Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Classical music in popular culture


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete. Subject may merit an article but looks better start from scratch due to several issues, namely scope unclear and possibly too broad. Discussion encourages creation of more specific articles and/or inclusion in other articles. (Anyone wanting it userfied or contents to merge please leave a note at my talk) - Nabla (talk) 19:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Classical music in popular culture

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Delete. This page republishes previously deleted listcruft from the Pagliacci and Symphony No. 9 (Dvořák) articles. I understand it was created to illustrate a discussion on the Classical music project (see 'Music in popular culture'). I think it would have been better to create, and if necessary develop it, in userspace. Kleinzach (talk) 09:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete-The article does not comply with WP:CITE criteria. The entire article is unreferenced. And, just as Kleinzach mentioned, it is a listcruft. -- Zachary crimsonwolf  10:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete- I always look at “Classical music in popular culture” as trivia. It doesn’t serve any purpose and the list can goes on and on like what had happened to some opera articles before. I support for the deletion. I am not a purist or treating opera like some sort of sacred art but I think there is no need to list down all the opera adaptations because the list will not stop. Famous opera arias and music will forever be used / taken by cartoon or movie producers in their productions – some using them for “fun” (mocking) while some adopting them to show their appreciations. For whatever reasons they are, I would suggest for this article or anything similar like this to be deleted unless if somebody could really make it useful and appealing to be read - Jay (talk) 10:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete as is, but please keep the talk page. This is an appropriate topic, but it should be a normal researched prose article, not a list.  This list doesn't serve as an appropriate starting point for that article, though.  Mango juice talk 11:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete as is, but I do agree with MangoJuice that it could potentially make for a good article if approached in a different way.Nrswanson (talk) 15:34, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per the comments listed above. (jarbarf) (talk) 16:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions.   — Paul Erik  (talk) (contribs) 17:31, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. This article, the way is written, is unencyclopedic. -- Magioladitis (talk) 01:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. The subject could make a very good article, provided it's written in prose and properly referenced. But at present it's just list-cruft and will attract even more. This article should be developed outside the main article space. Voceditenore (talk) 07:01, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and rewrite. The article's creator, Ravpapa, has voiced opinions much like what everyone above has said, and wishes to be given the opportunity to rewrite it in mainspace, with the help of others, which is entirely reasonable.  All of us here should really be working on helping with the intended rewrite, not trying to delete it, since we agree that such an article belongs on Wikipedia.--Father Goose (talk) 10:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Deleting this article will not interfere with that in the least. These are not even useful research notes.  An appropriate version of the article would have to be written entirely from scratch anyway.  Mango juice talk 11:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * IMO It would be better if Ravpapa developed it in userspace and asked any collaborators to help him there. Mainspace is for readers, for the public - not for editors to make drafts or to use as a notebook.--Kleinzach (talk) 12:10, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete and rewrite – this is the best thing to do. Wiki pages are not for testing ground. I would suggest the creator to finish the job offline (seek all the necessary references) and later on copy all of them online. A line like In the Law & Order episode Faccia a Faccia, Vesti la giubba plays in the background when Detectives Briscoe and Green find the character Joe DeMayo injured in a hotel room - don’t do any good for the article. Imagine someday if someone added In the King Jay episode of "I am the new Calaf", Vesti la giubba plays in the background when King Jay and his slaves were busy looking for easy going and non-demanding Turandot look alike in a hotel room – how can you verify? There are thousands of movies and TV series all over the world (Though this is ENGLISH language page, but there is no rule saying that non-English materials can’t be posted). Therefore my suggestion to the creator, only write down important and noted adaptations and elaborate the contents for why, when and how the arias or the scenes were taken for the movie or TV series. Compose it well and make it look so damn good and professional. Or not, you will make this page look like a cheap tabloid while in the same time offending people like me who do not like to see "cheap trivia" involving opera. This is my personal opinion, no offense and good luck - Jay (talk) 14:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment. I see that Ravpapa has done some organization, removed much of the random (and truly trivial) material and added more prose. The Pagliacci section is reasonable... up to a point. However, Symphony No. 9 (Dvořák) is basically a 3 item list of occurrences with no rhyme or reason as to why the latter two use that particular music. Note that writing an article like this can be very tricky. It can't be original research or a personal essay. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, not an original analysis of the primary-source material. It isn't enough to simply verify the occurrence of a particular use of classical music in popular culture. References must be found that verify its significance and relevance to the topic. Even more crucially, the article itself needs to incorporate and reference published work on the actual topic, i.e. "classical music in popular culture". Until that happens, the article is not even a viable stub. It is simply a nicely formatted list of trivia. Like the others above, I see no reason why this article cannot be written to a viable level on a user space draft page or on a temporary talk page by Ravpapa and anyone else who wishes to work on it. Then it can be published to the main space. Deletion will not prevent that. The article, even in its present slightly improved state, does not belong in the main article space yet. Voceditenore (talk) 15:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete As I commented on Talk:Classical music in popular culture, this subject is notable and deserves an article. However, this is a dreaded IPC list that can never hope to be comprehensive or representative (even if such lists belonged on Wikipedia, another discussion). Delete as listcruft that should have been simply removed from the parent article. I suggest userfication; these items may have potential for use as examples in a more encyclopedic article. However, in article space this presents an attractive nuisance for IPC list appenders. / edg ☺ ☭ 20:14, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete: The artcle lacks notability as a stand alone article.Camilo Sanchez (talk) 04:30, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete because the subject of "Classical music in popular culture" is basically the same as "Classical music." Contrary to widespread belief on Wikipedia, "popular culture" did not begin with color television. It would be impossible to list every work that uses a few bars of some classical work. WillOakland (talk) 01:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course it would be possible to list all the major, and even most of the minor media uses of a classical work. There is a narrow belief that we shouldn't allow such uses to be listed in the encyclopedia... for reasons that have never made sense to me.--Father Goose (talk) 03:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you are missing the point. The article inherently makes a distinction that does not exist, as if there were not opera houses playing "classical" works all over the US in the late 19th century. WillOakland (talk) 03:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe that is Classic music as performed in traditional venues that you are referring to.--Father Goose (talk) 06:23, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

By the same token, how can a discussion of the New World Symphony be complete without a reference to Dvorak's mission in the US, and the profound effect of this and his other American compositions on the American style. Dvorak was invited to the United States to aid in the creation of a distinctive national style, and the theme songs of Bonanza and the Lone Ranger have their roots in the ideas of this crazy drunken Czech. Of course, neither the original Pagliacci nor the NWS PC sections said these things - they had to be read, thought about, and rewritten from the original listcruft to something meaningful and coherent. That is why we are editors. To do this work. And it is only other editors' express refusal to do this work, and, instead, to perform unconsidered deletes, that led me to create this article. Fact: the PC section of Große Fuge got deleted and restored three times, before I had a chance to rewrite it, based on the original listcruft. No one has disagreed that the section as currently written is a meaningful addition to the article. Those of you who have already voted, please read the rewritten section of the article on Pagliacci and see if you don't agree that it is worthy of inclusion in the wikipedia, either in the context of this article, or as part of the original Pagliacci article - Ravpapa
 * Keep: Any discussion of Pagliacci is incomplete without discussion of the fact that Pagliacci, the figure immersed in tragedy yet guised in mirth, has become a cultural icon.  The picture of the weeping clown adorns the walls of thousands of homes.  He is refered to in songs.  I cannot fathom why you consider this aspect of Pagliacci's history irrelevant to a discussion of the opera.
 * Comment: - Quoted from the latest "For example, Spike Jones song, Pal-Yat-Chee, jokes about several cowboys who went to see Pagliacci, thinking it was a cowboy play. " - No reference for that? Who is Pal-Yat-Chee? Spike Jones? Do you expect all the readers know what is that all about? - Jay (talk) 08:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Jay's comment is right on the mark. A lot of the references are extraordinarily obscure, quite apart from all the other problems we've noted. --Kleinzach (talk) 10:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You find out who Spike Jones is by clicking on the wikilink. And since Spike daringly assumed his audience could figure out that "Pal-Yat-Chee" was a mispronunciation of Pagliacci, maybe we can take the same risk.


 * Separately, if not for all the pop-culture references, Pagliacci himself would be more obscure than most of the references. That's why we should have "in popular culture" sections and articles in the encyclopedia: to document the very reasons why a given subject is so well-known.--Father Goose (talk) 03:32, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Father Goose wrote "Separately, if not for all the pop-culture references, Pagliacci himself would be more obscure than most of the references".
 * Wow, are you saying that without this SPIKE guy, Pagliacci is a nobody? Enlighten me please. This is really an understatement! When I asked "who Spike Jones is", the wiki link has not been added yet, it was later added by Voceditenore. As for Pal-Yat-Chee, I still don’t see the connection. Could this happen because I first heard about Pagliacci when my parents brought me to watch Pagliacci at age 8 but only aware of someone called Spike Jones 1 days ago (ironically here in this page)?  So who is obscure, Pagliacci or Spikey or Pal-Yat-Chee? - Jay (talk) 16:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Father Goose:  "Pagliacci himself would be more obscure than most of the references"  Hmm. Have you read the article? It seems you don't even know what the word pagliacci means!


 * More seriously, you are making the assumption that Pagliacci was not well-known, until referenced by later so-called "popular culture" references. That's simply not true and it never was true. Moreover for me (and many, many others) Pagliacci is popular culture and Spike Jones et al. are obscure, unknown cultural artifacts of no obvious relevance. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment The current section on Pagliacci could easily be included in Pagliacci. I can't speak for anyone else here, but I'm not at all arguing that the cultural resonance of a classical piece outside its own genre does not belong in an article about the piece. In fact, I've argued for this in several discussions, e.g., , as it demonstrates the piece's impact on the culture at large. I personally incorporate cultural references into opera articles via prose, where they are relevant and notable. See, for example, Nessun dorma and Cavalleria rusticana and its talk page. Lists of trivia are not 'lost' when removed from the article. I edit them to remove totally trivial mentions, put them on the article's talk page and invite other editors to incorporate them in the article via referenced prose, as I do.

What I'm arguing is that if this article is meant to be a 'repository' for all the deleted trivia, then it's misguided. As I argued above, it needs to be centered and focused on referenced published work on the actual topic, i.e. "classical music in popular culture". The actual examples, can then be incorporated as part of the discourse. It should not be centered on simply cataloguing and discussing non-classical contexts of use for particular pieces, whether they're written in continuous prose or as lists. That's the main problem. As it is now, this article puts the cart before the horse. It needs a theoretical underpinning from published sources on the overall topic first.

Once again, userfying the article will allow it to be developed into what is required for an encyclopedia article. And if editors are reminded that 'trivia' collections (or whatever people want to call them) should be moved to the articles' talk pages rather than simply deleted, there will be no problem of 'losing' material that could eventually be usefully incorporated into the individual articles. My view is that if a piece's cultural resonance is truly significant, it primarily belongs in the article on the piece itself (properly written up and referenced), not in a collection like Classical music in popular culture. If it's not significant enough to appear in the individual article, then what is doing in this one? Best, Voceditenore (talk) 10:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keeping it in mainspace would more readily allow it to be developed into what is required for an encyclopedia article. User space is effectively invisible to the encyclopedia's readers and contributors, which is the apparent intent of the commentators here.  The kind of immediatism being displayed in this discussion should be reserved for articles that are unimprovable.  Articles that are redeemable should simply be improved.  Not deleted, not swept out of sight.--Father Goose (talk) 03:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm beginning to think you are allergic to sand! But seriously - the concept of different spaces is fundamental to WP and the WikiMedia software. How about having a look at What is an article? --Kleinzach (talk) 04:08, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment: Whether Voceditenore's opinion that PC sections are better off within the articles on the different pieces, rather than in a separate article, is arguable. I, for one, would be willing to have it either way.  However, we need assurances that the material for these sections will not be subject to knee-jerk deletions.  As for moving the trivial information to the talk page, that option was discussed and rejected during the formulation of Handling trivia, though I can't now find the specific reference.  The upshot of that discussion was that the listcruft should be winnowed, but left in place for future editing.  "There is no deadline" says that guideline.  Copying it to the talk page is essentially consigning it to oblivion - who knows it's there? who can find it?


 * As for --Kleinzach's comment "Moreover for me (and many, many others) Pagliacci is popular culture and Spike Jones et al. are obscure, unknown cultural artifacts of no obvious relevance." This is, indeed the crux of the matter.  Kleinzach, you are right for you, but many editors, and, I would venture to say, most readers, do not feel as you do.  Why do you insist on refusing them a voice? --Ravpapa (talk) 11:15, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, that's an outrageous bit of rhetoric! We are not refusing anybody a voice. You are free to express your ideas within the agreed structures that apply to everybody here. --Kleinzach (talk) 12:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment Let's look at this from the opposite perspective. Maybe what's needed is to insert classical music into the popular culture articles at every opportunity. The Pagliacci connection is already discussed and linked in "'The Tears of a Clown" where it is absolutely central to the subject. Good! However, in an article about the opera Pagliacci, it is very tangential, as is just about every other use/quotation of the word pagliacci. The discussion more properly belongs in the former with a link to the latter as is the case now, with perhaps a "see also" at the end of Pagliacci.

Meanwhile, "Pal-Yat-Chee" in the Spike Jones article currently links directly to Vesti la giubba (with no explanation), when according to Classical music in popular culture, it doesn't incorporate the actual music in its tune and it's all a bit of a joke. Again, why not put the information in the Spike Jones article rather than the other way around? Pagliacci isn't even mentioned in the Clown article, for heaven's sake. Another example... if the fact that the Cavalleria rusticana "Intermezzo" is used in the anime series Rurouni Kenshin is not worthy enough to mention in the article on the series, why is it worthy of mention in Cavalleria rusticana?

However, what remains the real problem here (even more than the endless list-cruft this article will attract) is that it is highly subject to original research. References will have to be provided for each musical quotation (incorporation of actual melodies or passages) in other works. You'd either have to provide a link to the two scores or to give the name of a published author who says that one quotes the other. How else can the reader verify that the Norwegian black metal band Dimmu Borgir used part of Dvořák's 9th Symphony for their song "Guds Fortapelse - Apenbaring Av Dommedag"? Ditto for the use in various soundtracks. How else can the reader verify that the Cavalleria rusticana  "Intermezzo" appears in sound track of Rurouni Kenshin or "Nessun dorma" is used in Toys? Those assertions have to be referenced to a published list of the complete soundrack.

There's also a conflation in the article between the quotation or use of actual music, and the quotation of or reference to characters or concepts in operas. Leoncavallo didn't invent the weeping clown, or even the story of Pagliacci (he took it from a play by someone else). The sad or weeping clown is goes back to Commedia dell'arte and was also a classic figure in late Romantic French literature. Now, I could easily write that his opera, because of its popularity and probably Caruso's recording, gave a modern 'handle' to the very old concept of the weeping clown. But that's clearly straying into original research and synthesis. That's not a piece of common knowledge like "the Earth is round". It requires a published source.

These are major problems with the article as it is currently conceived, i.e. a list of individual prose discussions of various references to/uses of classical music outside classical music plus added raw, unreferenced data to be incorporated at some later date. This has nothing to do with "refusing people a voice". Best, Voceditenore (talk) 13:55, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * PS. "Copying it to the talk page is essentially consigning it to oblivion - who knows it's there? who can find it?" I really cannot see how an article's talk page can be considered "oblivion". If someone remotely cares about contributing to an established article, especially for the first time, its talk page is the first thing to read. I don't know about you, but I always check it out before editing. Leaving an unreferenced 'drive-by' contribution  like "X song appears in X movie/commerical/TVepisode/cartoon in the article results in a potentially wrong or misleading article. It's quite common practice to move unreferenced assertions, not just IPC ones, to the talk page until a reference can be found (noting it in the edit summary). If the person who made the 'contribution' cares enough, they can return and provide a reference. Voceditenore (talk) 15:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Voceditenore: That's an excellent summary of the situation. I haven't always agreed with your opinions about trivia/pop culture in the past, but for the record I do agree with this. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.