User talk:Jerome Kohl/Archive 12

♯ is OK, but ♭ is not?
Hi, there is a mixture of characters and templates on the Oboe page for flats. All I did was bring them into line with only characters. Would you please undo your reversion? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:54, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I was unaware that there was a mixture—all that I saw in your edit was the replacement of template characters with numerical codes (Unicode? HTML?). It could take some while to find the guideline, which ought to be somewhere in Manual of Style/Music, though it may actually be in a subsidiary article, but my recollection is that these templates are strongly preferred over other methods of displaying music characters. I have had personal experience with trying to insert Unicode symbols, only to have these templates substituted by editors who tell me they display nothing but gobbledy-gook on some browsers, which is why I no longer use them. If I discover that things have changed, then I will gladly revert my edits. Otherwise, I plan to go after the remaining Unicodes in the "Oboe" article and replace them with the appropriate templates.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * OK. A quick shufty in WP:Manual of Style/Music produces two somewhat contrary results. First, right near the beginning, in the section "Accidentals", it says:
 * "Use either the music template flat (♭) and sharp   (♯) symbols or the words flat and sharp."
 * However, further down, under "Images and notation", subhead 6, it says:
 * "The sharp (♯) and flat (♭) signs are and, respectively. A natural (♮) can be entered with"
 * These appear from their syntax to be XML codes or something similar, which in turn call Unicode characters. I infer from the placement of the earlier entry that it takes precedence for editing the main text of the article; the later entry with the XML code appears to refer to the internal workings of examples, though this is not absolutely clear to me. I think perhaps a question on the appropriate Talk page is in order here but, in the meantime, I propose using the templates in the Oboe article, and only changing to the XML codes if the discussion indicates that my logic is faulty (in which case, I shall propose changing that guideline section titled "Accidentals").—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:20, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I've just dug into the back of the template. The template maps sharp to &amp;#266f; natural to &amp;#x66e; and flat to &amp;#x266d; which are the very codes I used. Some redundancy somewhere in there and I'm not sure which way to go. Maybe I'll just go back to Wikisource and continue making the 1900 edition of Grove available. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 02:24, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
 * You're a better man than I, Gunga Din! I wouldn't know where to begin digging into the way those templates work. As far as I am concerned, they are magic black boxes that do good things, though I always admire more the contraptions that show their inner workings on the outside than the ones with slick outer housings. It sounds to me as if there is no functional difference, then, and I certainly have got no axe to grind about this. I'm just trying to follow the directions in the Manual of Style. It will be interesting to see where the discussion I initiated on the Manual/Music Talk page leads.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

July 2013
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 * "The smoky one smokes through [or for] smoke", including the possible equivocus "par fumee" - "Smoker who smokes 'parfumee' smoke"), in which the singers appear to get completely lost, singing
 * Gloucestershire, England 20–22 February 2006; CD recording, 1 disc, stereo; AVIE AV2089 ([London]: Avie Records, 2006)  #1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19: ("Basile", "Calextone qui fut", "Corps femenin", "En l'amoureux

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 * * Bartók:  Out of Doors, Piano Sonata, Popular Romanian Dances, Suite op. 14, Improvisations op. 20.

Olivier Messiaen at FAR
I have nominated Olivier Messiaen for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Toccata quarta (talk) 05:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Footnote Format
I just noticed you'd changed the formats of the footnotes in the revisions to the Stravinsky Violin Concerto article. I'm wondering why you think the (Name. Year. page) format in line is superior? In fact, I find all those numbers to be extremely distracting when trying to read the article. Furthermore, with the "ref" system, one only has to hover over the footnote number to get the complete citation (if one wants it during reading the article) whereas with the "inline" system, one is forced to drop down to the References and scroll back up any time one wants to see what the citation actually is. I have to say that I think the "ref" system is vastly superior. Yankeecook (talk) 17:16, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There are several reasons why I find parenthetical referencing superior to footnotes, not the least being that, exactly as you say, I find "all those [blue] numbers to be extremely distracting". However, I did not so much "change the formats" as "restore the established formats", which had been changed without explanation or obtaining consensus from the editors active on that page, per WP:CITEVAR. BTW, there is a template that will do for inline references what you describe for footnotes, and eliminates the triple-redirect problem you get with short-citation formats in the footnotes, namely: annoying little blue number links to a short citation, at which point in turn "one is forced to drop down to the References and scroll back up any time one wants to see what the citation actually is", because there is no provision in the templates to embed one link inside the other. However, that template enforces one particular type of so-called "Harvard referencing" format, which does conform to any of the standard formats with which I am familiar (Chicago, MLA, APA, etc.). If it were provided with options to allow correct formats, I would embrace it with enthusiasm, since it would solve both the problems with parenthetical referencing you note and the even greater ones I see with footnote referencing.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain. I'll respect your preference. Yankeecook (talk) 22:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Aeolian mode
Hello, Some days ago you've reverted an addition I made on the Aeolian mode article where I had created a link to the Not a Second Time page dedicated to the song by the Beatles on the reason that there was no source. Well, the link precisely directed to the source. When one reads the Not a Second Time page it appears that half of the text explains how the song developpes into an aeolian mode. So which is which and are some changes to be considered?  Yours, LouisAlain (talk) 07:15, 9 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia cannot be used as a source for itself, according to WP:CIRCULAR, WP:Reliable sources, and Reliability of Wikipedia. If the article in question cites reliable sources, then those sources should be quoted directly, rather than sending the reader to a potentially unreliable Wikipedia article.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:49, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Civilización o Barbarie
Hello, I would like to ask you to please remove the template message regarding notability. --Goliath613 (talk) 03:56, 11 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Jerome Kohl has no obligation to fulfill your request, if the concerns regarding notability still persist. Besides, the article as it stands is a total disaster. Toccata quarta (talk) 12:54, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I certainly know he has no obligation to fulfill my request - or any request of any other user anyway. Still, I'm quietly waiting for Jerome Kohl's answer. Whether or not the article is a total disaster, I'm sure he is perfectly able to decide about it. --Goliath613 (talk) 15:59, 11 August 2013 (UTC)


 * What are your reasons for making this request? More specifically, what sources currently provided in the article have I overlooked that support the idea that its subject is notable?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * There is for example a quotation from Harry Halbreich, published in Le monde de la musique --Goliath613 (talk) 20:12, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree that this helps. So does some other material added since I placed that template, which I have now removed. That said, I have to agree with Toccata quarta that the article remains in need of extensive work.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you. --Goliath613 (talk) 04:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Mr Kohl, I wonder if I could ask for your input at Talk:Civilización o Barbarie. There is an ongoing content dispute over this article and seems to believe that you are the ne plus ultra when it comes to matters of modern classical music. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 10:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I am flattered that Hammero should think so highly of my expertise! I had only glanced briefly at the discussion, which seemed to focus mainly on style and copyvio issues. However, I shall look more closely now. Thanks for calling my attention to this matter.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:09, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Bernardo Kuczer

 * Mr Kohl, hi. I would like to ask you to please be as kind and have a look again at the biography page of Bernardo Kuczer and the discussions in the talk page. You have truly helped with the Civilización o Barbarie one. wikiDan61 has set there a tag or banner (?) which puts a shadow of suspicion or "bias" on the WHOLE content of the article. I think this is wrong, and i think it offends unnecessarily the honour of the artist. I think you yourself have corrected things in there and did not seem to find it so "untrue" or bias, as to set such a banner. I have asked wikiDan61 to sate with detail where the problems are, also, so as to try to address them, but he refuses to do so, stating that "a vast amount of detail" is insourced. If the detail is the problem why put everything in doubt then ? If one reads other biographies in the Wiki one realises that with such a conception almost every one would need this banner. On the other hand, I find the form in which he has put the word NOTE, appearing within the sentences, very disturbing since it does not help a fluid reading. I think this needs not be. Perhaps is this permitted, but it certainly does not seem to be a Wikipedia standard. I would change it myself but do not want to appear to be destructive, etc. thanks a lot. --Hammero (talk) 16:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello, Hammero. I am glad that you find helpful my (very slight) contribution to the article on Civilización o Barbarie article. I have refrained from making any but the most basic changes to the article on Kuczer at this point, for several reasons. First, I know nothing at all about this composer; second, other editors (particularly WikiDan61) seem to be taking appropriate action to improve the article; third (and finally), in my experience all newly created biographical articles go through an initial period of turmoil, in which the form and content are reshaped many times, often with some disagreement of opinion amongst the primary editors. Since I do not regard myself as one of these principle editors in this case, I have preferred to let more expert minds work out their differences as far as possible before getting involved myself. Now that it appears there may be some communication difficulties, I shall have a look and see if I can help. On the whole, I prefer (as you seem to do yourself) specific criticisms rather than general complaints. However, every case is different, so I shall have to see what I find when I read the article and its talk page in detail.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:50, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Mr. Kohl, thanks for taking notice of my help call. I think when you state: I know nothing at all about this composer... you somehow have said it all. But the reports seem to give to understand, there is something in there...

He and his music have been very elusive, thus some difficulty of documenting with the precision needed for the WIki. I wonder if something might be found in the archives of Perspectives. Although, looking at the times in which his concerts seem to have happened, I guess the reporters were already having some good wine or asleep... --Hammero (talk) 18:14, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hallo again Mr Kohl. I have left you a message with an answer at your question regarding IMD inside the CoB page. If you look at the history of the page, and read the Hammero talk, it was wikiDan61, who retained the citations without text (!) after the notability question had been solved. I find that pointless. Since, the fact that such magazines mention Darmstadt is of no surprise at all or unusual (the fact that Kuczer is not mentioned in the articles, can have to do with the "wine question" I mentioned earlier...) . Having them there, I thought they might be interesting (but retaining some of the text (see last version of Goliath613 for the full text)), since it is constantly being said in the wiki, that all of these seems to be written "eher für die Liebhaber als für die Kenner", that know nothing about what Darmstadt means... (there is not even an article on the Kranichsteiner prize in the English Wiki) and thought they document the "context" (1984) in which Kuczer got his notoriety. But I would agree to delete the three of them without any problem. If you look at the first version of Goliath613 he did not put citations of critics, but the one from Halbreich, which the artist found to be "poetic". I myself send them down to the footnote space... When you asked for the notability question, we asked the artist if he had any useful material. He had to look under his roof (apparently in some old box...) and sent us some photocopies. Mostly so called Presse Spiegel (sent to him from Darmstadt or the ISCM etc.) with snippets of articles. He does not seem to care much for this things... From his point of view, you can burn them all if you want or think they are not well documented... I think this artist has never searched for and does not need "propaganda" here. Only good faith... --Hammero (talk) 22:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)


 * told you ! "... Please serve more vegetables at meals. Will I return to Darmstadt in 1986? You bet I will"  Perspectives of New Music, Spring/summer issue 1985, Seattle--Hammero (talk) 23:04, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

About Classical Composer
I think the definition of classical music is up to the perception of the individuals. There are so many songs which are composed by him are classical. I leave it to you to decide. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ddineshk (talk • contribs) 06:08, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Neither Jerome Kohl, you, or any other Wikipedia editor decides on this matter—see WP:OR. Toccata quarta (talk) 06:14, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

aus Licht
I thought of you! See my talk for other thoughts, warning: aus Dunkelheit. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for calling my attention to this, Gerda. Unfortunately, you had the date slightly wrong. The premiere was on a Wednesday (appropriate to the opera), which also happened to be Stockhausen's birthday: 22 August. I have corrected this on the DYK page. Of course there were also performances on the 23d, 24th, and 25th, and the Helicopter Quartet performances got better as time went on (both the string quartet and the pilots were a bit anxious on the premiere night!). The Friday performance was the most exciting, because of stormy weather that threatened to ground the helicopters, but in the end gave them an unusually wild ride. For those of us on the ground, the chief hazard was the leaky roof of the Argyle Works, which let in some rain, making it important to consider carefully where to sit!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:09, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, - the picture captions all said 23, that confused me, sorry. Once we enjoyed an outdoor performance of Zauberflöte, interrupted by a thunderstorm during intermission. No way to sit afterwards, 3 more arias with singers under an umbrella and rainchecks for La bohéme. I heard the concert on top of my talk, but the picture was taken at this one, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:54, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * ps: remember "In nomine"? - The US premiere of the cello solo one was in Portland, Oregon, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I see. Yes, the Helicopter Quartet photo was taken on 23 August, but the other photos on the Mittwoch aus Licht article run from the dress rehearsal on 21 August to the Friday performance on the 24th. Yes, I remember "In nomine", and have not forgotten that I promised to typeset a music example for it. I've just been lazy, I guess.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:07, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Infobox for Girolamo Dalla Casa
Could you consider adding an musical artist infobox for Girolamo Dalla Casa with correct information? I had filled it in with information that was already on the page, but if that's not correct, it would be great if you could add one with correct information. Thanks! Bonnie (talk) 18:00, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I am implacably opposed to infoboxes in cases like these, and the Girolamo Dalla Casa article is a prime example of why. Infoboxes present themselves as summaries of incontrovertable facts, and there are virtually no facts about Dalla Casa (apart from his name) that are known with any certainty at all. (The article is peppered with expressions like "perhaps" and "it may be assumed", but there should probably be even more cautionary indications of this sort.) His name indicates he came from Udine, but this does not necessarily mean he was born there. He describes cornetto technique in his treatise on a level of detail that makes one suppose he must have played that instrument, but it is only an assumption that he was a virtuoso (there is no contemporary testimony about his playing). In the second volume of Il vero modo di diminuir he also describes viola bastarda technique (this is not presently mentioned in the Wikipedia article). Although this instrument is not especially consistent with his employment by the Signoria, it is likely that he did play it, or regularly worked with musicians who did so. As a member of the wind capella at St Mark's, it can be speculated that he played other instruments, but this remains speculation. In the prefaces to both volumes of his treatise he says his examples are suited to (amongst others) keyboard instruments, and for the voice. All musicians at that time were trained in singing, and many on keyboards, but we do not and cannot know to what degree Dalla Casa may have been professionally involved in such activities. We do not know even the year of his birth, and the year of his death is only tentatively established as being 1601, possibly in August. This leaves only three solid facts to put in an infobox: his name, his position as capo de concerti delli stromento di fiato to the Signoria of Venice, and his publications (a list of which has no place in an infobox in any case).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:48, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Aleatoric music
Hello, Jerome -- I'm writing about your recent edit to Aleatoric music. I have no vested interest, no strong feeling, about this either way. Clear writing is my interest. I wonder why you felt it necessary to add, "both of which should be aleatory" to my re-wording of the sentence (which I and another editor felt was not well written and not clear). First of all, since the translation was done quite a while ago, I think your phrase should be, "both of which should have been translated aleatory", but, besides that, it is not clear, as it wasn't before, why both the German noun and the German adjective should have been translated "aleatory" and why that is important to mention. Words ending -ory in English are usually adjectives. There are very few English nouns ending -ory. I've never heard this word aleatory before I read this article. I did not see the word aleatory used as a noun anywhere in the article. Have you ever heard the word aleatory used as a noun in English? The German writer used either the noun or the adjective; it should have been translated into the English word of the same type. If the German noun were mistakenly translated into an English adjective (or vice versa), exactly that could be mentioned. If it is not mentioned, then I do not see why the phrase you added, "both of which should be aleatory", is important to include. It unnecessarily adds confusion. I guess I just do not understand the exact error that was made by the translator, nor why it is so important to mention.CorinneSD (talk) 21:00, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * [Edit conflict] The reason it is important to mention is that the reader, having been told that "aleatoric" is a mistranslation, has a right to demand what the correct translation is. Your edit removed this information, and I attempted to restore it, without unduly disturbing the rest of your changes. You may well be correct about the noun formation. According to the OED there is no noun form, which presents a bit of a quandary. The word Aleatorik then becomes untranslatable. In German, it nevertheless is a noun, related in form to words like Mathematik (mathematics), Harmonik (harmony), Physik (physics), Romantik (romanticism), Germanistik (German studies), and Akrobatik (acrobatic skills)—not all of them easily rendered in English without some contortions. I do not know what noun form there might be in the field of mathematics (or perhaps better, actuarial science, where I believe the term is actually native), but it seems to have escaped the notice of both the OED and Wikipedia. The interpretation given in the passage under discussion is based on the source cited at the end of the sentence. In case you have not consulted it, it reads in its entirety:

"Normally zealous in defending our language against barbarisms, MT [i.e., Musical Times] (April) ought not to admit aleatoric, vogue-ish though this has become. There is a perfectly good word aleatory, 'depending on contingencies' (Chambers). The vogue-ish form presumably arose from imperfect understanding of the German Aleatorik (noun, not adjective). May I hope that, as a result of this exhortatoric letter, this unsatisfactoric (and to me inflammatoric) usage will prove transitoric." A closer reading than I gave this when adding the offending sentence shows me that indeed Mr Jacobs does not actually say what the translation of the noun Aleatorik ought to be, though I think since he does not provide the German adjective form (aleatorisch) one might be forgiven for assuming he meant "aleatory" as the translation of the noun as well as of the adjective. What do you suggest might be the best course of action to take?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:16, 28 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your interesting and informative reply. From what you wrote, I have changed my view of the problem. I think perhaps it is wrong to say that the translator made an error.  As I am sure you know, one of the most difficult tasks in translating from one language to another is to render words that simply have no equivalent in the target language.  One solution, which this particular translator apparently used, is to create a word that is in a different grammatical category.  As long as the translator retains the intended meaning and the word makes sense in the target language, it is not a bad translation.  In this case, it seems -- although we'd have to read the original text to be sure -- the translator translated a German noun ending in "ik" as a new English adjective ending in "ic".  The writer of the quote in the reference which you shared -- and thank-you for that -- was clear and clever and has a point, but I am not sure I agree that this translation was due to "an imperfect understanding of the German Aleatorik".  I kind of think that if a translator is fluent enough in German and English to translate a book, he or she knows what a noun and an adjective are, in both languages.  If one is translating a noun by creating a new English adjective, it is kind of arbitrary which adjective suffix one chooses to use -- -ory or -ic.    The writer of that quote was just upset that the translator created a new English adjective instead of using an existing, but rare, English adjective (aleatory).  (Notice that he says, "there is a perfectly good word – aleatory".  He doesn't say, "there is a perfectly good English noun".) But I believe that this kind of thing, creating new words to represent an untranslatable word from another language, has happened many times in many different languages.  Regarding what to write in this article, I feel that the words "error" or "mistakenly" should not be used.  (And anyway, who said it was a mistranslation?) The only thing for which the translator could perhaps be criticized is not using the existing English adjective, "aleatory", but, since it is a rarely used adjective, the translator could perhaps be forgiven.


 * We can say that, due to the difficulty of translating the German noun "aleatorik", for which no equivalent exists in English, the translator created and used a new English adjective which people have continued to use, to the consternation of some, rather than using the existing adjective "aleatory". – CorinneSD (talk) 02:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)


 * It isn't quite like that, though. Meyer-Eppler uses both the noun Aleatorik and the adjective aleatorische. The translator appears to have overlooked this and used the English homonym of the German noun in place of the adjective, inventing "aleatoric music" where "aleatory music" should have been used (and was used by many other English writers at that time). There is a larger context of such mistranslations, and here I probably have the advantage of you, since it concerns the entire run of eight volumes of Die Reihe. The fashion of the day in German avant-garde music circles was to dress up music theory with ideas appropriated from the sciences—sometimes with embarrassing misunderstandings. It was also true that electronic music was a major focus (in Meyer-Eppler's article, as well), and there was a substantial specialized technological vocabulary employed there. The problem rose when translators for the English edition of Die Reihe were chosen who had the requisite background in music, but lacked the scientific/technological vocabulary. Because the German scientific terms were not especially familiar to them in the first place and, worse, they had no idea what the correct English equivalents were, they often guessed wrong. The translator of Meyer-Eppler's article (who signs himself with just the initial G) had the advantage over many of the others in being the bilingual son of a German immigrant, but like them was a musician without experience in electronic-music studios. One hazard of bilingualism is that because both languages are present at a subconscious level, it is easy to forget that there may be missing equivalents, so that false homonyms like Aleatorik/aleatoric become a constant danger. There was a long, indignant review of the first volumes of Die Reihe published shortly after the appearance of their English translation, written by a well-known American acoustician, who jumped all over such misused terminology (without observing how much of it was already present in the German original, and how much introduced in translation). He did, however, single out Meyer-Eppler's article as the sole exception, which may have given a certain amount of unintended authority to the term "aleatoric". (Because the word "aleatory" properly belongs to actuarial science rather than to physics, it may be understandable that it slipped by this critic.) BTW, in the very next sentence of the Wikipedia article, reference is made to Pierre Boulez's promulgation of the term, in an article where he uses the perfectly standard French noun aléa (which is the equivalent of the German Aleatorik), as well as the adjectival form aléatoire. Though the word has its roots in the Latin alea (dice), the concept of aleatory investment and its application to life insurance has its most natural home in the French language, because it was in the Napoleanic Code that it was given its earliest important legal status. Needless to say, the French are just as indignant as the Germans when it comes to dealing with the English over the "aleatory"/"aleatoric"/"aleatorical" trifurcation. This long and rambling explanation of course has no place in the article on aleatoricalisticismic music, but may give some idea of why the use, and perceived misuse or abuse of the term can provoke such strong reactions.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:52, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for such a detailed reply. I am humbled by your thorough knowledge of the issue.  Now I wonder whether I should have left the sentence as it was.  It is a confusing issue, and it is hard to express a confusing issue in a way that is clear to most readers.  From what you just explained, it seems clear that there was some kind of error on the part of the translator.  We could say something like this:
 * The translator incorrectly translated the German noun Aleatorik and the German adjective aleatorische into aleatoric, a word he created, rather than using the existing English word (adjective??) aleatory, and, while this error has irritated many, the word has persisted.


 * Please feel free to modify this. You know the subject better than I do, and it is clear that you are a very good writer. Thank you again for your courtesy and for taking the time to explain this confusing issue.CorinneSD (talk) 16:08, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that might cover it. I think that "adjective" might be best, and the "irritate many" might not be necessary. I'm inclined to mention or even quote the "imperfect understanding" line from Arthur Jacobs's diatribe, because despite the translator's bilingualism (a fact evidently unknown to Mr Jacobs), this appears to be precisely the cause. The word has in fact persisted, as has the stubborn insistence on many (including myself) to use "aleatory" in its place. BTW, in the "edit conflict" noted above, you had inserted a question to the effect: have I ever heard "aleatory" used as a noun in this context. Yes, I have, but of course adjectives are often used as nouns in this way. For example: "The new, the aleatory, the disturbance coming from outside are immediately retrieved and integrated into the arrangement. … The formal dynamic processes of Dusapin show us that the aleatory—that is the new—can be transformed into a partially known and arranged order" (Ivanka Stoianova, “Pascal Dusapin”, in Music, Society and Imagination in Contemporary France, edited by François Bernard Mâche, 183–96, = Contemporary Music Review 8, no. 1, 1993, citation on p. 195). Another example, not from the field of music: "It is a culture in which the aleatory grossly imprints itself upon consciousness", and "In emphasizing. the pre-eminence of the aleatory Baudrillard is pitting himself against this whole tradition" (Chris Rojek, "Baudrillard and Politics", in Forget Baudrillard?, edited by Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner, 107–23, Psychology Press, 1993; citation on p. 112).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * O.K. I see you made the change. I have definitely learned something new.  I don't think I'll ever forget the word "aleatory". By the way, I don't even know what an edit conflict is, or why one would type it at the beginning of a comment.  Can you tell me?CorinneSD (talk) 20:51, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * An edit conflict occurs when another editor changes a page while you are in the process of making changes yourself. When you try to save your changes, you are given an "Edit Conflict" message, and can only add your edits to the changed version already saved by the other editor. This prevents accidentally erasing another editor's work. On Talk pages, when this occurs it is usual to make a note at the head of your message, to warn others that the content of your comment may not take into account those immediately preceding changes or observations.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:56, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, O.K. Thank you.CorinneSD (talk) 22:01, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You are welcome, no problem. It is much easier to explain a mechanism like this than to account for everything that was in the background of my thinking when I made an edit to an article, like the one we were just discussing! And I can remember the first time I got an "Edit Conflict" message: My first thought was, "What have I done wrong?" The accompanying message explains everything, but it can be a bit of a shock the first time it happens!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:15, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Ralph Vaughan Williams
I've just started editing the article on Ralph Vaughan Williams. May I ask you to read my comment on my Talk page? I am seeking your opinion.CorinneSD (talk) 01:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Convention songbook
Based on a little Googling, it seems that "convention songbook" is what Southern Baptists called their hymnals for a while. Probably we could delete the reference from the Clef article since "hymnal" includes it. &mdash;Wahoofive (talk) 01:16, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Good work, Doctor Watson! I was imagining campaign songs in booklets distributed at political conventions! Yes, I agree that this could be deleted, since it is just another term for the same thing.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

What do you think of this?
What are your thoughts on this closure? GabeMc (talk&#124;contribs)  19:43, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not surprised, though of course I am disappointed. It is clear that no consensus was reached, and this opens up many of those articles to edit-warring. It is one of the weaknesses of Wikipedia that all opinions count equally, including uninformed ones. This was a needless dispute over a perfectly clear English-usage practice that some people evidently never learned in elementary/primary school. I blame the British and American education systems (and probably the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, etc. as well).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:53, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm curious; why do you think that no consensus was reached? In addition to the 17–7 !vote count I find the arguments in opposition to be quite weak, if not completely irrelevant. GabeMc  (talk&#124;contribs)  20:00, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * As I said, I regard it as ignorance, and stubborn ignorance at that. I did my best to make my position clear in the discussion (and I am not above using a little rhetorical sarcasm, as I expect you noticed), and I didn't see anyone trying to refute my statements. People were for the most part simply talking past each other—not an unfamiliar situation in political "discussions" also. There are none so blind as those who will not see.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:15, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Perhaps you would consider weighing-in at the ongoing closure discussion. GabeMc  (talk&#124;contribs)  20:39, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

September 2013
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=574260166 your edit] to Neoclassicism (music) may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry: just [ edit the page] again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:A930913/BBpreload&editintro=User:A930913/BBeditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:A930913&preloadtitle=BracketBot%20-%20&section=new my operator's talk page].
 * List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 01:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell . London: Macmillan Publishers.

Redirect goes from correct form of title to incorrect form
Hi Jerome-- I was trying (again - I had earlier left a note on the talk page) to change Les Millions d'Arlequin to Les millions d'Arlequin, but there's a redirect from "millions" to "Millions". It wouldn't let me just reverse the redirect because that would again create a duplicate name, the same reason I couldn't simply move the article title to start with. I tried moving the redirect to a temporary misspelling to avoid the duplicate titles - this move worked, but even so, trying to then move the article still gave me the same error message. If there's a way to delete the bad redirect, I don't know what it is. Do you know how to fix this situation? Thanks for any help. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:35, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you may need the help of an Administrator to do this. I suggest asking over on the Help desk or at Editor assistance/Requests.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:RM should be enough. Toccata quarta (talk) 17:05, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Henry VIII and Greensleeves
Hi Jerome. Over the years I've noticed your various edits to the Greensleeves page and always been impressed by your judgement. I'm conscious that there's some shenanigans happening on the issue of Henry VIII and Greensleeves (as it does about once a year) and rather than get into an edit war, I thought I'd raise it with you to get your advice. The quote that used to be there was taken, almost word for word, from Alison Weir's book Henry VIII: King and Court. If memory serves me right it was agreed some years ago with other posters that rather than rework what she said we should take it as it stood. To be honest, that still seems correct to me. Over the years I've noticed various attempts to change it slightly - the problem is it invariably opens up the doors to the possibility that Henry might have written it. So usually, I revert by to Alison Weir's quote really for no other reason that I think it says it best.

What's your view? David T Tokyo (talk) 21:18, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi David. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer evidence to wishful thinking. As far as I can see, there is absolutely no controversy on this question at all: all authorities agree that the tune cannot have come into existence until after Henry VIII's death (not to mention the drastic stylistic disparities with the pieces which there is reasonable cause to suppose may be by Henry). As far as I can determine, the only people who hold out any hope at all for the Romantic fiction of Henry's authorship are those who subscribe to the SCA's slogan: "The Middle Ages: not as they were, but as they should have been." We might as well ascribe Greensleeves's authorship to Elvis (who not only continues to show up in shopping malls and restaurants, but is reliably believed to have access to Doctor Who's TARDIS, and therefore might have gone back in time to copy the song into the Board Lute Book after having composed it in 1957. Or whenever. If I sound skeptical, let me just say that the moment someone comes up with sound evidence for all of this, I shall be the first to insist it is given a prominent place in the article on "Greensleeves". In the meantime, I am scanning the heavens for my first glimpse of airborne swine.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:34, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Flutenists
Hi - hope I'm doing this right. I'd posted this question somewhere else but now can't find it. I was just wondering why you removed my additions to the famous flutists (which for some reason wikipedia insists on calling flautists) page for Lois Schaefer and Robert Stallman. Many thanks. Canamets (talk) 16:20, 28 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're doing things right. When starting a new topic, it is customary to provide a header, which I have added. Such questions can be posted either on the Talk page of the article in question, or on the Talk page of the editor with whom you wish to discuss something. You did try the former option a few days ago, and I replied there:
 * My edit summary read "-redlinks", which means I deleted red-linked names. On Wikipedia, links to valid articles appear in blue, whereas links pointing to non-existent articles appear in red. On lists such as this, names without Wikipedia articles are regarded as not having demonstrated notability. The usual procedure is to write an article first, which contains the necessary reliable sources to establish notability.
 * If you consult the Wikipedia article Flute, you will discover that there are several variations of the English word for players of the instrument. I believe there may be some discussion about this on the Talk page of that article, in particular the expressions "flutenist" (found in the 18th century but obsolete now) and "fluter" (comparatively rare perhaps because of an unfortunate alternative meaning). The most common forms are "flautist" (derived from the Italian form of the instrument name, "flauto") and "flutist", anglicized from the French "flûtiste". There are factions preferring each (there may be a regional English involvement), and clearly the one preferring "flautist" created the list of flutenists we are discussing.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:25, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks indeed for that enlightenment. Maybe one day I'll plunge in and do a page for each of those flute players as I feel they're certainly deserving... and more so than many of the names on the existing page. As for flautist... well, if you're British, as I am not, I suppose that's how you'd refer to it. If it were up to me I'd change the name of the page; since to the best of my knowledge Wikipedia originates here in America there's no reason for the pretension of the British version. As a former professional flutist I find it annoying. I appreciate your contributions! Canamets (talk) 21:25, 28 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Permit me to correct you on one rather important point: Whether or not Wikipedia originated in America (and in fact Germany has an awfully good claim to precedence, especially insofar as many of the templates commonly used are concerned), this has absolutely no bearing at all on the varieties of English used on the English-language version. Please see WP:ENGVAR. You may be surprised to learn that there are professional flautists in Britain as well as in the US. I believe there may even be a few in Australia and Canada. And, FWIW, I am not British, though I regard myself as bilingual ;-).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:14, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Wind ensemble/concert band
I'm trying to keep the name of the ensemble consistent across different music articles. All the different titles of the ensemble may confuse people: concert band, symphonic band, wind band, wind symphony, wind ensemble, symphony band, wind orchestra, etc. The actual article on Wikipedia is titled "Concert band". I think "concert band" is fine to use.

Also, "wind ensemble" generally refers to bands that use little or no doubling of parts. I definitely don't think the term "wind ensemble" is more inclusive. In fact, it's quite the opposite, as it excludes larger bands. Saxophilist (talk) 06:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I believe you will also find that there are articles titled Military band, Marching band, and Harmonie. Having myself played in many such groups, I can tell you that a concert band is a subset of wind bands generally, so that by using the term "concert band" you are automatically excluding military bands and marching bands, not to mention the various other forms of wind ensembles. When you claim, for example, that the modern Western flute is "commonly" found in orchestras and concert bands, you are implying that it is not usually found in these other types of wind ensembles (such as the one-to-a-part bands called harmonie by the French, for which Stravinsky wrote at lest two important works—the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and the Concerto for Piano and Winds—both of which use flutes, clarinets, etc., as part of their normal complement). I believe it is misleading the reader not to include mention of such ensembles in those articles. As for the expression "wind ensemble", you really ought to check where this link leads—inaccurately, I think you will agree.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:38, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I am correct. The wind ensemble is an ensemble made popular by Frederick Fennell. "Wind ensemble" is an actual title of a specific ensemble. The term "wind ensemble" does NOT mean "any musical ensemble comprised mostly of wind instruments". A wind ensemble is a band that generally has only one player per part, except perhaps on the Bb clarinet parts.


 * Now, I can see your point about the Western concert flute. I didn't mean that it wasn't popular in those other ensembles, but perhaps it could look that way. Feel free to add military bands and marching bands there.


 * Also, just the orchestra was mentioned in most places where I edit, so I felt the need to also add the concert band. Saxophilist (talk) 16:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * (Edit conflict.) I do see your point about bands being excluded (even if some people might assume that "orchestra", especially in a jazz context, includes groups with only winds and percussion, like the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra or the Count Basie Orchestra), and I certainly have no difficulty with your mentioning bands in these various articles. However, I do not believe that the expression "wind ensemble" is as exclusive as you suggest, except perhaps in the sphere of American university music schools. Nor was the term Frederick Fennell's invention, unless of course you add the word "Eastman" in front of it (and you will notice that the link in his biographical article to "wind ensemble" redirects to concert band). As Donald Hunsberger observes in his New Grove article on the Wind Ensemble, performing groups, "especially in America, utilize the elite quality of the title while maintaining allegiance to a more traditional massed and fixed instrumentation approach." I was trying to find an umbrella term that would include concert bands as well as other types of wind ensem…, erm, I mean, wind bands, since the "concert band" is a stationary group with doubled wind parts that usually performs indoors and, strictly speaking, is an American type of wind band. Do you have a suggestion for such an inclusive term, that includes marching ensembles as well as large groups of wind instruments, with or without percussion, in which the parts are not doubled?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I thought that "concert band" would be fine to use. I don't think a concert band necessarily has all doubled wind parts. And I think marching and military bands should also be mentioned, but we don't need to find an umbrella term that lumps concert bands, marching bands, and military bands together, as they are all quite different ensembles. So, lets mention marching and military bands, but separately from concert bands. Saxophilist (talk) 17:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't the same logic apply to orchestras? Should we then mention dance orchestras, wind orchestras, baroque orchestras, chamber orchestras, etc., wherever appropriate?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, a dance orchestra is a jazz band, a wind orchestra is just another name for a concert band, a baroque orchestra is just an orchestra from the baroque period. All of them are quite different from a modern symphony orchestra. It just depends on what the article is talking about. You wouldn't mention a symphony orchestra in the same place as a jazz band, for example. Saxophilist (talk) 17:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Probably not, which is why the simple word "orchestra" may be misleading. Similarly, the article "Concert band" subsumes a number of different wind-band classifications that really do not belong there at all. The issue therefore becomes much larger than simply deciding what terms are appropriate to insert in various articles on particular wind instruments.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:02, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I just realized there wasn't any mention of marching bands on the clarinet page. I made a section for marching and military bands. Please feel free to expand it. Saxophilist (talk) 17:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

What are the differences?
What do you think the differences are between concert bands, wind bands, wind orchestras, wind symphonys, symphonic bands, wind ensembles, etc? I think they're all referring to the same ensemble, except I think wind ensembles only have one player per part, except perhaps on the Bb clarinet parts. I think all the others could technically also have only one player on any given part, but it's not required. Saxophilist (talk) 04:35, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * On Wikipedia, what you and I think matters less than what reliable sources say but, since you ask, I think a "concert band" performs from a stage to an audience seated in an auditorium, and is functionally indistinguishable from a "wind symphony", "wind orchestra", or "symphonic band". A "wind ensemble" can be any number of things, and the meaning varies from place to place (it is one thing in American university culture, quite another in continental Europe, and probably yet something else in the UK). A "wind band" is all of these things, and many others (for example, it includes brass bands, military bands, Feldharmonie, Kapelle, orchestre d'harmonie, fanfare, batterie-fanfare, waites, marching bands, flute bands, pipe bands, bagad, coblas, and drum-and-bugle corps, none of which fall comfortably under the category of "concert band"). That said, I might have some trouble tracking down sources to support my opinions.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:52, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2013
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=577085438 your edit] to List of 20th-century classical composers by birth date may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "[]"s and 2 "{}"s likely mistaking one for another. If you have, don't worry: just [ edit the page] again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=User:A930913/BBpreload&editintro=User:A930913/BBeditintro&minor=&title=User_talk:A930913&preloadtitle=BracketBot%20-%20&section=new my operator's talk page]. Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 04:39, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Stockhausen references
I hadn't seen that part of the references guide. It just seemed natural to make them conform to style since I found the article very difficult to read laid out as it was. Patrick Neylan (talk) 16:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that you find such a thing as an unfamiliar style of reference formatting makes an article difficult to read. Perhaps if you get better acquainted with parenthetical referencing, you sill come to agree with me that it is much less awkward and distracting than footnotes. You will find that this method is used quite widely in music articles on Wikipedia, especially those dealing with recent music, for example the biographical articles on Arnold Schoenberg, Luigi Nono, and Milton Babbitt, and topic articles such as Tonality, Atonality, and Serialism.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:29, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for link. It's illuminating. It's not the unfamiliarity that makes it difficult, it's the presence of the notes in the text obstructing the flow of the narrative. It seems to me that this is an academic practice, where the author is just as concerned with covering himself as with providing information. That strikes me as inappropriate for Wikipedia, where checking sources (from a reader's point of view) is only relevant if the information is in question. Readers, for the most part, aren't interested in sources; they want to know the facts. My qualification here is that I'm a professional editor, and my priority is always to ease the flow of knowledge from expert to reader. The test for this is to read it aloud, references and all. It's very difficult to follow. Having looked at your talk page, I can see you are a serious and knowledgeable contributor who doesn't take difference of opinion as a personal slight. I have no interest in flame wars or edit wars. Thanks for the polite explanation of your reverts. Patrick Neylan (talk) 22:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * As a fellow professional editor, I do know what you are talking about (even if my own experience is primarily with academic/scholarly publications). However, if I read aloud an article such as the one we are talking about, I would no more read aloud or hesitate over the parenthetical references than I would read aloud the footnote numbers in a text using that form of referencing. Perhaps I have more interest in the sources than most Wikipedia readers. This is in part just a matter of personal preferences, but it is also conditioned by my experience editing Wikipedia, where every important fact needs to be attributed to a reliable source. When this is not done, some other editor is bound to plant a marker or similar, demanding that the missing citation be supplied. This in turn leads me to want to be able to determine as quickly as possible what is the nature of the supporting source. Parenthetical referencing does his instantaneously for those already familiar with the sources, a little less quickly if you have to look them up in the alphabetical list of sources. Footnotes, on the other hand, are of two types: full reference, and abbreviated reference. The latter is the most awkward on Wikipedia, because jumping to the note (or floating your cursor over the number in order to display the note content) merely provides you with what you would already have had before your eyes with parenthetical referencing. Full-reference footnotes avoid this problem, but do not—on Wikipedia, at least—provide an alphabetized list of sources (what people in the real publishing world call a "bibliography"—a term reserved for other use on Wikipedia, in practice even if not in the guidelines and Manual of Style). This in turn makes it difficult to assess quickly whether the sources include substantial publications, or consist merely of a series of blogs, popular-magazine articles, and sensationalist newspaper stories. For the editor already expert on the article's subject, it also hampers the job of seeing whether any important items have been overlooked or, worse, whether the sources have been systematically biased in favour of one side or the other in any matters of controversy. While I would not claim that editors take priority over the reader, this is nevertheless a contributing factor when all other aspects are equal.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation. My point about reading aloud was that we read silently in the same way as we read aloud, so a reference such as "(McKinsey, VI p22)" is much more intrusive than a simple " ". By putting the references in the text, we are putting the editor's interests before the reader's. While that might be appropriate in strictly academic texts, I don't think it's right for Wikipedia, where most visitors to the page only want information - a story, if you prefer - and not a list of sources. I'm not going to revert (as I said, edit wars aren't my thing), but have a look at the history and tell me it isn't an easier read with the references tucked away in footnotes, where the minority of readers who care about such things can easily find them, while the majority who don't care can more easily find what they came to Wikipedia to find. Patrick Neylan (talk) 17:15, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * While I disagree that we read silently in just the same way we read out loud, that is not really important. I think perhaps you are right that we are catering more to editors than to readers by using parenthetical referencing, but I cannot agree that those garish blue numbers are less distracting than an author-date citation enclosed in brackets, which I find much less arresting to the eye and therefore easier to glide over than a footnote number. Also, speaking as a reader rather than an editor, I find the numeral always raises a nagging doubt: "should I look and see whether there is some content hidden away here, or ignore it because it is just a source reference?" This is, I submit, far more distracting than an honest, straightforward parenthetical reference.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:24, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Lets Talk about the Musical Nationalism article : )
I'm confused by your recent content removal. I restored, expanded, and cited some of the content that needed references, and left other sections of your removal alone. I'm a bit confused about your decision to remove some uncited material, and leave other material alone. The citations I added are now the only citations in the Musical Nationalism article.

I hope you will engage me in discussion on the articles talk page, because I'd like to understand your decision.

Thanks for your time, and for all the work you do.

Discussion is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Musical_nationalism#Reverting_entire_removal_would_be_a_good_idea.

Ollie Garkey (talk) 14:02, 18 October 2013 (UTC)


 * That was over three months ago! If I left any passages that had been flagged as needing citations for over a year, I will be happy to remove them now. That was the basis of my edit. As a rule, when I see unsourced material that needs a citation, I put a flag on it, in order to offer the opportunity for the editor who inserted that claim to justify it with a reliable source. I only delete the material after the tag has been in place after several weeks or months. Naturally I also try to find sources that either verify or falsify the claim, but often this proves impossible. I shall check the discussion page and see if I have anything to contribute.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Microtonal music
I don't know if you are watching the article on Microtonal music, but I thought I would tell you about a recent edit to that article. I cannot figure it out; I cannot even tell whether it is in English or not. – CorinneSD (talk) 17:59, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Corinne. I do have that article on my watchlist, but I had not noticed this edit. Thanks for calling it to my attention.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:04, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Roy Harris Roy Harris Symphony Recordings on Naxos
I've added a list of the released (& one unreleased) recording of Roy Harris Symphonies by Naxos Records to the Roy Harris Talk Page. The information about the unreleased symphony recording comes from a list of upcoming releases in the American Classics line that was included with Naxos CD 8.559167. You will not find the catalog number 8.559109 on the Naxos website, but I am willing to scan the booklet if you need other proof (I know some people seem to think 'not online = not real' which is a dangerous attitude to have).Graham1973 (talk) 03:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notice, and for a good laugh: I personally have strong misgivings about accepting as 'real' anything that is only online!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Flute etymology
You're correct that the Danish>Dutch change may take time to appear. Here is a section of the email I received:


 * "Dear Mr ______,


 * Thank you for your comments.


 * I am an etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary; John Simpson forwarded your query to me to investigate.


 * I have looked into the forms of the word in all three languages and I agree with your assessment that Danish is incorrect here; in addition to the points you make, it is also much more likely for Dutch than Danish to have influenced English in the late medieval/early modern period.


 * The entry FLUTE has not yet been revised for the 3rd edition, so it still looks essentially as it did in 1897, when it was first published. The printed version of the Dictionary used abbreviations for language names, and in this instance, the language is specified as "Da." even in the first edition.


 * I suspect that this was either a random typesetting error, or (as you suggest) that the typesetter misread a handwritten "Du." for "Da." Both are standard abbreviations, but "a" and "u" are not always easy to distinguish in some forms of handwriting.


 * I will correct the language name on the database, but please be patient as it can take some time for a change to appear online.


 * Thank you very much for pointing this out; in a work of this size (especially a printed work), occasional slips of this kind are inevitable, but they are also very difficult to spot, and we are grateful for your help."

Heavenlyblue (talk) 22:46, 30 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for letting me know. If you see the change on OED before I do, do not hesitate to change the material in the "Flute" article. It is always satisfying to see Wikipedia cause a correction to be made in an august source like the OED!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:54, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I think we should change it. I believe I have proven to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the information currently posted is incorrect AND that the source (database) from which the OED is printed has been corrected, leaving the Wikipedia page clearly in error.  I have neither the time nor the energy to monitor the Flute page daily for the next year, and I certainly don't find it useful to be a stickler where practical reality is concerned.  I would just like to point out also that Wikipedia did not cause the change to be made; that was entirely my own initiative, and what allowed its success was a lack of excessive deference to authority on my part.    Heavenlyblue (talk) 17:27, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I did not mean to minimize or dismiss your efforts in this matter; I merely thought that, had this not crept into Wikipedia, you might not have been so quick to notice the OED had gotten it wrong. I have checked the OED database (or at least, its outward manifestation in the online version) and it still has not been corrected. However, I am inclined to agree that it is time to correct this, even if it may seem to some that we are jumping the gun.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree. I'll go ahead and change it.    Heavenlyblue (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I see it's done. Excellent.    Heavenlyblue (talk) 18:58, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Enharmonic genus
Arithmetic mean A = (x1 + x2)/2 Harmonic mean  H = 1/[ ( 1/x1 + 1/x2 )/2 ] = 2 / ( 1/x1 + 1/x2 )

L1 = 4/3;  L2 = 5/4 f1 = 1/L1 = 3/4; f2 = 1/L2 = 4/5

A(L1, L2) = (4/3 + 5/4 ) / 2 = ( 16/12 +15/12 ) / 2 = 31/24 H(f1, f2) = 2 / ( 4/3 + 5/4 )  =  24/31 therefore A(L1, L2) = 1 / H(f1,f2)

A(f1, f2) = ( 3/4 + 4/5 ) / 2 = ( 15/20 + 16/20) / 2 = 31/40 A(L1, L2) ≠ 1 / A(f1, f2) ≠ H(f1, f2)

Derekhmartin (talk) 00:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I don't immediately see what you are trying to say. Presumably this has to do with the edit I made on the Enharmonic genus article. It appeared to me that someone did not notice that the comparison being made was between string lengths on the one hand, and frequencies on the other. Since these two things are inversely proportional, it did not make sense to say that the their measurements are directly proportional.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:17, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Magnificat by C. P. E. Bach
Good morning,

By chance I came across this splendid piece of music, you may be familiar with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNbaGAn1_ec

Two things stroke me immediately when I listened to it: Emanuel Bach must have known his father's version, BWV 243, but his setting is different from the beginning to the end. As if he was saying: I did it my way. It's almost heroic if you take into account that he wrote it in 1749, when his father was still alive but probably bedridden.

The second thing is the concluding fugue, "Sicut erat in principio" (from 33:00 onwards on the present CD). The theme is introduced in a major tonality, and when it comes to the minor version, the resemblance to the "Kyrie eleison" in Mozart's Requiem is really striking. I think it can't be a coincidence, and it seems to me sort of ironical that Mozart, during his last few days, was remembering Emanuel Bach, while on the other hand, when Sebastian Bach was already very ill, his son was trying hard to forget him - at least in a musical way.

I was thinking to point out this resemblance, maybe in the article about Mozart's Requiem, but I wouldn't like to be accused of "original research", and so I'm waiting for the moment. Do you happen to know if anything has been published about this resemblance between Mozart and Emanuel Bach?

Thank you for your patience, and greetings --Goliath613 (talk) 14:11, 15 November 2013 (UTC)


 * And good morning to you! I am not familiar with the C. P. E. Bach Magnificat, but your description has awakened my interest in it. I shall have a look around, to see whether I can find any literature in which it is discussed.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:56, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Culture of Hungary
I just wondered if you agreed with the recent edits to the article Culture of Hungary. While the edits concern geography, the material is about music. - CorinneSD (talk) 21:01, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I presume you are referring to the changes from "Eastern" to "Central" Europe, with reference to Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. I really have no strong opinion about this, but I believe the Wikipedia guidelines specify certain boundaries for these terms. If they are not being followed, then they probably should be. For me, personally, "Central Europe" is the region from which my ancestors hailed (Bohemia), together with Austria, Hungary, and perhaps Poland. At the same time, "Eastern Europe" evokes the Cold War division of Europe into two sectors, which leaves no room for a "Central Europe", but also makes for some rather peculiar geography, since Austria was "Western" but the DDR "Eastern", in spite of their relative geographical positions and the fact that Austria's name in German, Österreich, means "Eastern Realm".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 20 November
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November 2013
Hello, I'm BitBus. I noticed that you recently removed some content from Piano without explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry: I restored the removed content. If you would like to experiment, you can use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks! BitBus (talk) 06:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Wow - Whoops!
Definately my error, I was actually working on another edit and ended up on the wrong tab. My apologies! BitBus (talk) 07:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Apology accepted. This kind of thing happens to us all, from time to time.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:52, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Reverted fifths
Got it, you're one of those "cops" who contributes little but loves removing the work of others. Get a life!

Pitch classes
Hi -- I see you reverted my edit, I'm sure for the better, as you seem to be a specialist in this area. (Despite an undergrad in performance and some aptitude for music theory, the material feels rather Greek to me). In trying to understand, if you have a moment: is the idea that a hexachord refers to a set of six notes within an octave, which are not necessarily sounded together, but which are also distinguished from a scale in that they could fall in any sequence? Ultimately, I was trying to decode the Guidonian hand. Thanks. 67.168.11.194 (talk) 05:56, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * To clarify: Your edit equated hexachord with the notes of a hexatonic scale. The edit summary for my rejection of your edit read, "in a tone row, it is part of the chromatic aggregate, and not in such a context considered a hexatonic scale". While it is true that a hexachord may correspond to a hexatonic scale, it is not the only way a hexachord can be construed. In a twelve-tone context, a hexachord refers not to fixed pitches, but to pitch classes. (I imagine this is why you have titled your comment in this way.) This means first, that scale-wise arrangement is not appropriate and, second, that it is only part of a larger set of pitches. Similarly, in medieval music theory, although hexachords consist of six adjacent scale members, they are only subsets of scales. Whether those scales consist of seven notes or more is a complicated matter, but there is no question of a hexatonic scale. Does this help, or am I missing something?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:16, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry, I see my subject heading didn't entirely match my note. So a "hexachord," according to the article, can be just the interval of a sixth, but generally it refers to that set of six "pitch classes." Which is, in other words, a set of sets, or something that I certainly couldn't play on the piano.  OTOH, when I read about the use of the hexachord in the Guidonian hand, I don't believe it has that characteristic of extending across the octaves; isn't Guido dealing with sets of notes, rather than pitch classes?  I believe the hand covers several octaves from bottom to top.  Possibly that is part of what is confusing me.  Thanks for responding. 67.168.11.194 (talk) 00:11, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Quite so: The term was also used to refer to the interval of a sixth, though implicitly this was thought of not just as a distance (as it is treated today) but as a span of six notes—in other words, what is called a "composite" interval. In this context, it is similar to that hexatonic scale notion, but does not constitute a scale as such. The Guidonian hexachords, which are a closely related idea, are still not scales in the usual sense, because they are not regarded as complete scalar sets, but as components. In order to form a complete scale it takes two of them, involving what is called a "hexachord mutation", and even then we are usually talking about two partial hexachords. Consider the construction of a Dorian octave from D to the D an octave above. We must begin with the "natural hexachord", which runs from C up to A. The C is of no particular use for a scale starting on D, but the remaining five notes of the hexachord are also insufficient to reach the upper octave. In order to do this, the pattern begins re-mi-fa-sol-la (D-E-F-G-A), at which point we must mutate to the "hard" hexachord (G-A-B-C-D-E), which has the same intervallic pattern and the same solfège syllables as the natural hexachord, only starting on G instead of C. Mutation can take place either on G or, more typically, on the last possible note, A (meaning that at the point of mutation either the note G is momentarily both sol and ut, or the note A is both la and re). Continuing up the scale in the new hexachord, the octave is completed with mi-fa-sol (B-C-D). In this way, a heptatonic scale results from overlapping portions of two hexachords, and the composite solfège is re-mi-fa-sol-la/re-mi-fa-sol. In this way, you can see that the hexachords are not in themselves complete scales.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 08:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Apologies, as I've been distracted for a few days. The above is interesting and helpful to me, but I'll have to give it some more thought at my leisure!  Thanks.  67.168.11.194 (talk) 02:20, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

List of tone rows and series
Either my computer is to old or the article is to big, or both. Many of my edits to that article time out, and it's difficult for me to fix edits, simultaneously edit, and the like. I figure I/we should simplify the table, and I've been working on that. Hyacinth (talk) 03:51, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I have been experiencing the same problem. The list is fairly large, but not as large as, say, the List of 20th-century classical composers by birth date, which edits slowly, but nowhere near as slowly as the list of tone rows. My computers are old, also—one is a 12-year-old "classic" Mac G4, but the other is an Intel Mac only five years old. I don't think aging computers have much to do with it, since almost all other articles edit quickly. I suspect the large number of "tonerow" templates may be the problem, but I know next to nothing about how templates work, or how multiple copies may interact.
 * More generally, there are a number of structural issues about this list that should be ironed out (e.g., the criteria by which "prime form" should be defined, whether this is a systematic list of possible series or a list of the rows that happen to occur in notable compositions, what do we define as a tone row, and so on), so while we are going about simplifying the list, we should address these questions, as well. But let's start with your ideas for simplification of the list as it exists.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:30, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Hyacinth/Test rowspan is 2,465 bytes, User:Hyacinth/Test numbered lists is 2,393 bytes ( byte reduction), and User:Hyacinth/Test consolidate row forms is 2230 bytes ( byte reduction). Hyacinth (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I take it that the first test is the current format of the list, and the other two are attempts at reducing the file size. It does not appear that the reduction is very dramatic in either case but either of these should work, though I slightly prefer the aligned data in the original, as opposed to the numbered lists in the other two. I am a little concerned that the music-notation image appears to align with the RI form in the third version, and with the R form in the second, which could cause some confusion.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:09, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Hyacinth/Test written out is 2,412 bytes ( byte reduction). Hyacinth (talk) 02:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * None of these make a significant difference, if we consider that the present list will eventually at least double in size. I'm also not at all sure that file size alone can be the problem. This list is about 139K, compared to over 300K for the "List of 20th-century classical composers by birth date", which hasn't got anything like the edit problems of the tone-row list (I kept an attempted addition of the eleventh version of the second aggregate of Klavierstück I spinning on "Save page" for nearly three hours this afternoon, and it never did finish loading). You have a lot of experience with templates. Can the operations called by your "tone row" template possibly have anything to do with this?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Formatting of musical works
What is generic about Mass in b minor? Tony  (talk)  00:59, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I think this is explained at Manual of Style/Music but, since these guides are not always completely transparent, and this "generic" vs. "true title" business is open to interpretation in many cases, I would explain it in the present case by analogy. Comparable examples are Symphony in D minor, Sonata in B minor, String Quartet No. 4, and Octet for strings in E-flat major, Op. 20. In such cases, the titles are "derived from the name of musical forms" and "are set in roman type with initial capitals. .&nbsp.&nbsp. The names of keys may use musical symbols ♯ and ♭ or the words 'sharp' and 'flat'" (New Oxford Style Manual, OUP 2012, pp. 147–48). Several examples are then given, beginning with "Bach's Mass in B minor or B Minor Mass". I cite Oxford because the article on Bach follows UK (though not Oxford) practice; if you prefer American usage, I can cite Chicago Manual of Style or D. Kern Holoman's Writing on Music, but they do not differ from Oxford on this matter. I believe you will find that the Wikipedia Manual of Style is based on one or all of these sources, and the article Mass in B minor follows this practice.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, Noetica confirms what you say. It is ungainly in an opening list, though, and many readers will wonder why. Can you tell me: Stravinsky's "Symphony in C" but Symphony in Three Movements? Tony   (talk)  01:23, 10 December 2013 (UTC) PS However, Noetica says: "Mass in B minor I regard as a difficult case though, because Bach is not a Catholic liturgical composer, expected to write series of masses. So "in B minor" is almost a sui generis epithet in his case, like "solemnis".  Tony   (talk)  01:25, 10 December 2013 (UTC)


 * My apologies for overwriting your comment. The software is supposed to prevent this sort of thing by notifying the later user of an edit conflict. This failed to occur in this case.
 * Forgive my ignorance, but who is Noetica, and how reliable a source is he/she/it? It seems to me unacceptable hair-splitting to make the composer's religious beliefs a criterion for how we format titles of works. After all, what are we to do in the case of anonymous works, or works by composers who underwent religious conversion? As for Stravinsky, the Symphonies in E-flat and C are generic titles because they follow the rules established in sources like New Oxford Style and Writing about Music. The Symphony in Three Movements does not, because "in Three Movements" is neither a key, a number in a series of works, or an opus number—that is, it makes the title idiosyncratic. Much more difficult are titles like the Concord Sonata of Charles Ives (sometimes styled Concord Sonata, or Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60), or Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. These are the titles where Holoman, Chicago, and New Oxford part company.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * In the Oxford resources, of which New Hart's Rules is a part, you appear to gloss over the uncertainty and context points they make. NHR—"8.6.1 General principles: The styling of musical work titles is peculiarly difficult because of the diversity of forms in which some titles may be cited, issues related to language, and longstanding special conventions." And: "8.6.3 True titles—A distinction is usually made between works with ‘true’ titles and those with generic names. The boundary between the two types of title is not always clear, but, as with all other difficult style decisions, sense and context provide guidance, and consistency of treatment within any one publication is more important than adherence to a particular code of rules." Context here might be the prominent list of works at the opening of the Bach article. By the way, that mass is often called "B Minor Mass". That shows how it is an idiosyncratic qualifier. We would not call it that if Bach written many masses, of which several were in B minor. Nor would "Minor" be capped in "B Minor Mass" if the titling were straightforwardly generic, don't you think? Tony   (talk)  02:24, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, (New) Hart's Rules have been combined with the (New) Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors to form the New Oxford Style Manual. I "glossed over" the portions you quote because they are not relevant to the question at hand. As I have subsequently pointed out, there are plenty of examples that create uncertainty, but Bach's B Minor Mass is not one of them. The very fact that it can be rendered in various ways (e.g., Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, Symphony No. 7, Symphony in A major, Symphony Op. 92) demonstrates the generic nature of the title. Just try doing similar things with Missa solemnis, Così fan tutte, Sinfonia domestica, or Ouvertüre zum Fliegenden Holländer, wie sie eine schlechte Kurkapelle morgens um 7 am Brunnen vom Blatt spielt) (apart from rendering them in translation, which is quite another thing). There is no uncertainty about any of these, amongst other reasons because standard references such as the New Grove may be consulted to verify their correct form (this is in part of the New Oxford Style Manual we have both "glossed over" until now: section 8.6.1, ref on p. 146). If you think italics and roman type are incompatible in such lists, then I strongly suggest you consult just about any composer article in New Grove.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:39, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * NHR goes against the very authority it cites (New Groves), and caps "Minor" in "B Minor Mass". No less an authority than Christoph Wolff (in Johann Sebastian Bach:The Learned Musician, Norton, 2000) usually calls it B-minor Mass. That's not generic; but when he names it generically, he calls it "Mass in B minor". In accord with the text in WP's Bach article, but rendering wobbly your claim that this is all simple and agreed. Richard Taruskin ('"Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", Vol 2 of his Oxford History of Western Music, OUP, 2005) calls it: B-Minor Mass, and B-minor Mass, and Mass in B Minor; Taruskin gives no italics to St. John Passion. So much for specificity versus genericity; so much for consistency, under an Oxford banner? [I was assisted by Noetica in this post.] Tony   (talk)  07:42, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Now you are venturing into two other areas: capitalisation of titles, and hyphenation of unit modifiers. Hart's Rules is especially flexible on capitalisation, describing a variety of options and emphasising the importance of "house style" in deciding amongst them. Chicago Manual is more restrictive, and I can't recall the position taken by Holoman on this issue (his book is elsewhere at the moment). Unit-modifier hyphenation is also a matter of common sense (according to Chicago and, I think, Hart's Rules), being most important where ambiguity may result in misunderstanding: If "fast sailing ship" is not to be understood as a vessel with sails that is capable of traveling rapidly, then it must by "fast-sailing ship". An alternative style (found as a minority practice in UK publications) holds to the opposite logic, and insists that if it is any type of ship underway at top speed, then it must be "fast sailing-ship". In the case of Bach's mass, there is only a small chance anyone will think it a secondary or small composition in the key of B (major), or a lesser work (B-grade), but if the house style wants to be sure, then of course it should be hyphenated "B-minor Mass" or "B-Minor Mass". The key phrase here is "house style". While in many areas Wikipedia does not have a house style (reference formatting, for example), this is thankfully not the case for music titles. Here we can securely say: no italics for Bach's B(-)minor Mass, and the word "minor" is not capitalised. About the hyphen, I am not so sure. I shall go and look at WP:Manual of Style/Music and find out.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:34, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Late to this: there was a move discussion a while ago, which changed from Mass in B Minor to Mass in B minor. The work is so unique - as far as I know - that you don't even have to mention the composer, there's only this one. I had the great pleasure to sing it (choir alto 1) in 2013: work in progress Mass in B minor structure. House style applies because Bach didn't name the work, only the four parts. If he had named it, would you say we should use his name, or would we have to apply house style? - I came to ask if the spelling of "Ausserhalb" in Für kommende Zeiten is a Stockhausen specialty, because otherwise it would be "Außerhalb". Thank you for the article! I think it's meaningful that "Über die Grenze" was written on 13 August, anniversary of the Berlin Wall. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:01, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


 * It took me a while to see the difference (capital vs lowercase "m" in "minor"). I suppose not seeing this distinction is something like being colourblind, but of course historically the difference had to do with whether you were carving an inscription in stone, or copying a poem into a papyrus scroll: there was never any question of mixing the two. How a composer names a work is not relevant to whether a title is presented in italic or roman type. I'm fairly certain that Peter Maxwell Davies (to pick one name at random) chose to title his Third Symphony "Symphony No. 3", but that doesn't make it a "true title": it still is the name of a form (or genre, if you prefer), followed by a specifier ("No. 3" in Davies's case, "B minor" in Bach's case). I have absolutely no doubt at all that other composers have written masses in B minor (however obscure they may be), just as there are masses in E-flat major, F minor, and so on.
 * Thank you for bringing up "Außerhalb". This is in fact a mistake and I should know better, but it has been carried on from one article to another for so long now (including yesterday's copy-and-paste from the article on Aus den sieben Tagen) that I didn't even notice it. In the score, Stockhausen used full caps (according to his preference of type design for titles of his own works): AUSSERHALB, just as on the title page the collection is FÜR KOMMENDE ZEITEN. (I suspect, but do not know for certain, that this may have been a reaction against Universal Edition's short-lived house style in the 1960s, which—contrary to tradition, all reason, and the Ordinance of God—rendered everything on score covers in lowercase except for Roman numerals, thus karlheinz stockhausen: nr. 4 klavierstück IX, for example.) Of course there is no such thing as a capital es-zet (ß), so double-S was substituted in the usual way. Someone (probably me) simply lowercased the two Ss automatically instead of engaging the brain first, whenever it was that this first happened. I shall correct this, both in the new article, and on the List of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, where it is probably also given incorrectly.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:58, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you. The lack of a capital "ß" leading to "SS" made me finally understand a while ago why we have ship articles Friedrich der Grosse (which looks atrocious/gross to a German): because on ships, all letters are capital, and then it gets to lowercase in the sources as you describe. - What do you think about Britten's A Boy was Born, - spelling, not music? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:42, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I think I have already expressed myself on the Talk:Benjamin Britten. The guidelines are plain: First and last word, and all words in between, except for articles, conjunctions, and prepositions (of less than four letters) should be capitalized in English titles. This is the Wikipedia style manual—others do vary, but none to my knowledge arbitrarily lowercase all words of three letters or fewer, which would result in such absurdities as these (some hypothetical) titles for novels: When war Will Come, If I Should die Before I Wake, Out of the red Planet, Now Shall we go to our Destiny. The style manual used by Faber & Faber (or whoever published the Britten score) has no bearing on how titles are capitalized in other publications, any more than Stockhausen's preference for full caps or Universal Editions (former) preference for all-lowercase should do.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:05, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The Firebird Bird
Then why don't you see Rise of the Guardians i am pretty sure that is the same music. Byzantinefire (talk) 18:04, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Why should I want to see Rise of the Guardians? If as I suppose "the same music" to which you refer is Stravinsky's Firebird, what you are looking for is a reliable source, not my verification of what you are hearing. On the other hand, Firebird has been in the repertory for more than a century now, and bits of it probably have been used in hundreds of films. I don't see the point of cluttering up the Firebird article with a lsit of such trivia.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:30, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well its rare to hear that theme in pop culture without Fantasia 2000 i would never have known about it and i really wish it had more references to it. Byzantinefire (talk) 01:46, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Counterpoint
Dear Jerome,

"And" is the appropriate conjunction because it implies no relationship between harmony, rhythm, and color, which are not inherently related. "But" is inappropriate because it falsely implies that harmony, rhythm, and color cannot differ without contradiction, and "yet" is inappropriate because it implies that readers would expect a contradiction where they would expect none. Also, compromising between a correct and incorrect application of grammar's figuratively black-or-white rules commits the Golden Mean Fallacy.

-Duxwing

PS I know that I may sound arrogant or bitter. I am neither. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Duxwing (talk • contribs) 06:51, 22 December 2013 (UTC) :

Please be reassured that you sound neither arrogant nor bitter. You are, however, wrong to maintain that "interdependent" and "independent" are not opposed concepts. I am pleased to hear you say that compromising between a correct and incorrect grammatical application is unacceptable, and thank you for conceding that "and" should be replaced with "but" in the referenced construction.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:12, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree that "independent" and "interdependent" are opposed concepts, and that if a piece of music were said to be independent and interdependent, then "but" would be the appropriate conjunction. :) Whereas in the Conterpoint article "but" is inappropriate because it falsely implies that the statement "these pieces of music have independent harmony" contradicts the statement "these pieces of music have interdependent rhythm and color," and therefore further falsely implies that counterpunctual music cannot exist. And I did not concede that "and" should be replaced with "but". O_o If to age is to callous over one&#39;s sympathy, then I shall remain a I child forever. (talk) 07:38, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes. You clearly understand that "but" is the correct conjunction in this case. Thank you for your gracious concession.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:45, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't "clearly understand that 'but' is the correct conjunction in this case," and whether I did or didn't, I don't. :)  The conjunction "but" should only be used to connect contradictory clauses.  The sentence wherein you want to use "but" can be restated in (and therefore is logically equivalent to a series of) clauses: "Counterpunctual music is harmonically independent, but counterpunctual music is rhythmically and colorly independent".  These two clauses are not contradictory because some music (specifically counterpunctual music) is harmonically independent and rhythmically and colorly independent.  Therefore, the conjunction "but" should not be used in the sentence wherein you want to use "but".

Whereas "and" groups clauses without logical implications. If to age is to callous over one&#39;s sympathy, then I shall remain a I child forever. (talk) 08:25, 22 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Please forgive my attempts at levity; I was in a silly mood last night. I probably would have had no problem with your preference of conjunction, had it not been for the earlier abomination of the non-word "contourally", which I had recast the sentence in order to remove. I was concentrating so hard on the structure of the sentence that I failed to notice its content, which is at least dubious if not outright wrong. It plainly is confounding "counterpoint" with "polyphony", and then tautologically uses the latter word to explain what is meant. As it stands, the sentence may be marginally acceptable with reference to 18th-century (or "tonal") counterpoint, but the invocation of "harmony" becomes doubtful as soon as one ventures back to the modal practice of the 16th century, and the rest falls to pieces when considering still earlier contrapuntal theory and practice. Think only of organum, conductus, discant (with the related technique of "sights"), and fauxbourdon, all of which obey rules of counterpoint but/and none of which feature rhythmic independence of the parts and/but some of which also do not employ independence of melodic contour. At the very least that sentence needs a citation, though I think any decent authority would not be so incautious.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:41, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

December 2013
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