User talk:Chandlerhall2/Winchester Troper

Instructor Feedback (First Draft)
You've made great progress! At this point, I think the main ares on which to focus are issues of organization, clarity, and writing style.

Lead

 * Consider qualifying the first sentence, "of liturgical plainchant and polyphony" to include the organum.
 * Be sure to include hyperlinks to other Wikipedia articles for technical terms like Mass, Proper, Ordinary, troopers, graduals, and antiphoners if such articles exist. Do so also for historical figures like Ætholwold and Swithun.
 * The penultimate and final sentences jumps out because you haven't explained what organum is yet. Consider rewriting: "Corpus 473 contains the most significant and largest surviving collection of eleventh-century organum [insert hyperlink] (i.e. polyphony). This polyphonic repertoire is unique to that manuscript." [Delete last sentence unless you think it's really important for the online function of the lead.

Manuscripts

 * "This renders the document as an anachronistic manuscript because it reflects practices different than those at the time it was copied." This sentence jumped out at me because, by this measure, many manuscripts would have been "anachronistic" several decades after their creation. Consider a more neutral term for Bodley 775, e.g. "retrospective."
 * "Assumed political control" sounds a bit anachronistic itself - try something more direct like "William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, thus strengthening its ties with northern (?) France."
 * "Has stuck" is a bit colloquial, even for Wikipedia. Otherwise I like the last paragraph as it reminds us that our understanding of medieval sources is so often colored by the work of 19th-century scholars or antiquarians. But I wonder if it should go first in this section, not last.

Physical Description

 * "It is possible" and "may have been" is redundant: pick one to signal that we're not sure.
 * Change: "makes this impossible" (always aim for more direct formulations)
 * I wonder if "composed" is the best term given that you seem to be talking about different ways of improvising that have been fixed in notation. Think about this and we can revisit the issue at our meeting next week.
 * Clarify what you mean by "simplification"

The Tropes

 * I don't believe "tropary" is a word - maybe this is just a typo. Consider defining "troper" in the lead.

The Tropes

 * Delete "both" before "proper" (it's redundant)
 * Revise: "In Corpus 473, different genres are grouped into different gatherings." (Can't think of a way to voice the passive voice here.)
 * In general, don't use nouns as adjectives. E.g. "Introit tropes for St. Swithun" rather than "St. Swithun Introit tropes."

The Organa

 * You need to do a bit more work explaining up front what organum is, i.e. what is an organal voice and what is a principle voice? Don't leave this until the end.
 * I think the second paragraph is a bit long and too into the weeds. I suggest you streamline it.

General Comments on Writing

 * Beware of repeating key words in close succession and avoid the passive voice!
 * Spell out #'s < 100.Bdbrand77 (talk) 19:40, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback
You've made an excellent start and there's lots to talk about! The six-part structure of the article works well: I wouldn't change a thing.

Manuscripts and the Winchester Troper
Your expanded and updated discussion is already a major improvement, but the prose could be streamlined a bit. I will make some edits in your sandbox to show you what I mean. Also, beware of using anachronistic terms. For instance, "urtext" is very much associated later repertoires, not the Middle Ages. Here "exemplar" or "model" works better. Along the same lines, is it really accurate to call the Winchester Troper a "repertory"? I think of it as a book, even if it's in fact two books! And finally, I wonder if you could highlight the scholarly disagreements about the dating and authorship. I'll include an edit that illustrates this point.

Overview of Contents
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, the medieval musicologist in me gets very excited about tables outlining the liturgical and musical contents of the two manuscripts. On the other hand, I worry that it might turn off a lay reader. Give some thought to this. It might be that you can describe the contents in prose w/o giving technical information about gatherings and folios.

Heading text
I agree that the current discussion of the Quem queritis drama implies that this is more significant than it actually is. If you do discuss specific pieces, I suggest you focus on ones that really relate to the English context of the troper (e.g. the Easter chants cited by Rankin; or chants for local English saints - are there any?). Bdbrand77 (talk) 22:35, 14 November 2020 (UTC)