User talk:Bajanorganist

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Thank you for adding. I don't understand your changes to BWV 565, though, and the straight brackets for a ref title are unusual. What does Ringk's copy mean? How sure is the date? - For questions, please ask here where I will watch. I try to avoid changing that article. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Reply
Hi Gerda, I'm not sure how to reply, hope this is the right forum.

I've made a lot of changes to the BWV 565 article as so much of it is incorrect, and - as an organist - I feel it is important that incorrect claims inserted for commercial reasons should be corrected. So, for example; the article incorrectly claimed that the date of the copy by J Ringk ( the only surviving 18th century copy of BWV 565) was estimated at between 20 years before and ten years after J S Bach's death in 1750. But elsewhere it correctly said that Ringk'c copy was dated, by analysis of the development of his handwriting, to c.1735. The latter statement is correct, so the first statement must be wrong.

How do we know that the latter statement is correct? - you can check it yourself. A facsimile of Ringk's copy is on the Wiki article. If you look at the tie beams joining groups of semiquavers, you can see that some are straight and some are curved. If you look at the angle of the note stems, you can see that they have a variety of angles to the vertical. These are typical inconsistencies found in the work of young copyists who invariably become consistent in such features after a few years' experience. We know that Ringk was copying music in 1730, so we can be pretty sure that this copy must be pre 1735. It cannot possibly be “ten years after Bach's death” as the article claimed, for a second reason - Ringk would then have had no access to a lbrary of Bach's music. The only reason he had access in 1735 was that he was then apprenticed to the organist J Kellner, who had in turn been a pupil of Bach and copied large quantities of his music for his own library.

Why does all this matter? Because the musicologist Peter Williams proposed that BWV 565 could have been composed by another organist after Bach's death, as an arrangement of an earlier Toccata for solo violin. This has led to a mini-industry of violinists recreating and performing their own version of what this “missing original” might have looked like. But this whole industry is seen to be a sham if Ringk had made a copy of the work, as an organ piece, in 1735, long before Bach's death. Hence the misleading claim in the Wiki article that Ringk's copy could be dated up to 10 years after Bach's death. The only basis for this claim is to protect the authors of violin “recreations”.

BWV 565 is big business, which is why the Wiki article is riddled with incorrect and misleading claims along these lines, and which is why I started updating It to reflect what can be proved to be true. But many of my changes seem to disappear after a day or two, so maybe this simply isn't worth the effort?

Bajanorganist (talk) 12:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC) Bajanorganist


 * This is the right forum for talk between you and me, but for talk about factual corrections of the article, the proper place is the talk of that article. Did you know that things don't "disappear", but editors make edits which you can follow in detail when you click on "View history" (top of each page, following "New section"). Once there, when you click on "prev[ious]", you can see the exact difference an edit made, for example this revert. When you want to change something, have a reliable source with it, - knowing that something is true is not enough. Don't do too much in one edit. - I remember that it's difficult in the beginning. - One more piece of advice: write something - however little - on your user page. Red there makes people suspicious ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Gerda, that's all very helpful.   I've added a user page and I'll try and find my way to the talk pages. Bajanorganist (talk) 01:53, 24 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the user page, I feel that know you a bit now! - Article talk is easy: click "Talk" in the top line, second from the left, in all Wikipedias, even Chinese ;) - This is true for articles and users. - I suggest that you start on the article page mentioning one thing that you found wrong, proposing a change, with a source. You don't have to format the source there (we'll help you in the beginning) but have to have one, like someone's book or journal, year, page. Online has the advantage of being easy to check, but others are fine if found reliable. It's the key to all in Wikipedia, - it doesn't matter if something is true (alone), it has also to have a reliable source. (See welcome, above.) I hope that some day you will move on to other articles, at least reading. You read much more on Bach than I did, I'm just a passionate singer. Please feel free to read the articles I wrote (look for Bach on my user page, for a start) and correct. Mathsci is another dedicated organist, btw. - Little formal thing: on talk pages, you intent one to the right under what you reply to. I did it in this thread. - Another: when you look at "View history", you get to "Revision history statistics", which in your case gets you to this where you can see the names of users who edited. You can lok up there background if you are interested. I'd not go to their talk for article problems, but to the article talk. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:09, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Gerda, all very helpful!  And keep up the singing! I hear what you say about sources, so what exactly do
 * I do when someone else deletes a reference to a new source?   To take an example, the start of the Wikipedia article says that BWV565 could be dated from as early as 1704.    The recent Organists Review article makes a well-argued case that it was probably written in 1703.   So I changed the date to 1703, inserting the reference, but that change has now been deleted.   What do I do next?  Bajanorganist (talk) 17:32, 24 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I saw, sigh. Perhaps, before anything else, read Talk:Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565/GA1, when the user who reverted hoped to receive Good article (GA) qualification for the article but failed. He put in a lot of effort, and I don't blame him for trying to keep that. AFTER reading: as said above, question just ONE item and offer a referenced alternative. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:50, 24 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Looking closer: both the last revert and the one before question Naeme as a reliable source. I can't tell. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:58, 24 November 2017 (UTC)


 * That gives me a problem; if I can't use Neame as the source, it's going to severely limit my contribution. So, I've read the notes about sources, and I think the problem must be that Organists Review articles are not normally peer-reviewed, and Neame is not an established academic.  But I could check - would it make it an acceptable source if they can confirm that this article was reviewed pre publication by a leading Bach expert?
 * I've checked, and it's not peer-reviewed, but it has been vetted by a number of experts.  So I've started a new Talk page to discuss whether there's a case for nevertheless including it - I'd appreciate your comments if you have time to read it!  Bajanorganist (talk) 16:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

COI?
Copied from Talk:Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565:


 * It appears the user Bajanorganist may very well be Neame himself, evidenced by his user page.--Galassi (talk) 16:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I don't see that: would recommend not to resort to such sort of aspersions. Nobody is required to "be" impartial (nor am I), but that is not the same as having a conflict of interest (WP:COI). The editing should be as impartial as possible: to make the distinction clear: when I write about chocolate in Wikipedia my editing is best when nobody can fathom from my editing approach whether I am actually partial to chocolate or not (see WP:NPOV). Assuming that I'm not in the business of selling chocolate (which would be a COI, for which the COI rules would apply). --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:51, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * His self-intro is too similar to Neame's LinkedIn page. And it also contains a strong POV statement re this article.--Galassi (talk) 17:39, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

are you in any way involved in the creation of the Neame article published in Organists' Review? See Conflict of interest if unsure why I ask this question. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:10, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No, though I have recently corresponded with Neame (via Organists Review) to check who had reviewed his article.  I don't think this creates a conflict of interest, does it? Bajanorganist (talk) 21:10, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I have no problems then, and suppose we can close this discussion – and concentrate on content (of the Wikipedia article) at Talk:Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:16, 27 November 2017 (UTC)