters? ...then the template documentation seems to be hopelessly lagging behind: which is another issue with decentralised templates: too much effort to keep the documentation up to date: better to do that centrally.
 * --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:09, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I meant more than 200 transclusions, available from here, - sorry. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:24, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, too few transclusions is not an argument for this proposal, nor was it for the hymn infobox if I remember correctly, nor is it generally an argument for template mergers (I recall the ill/illm or the IMSLP/IMSLP2 mergers, which affected many more articles). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:47, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Here's the hymn infobox merge discussion: Templates for discussion/Log/2014 December 22. I opposed at the time, but seeing its subsequent success, and the successful merge of far more complex and/or widely used templates (ill/illm, IMSLP/IMSLP2) I think there's a benefit here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:36, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Add NBA and BC references
Proposal: add NBA volume and  BC work number. The NBA is (presently) the most reliable complete edition of Bach's works, a vital source of critical information for Bach researchers and performers alike (read Bärenreiter's presentation and catalog). Similarly, the BC is a systematic catalog of Bach's works which was intended to supersede the traditional (and research-wise obsolete) BWV; it has become an especially informative means of ordering the Cantata production, at least in research settings (read Rifkin's review of the opus). Both the NBA and the BC are being used in different contexts as ways to reference a single Bach work (cf. Listing Bach's compositions), and the NBA number in particular is generally used to direct the reader to the work's state-of-the-art score and commentary; however, as of now, the quickest way to access this information is through searches on external websites such as bach-cantatas or this very long table on IMSLP, or similar Wikipedia catalog summary pages. I think adding these to the infobox would help, since it would make this information readily available on a work-by-work basis. --Giobrach (talk) 12:12, 16 January 2019 (UTC)