Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of quartal pieces


 * 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   merge to Quartal and quintal harmony.  Sandstein  04:32, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

List of quartal pieces

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Deprodded with nothing but moving some stuff around. The article has had only six examples for all its life, and as it stands, four are unsourced. The second source says nothing about "quartal" anywhere on the page. If only so few examples can be found, then it's not a list. I could also find no sources verifying the others as examples of quartal pieces. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)


 * What's the reason for deletion?
 * Deprod:.
 * Maybe you should look in the second source again: . I suggest Ctrl-F. Hyacinth (talk) 01:07, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I found the word "quartal" once. That does not verify it as a "quartal piece", nor does it seem like a reliable source. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * What exactly is the definition of a "quartal piece"? Is it any piece that includes at least one instance of quartal harmony? If so, then we may safely include almost every piece of music with any vestige of harmony of any sort (after all, sus4 chords are a commonplace throughout tonal music). Or is it a piece that is constructed exclusively of quartal chords? In that case, I think we must delete all of the examples currently in this very meagre list. It seems to me that this list has got no reason for existence if there is no clear criterion for what goes in and what is excluded. There is no Wikipedia article on "quartal music" (only the one describing individual chords), and even reliable sources are more likely to refer to pieces that use quartal harmony to some degree than to pieces which are entirely or even principally based in quartal harmony. In order for this list to be kept, the most urgent need is to decide what a "quartal piece" is.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thus the difficulty of any list. People often complain that they are too long, but this one is too short. Don't know what the term means? If a piece should go on the list? Notability? One can always fall back on citing sources. Hyacinth (talk) 05:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * But it's still synthesis if none of the sources uses the term "quartal". Do your sorces use that word or no? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * There is an easy way to see if a source uses the term "quartal". I would argue I don't own the sources. Hyacinth (talk) 23:36, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Absolutely true although, if I understand TenPoundHammer correctly, the emphasis is more on the word "piece" than on "quartal". That is to say, any musical work may use the odd D-major triad or the odd quartal chord, but neither one of these conditions makes it a piece in G or A major, or a "quartal piece".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:07, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

See: Talk:List of musical pieces which use extended techniques. Hyacinth (talk) 05:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * On Wikipedia one must expect to fall back on citing sources. The critical difference between this list and the extended-techniques article is that inclusion on the latter requires only documentation of a single instance. As I have already said, if that is the criterion for inlusion here, we had better get ready to list the entire output of composers such as Vivaldi, Mozart, and Albert Ketèlby, who scarcely can have avoided using a sus4 at least once in any of their compositions. (Vivaldi's Concerto "La notte" includes a movement with hair-raisingly extensive use of such chords, but does this make it a "quartal piece"?) The other problem, as already noted by TenPoundHammer, is that none of the sources cited so far actually declare any work to be a "quartal piece". I doubt that any source so bold (or so foolish) is likely ever to be found.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:31, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly what he said. I know what quartal means, but I see nothing referring to "quartal pieces" anywhere in a Google search. Quartals are as common as, say, fifths, so listing any piece with a quartal in it would include listing nearly all of music. Spamming the article with sources does nothing unless you say what your criteria are. "Quartal piece" gets 56 results on Google, so I don't think you ever will. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:03, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * When I replicate your Google search, I get 103 hits instead of 56, but that scarcely matters. What is more important is that a large share of them find those words embedded in phrases like, "Is there such a thing as a quartal piece", "this is not a quartal piece", or (my favourite, from a book on 15th-century music), "an example of a 'non-quartal piece'". It does transpire that a composer named Don Haddad has written something called Contrapunctus and Quartal Piece, which also accounts for about thirty of those 103 hits. A statistical analysis concludes that this may be the only verifiable Quartal Piece ever written, and thus should be the only composition included in the list under discussion. But is using the phrase in a title sufficient evidence that it is actually a quartal piece? After all, Ezra Sims wrote a work called String Quartet no. 2 (1962) which is actually a quintet for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, and cello, and was composed in 1974. The title is a joke, referring to an uncharacteristic error made by Nicolas Slonimsky when writing the article on Sims in the supplement to Baker's Biographical Dictionary.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:03, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Did I say "List of musical pieces which use extended techniques exists, so should this"? No. Hyacinth (talk) 22:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Given your arguments above, and the context of its appearances, the term "non-quartal piece" must mean something more than "a piece which doesn't use quartal chords consistently". Hyacinth (talk) 23:36, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I have no idea what "non-quartal" could possibly refer to in a context of 15th-century secular music. Presumably the word "quartal" is defined somewhere in that book, perhaps with a very different meaning to the one we are supposing here (i.e., chords built by stacking fourths).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:54, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

See: List of pieces which use the whole tone scale. Hyacinth (talk) 22:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that this is a flagrant example, Hyacinth. Are you saying that that list ought also to be deleted?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

What if the article was renamed "List of pieces which use quartal harmony"? Hyacinth (talk) 23:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * That would be somewhat more manageable, though it still leave open the question, discussed above, of what "using quartal harmony" actually involves. At least one sus4 chord? Two sus4 chords? Obviously this is not sufficient, especially if they resolve to triads. The Vivaldi concerto movement I mentioned earlier consists of a chain of sus4 chords, each turning into another as the anticipated resolution fails to materialise. The larger context, of course, makes it plain that they should resolve, so does this invalidate the idea that it is "quartal"? And where are we to find sources that will verify such distinctions?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:36, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * That's a problem with each of those similarly titled lists. Hyacinth (talk) 02:09, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 01:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 01:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * This page is also the subject of a discussed move request: see Talk:List of quartal pieces. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:29, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:06, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, I've come to a conclusion: Delete. The criteria for inclusion on the list are undefined, to the extent that either nearly all or nearly no pieces may be construed as valid. No sources have been forthcoming that identify any piece clearly as "a quartal piece". I am not happy, however, that only three editors have so far been involved in this discussion, though this suggests a very low general level of interest in the topic, which may be yet another argument in favor of eliminating this list.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:57, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - those of us who are not musicologists with expertise in topics like '15th-century secular music' blush to say anything here as it will certainly be inadequate. I marvel that Wikipedia can marshal serious discussion of a topic such as this. But since you ask, I'd say that a list without a set of verifiable criteria must go, so if the criteria indeed can't be made to work, there's no doubt of the correct outcome. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:11, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge to Quartal and quintal harmony. --Lambiam 13:34, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This one's a tricky one. Although the information in general is encyclopedic, this list cannot be given a firm set of criteria that make sense, so the list is not encyclopedic. Still, I agree with User:Lambiam that we should merge this to Quartal and quintal harmony because these six examples are in fact good examples for the quartal part of that article. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 18:22, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge I agree with Jorgath's reasoning; the information is appropriate but does not necessarily warrant a standalone article. As there is an appropriate merge target, the appropriate information should be merged there. Rlendog (talk) 14:48, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Changing my mind: Merge, per the discussion immediately above, and given the fact that both Hyacinth and myself have considerably expanded the list and added a number of references. (Also, if anyone is interested, I have discovered that the peculiar "non-quartal" expression with reference to 15th-century music stems from a 1940 article by Charles Warren Fox, and has to do with a particular situation in 3-part writing, where no pairing of voices is permitted to have an "essential fourth", no matter what ameliorating interval may be supplied by the third voice. Fox regarded this—rightly, in the view of many other musicologists—as a stylistic watershed between medieval and renaissance compositional techniques. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with "quartal" music, which is not even a term that Fox used to describe the earlier, medieval attitude to harmony.)—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:03, 3 May 2012 (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.