Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of recordings of compositions by César Franck


 * 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 keep (no consensus). 1ne 06:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

List of recordings of compositions by César Franck
This discography is ridiculously small. My guess is that it is the contents of someone's private CD collection. Unless this page is going to expand to something close to a complete discography of Franck (which would be a mammoth undertaking) it should be deleted Grover cleveland 02:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Weak keep it needs expansion, but that's not a criteria for deletion. This list has definite, objective criteria for inclusion, and a finite limit.  seems fine and potentially valuable, if one wants to see all the recordings of a work, for example. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:30, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I generally think discographies are great and would agree with you if there seemed any remote prospect that this list would improve. However, given that the list currently contains only 14 recordings, while ArkivMusic lists 581 recordings of Franck currently available for purchase, and that all the listed recordings are of organ music with no mention of his orchestral, choral, vocal or chamber music, I seriously question whether this is ever going to happen. Grover cleveland 15:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete as unencyclopedic and per WP:OR, unless someone can find some sources that deal with the subject of this list (not the recodings themselves). That the list is incomplete is by the way absolutely no valid reason to have it deleted. -- Koffieyahoo 04:33, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * We don't usually require extensive secondary sources for discographies, normally the record catalog itself is sufficient to verify the necessary information about the albums. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 06:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, please point me to a recording catalog then. I would only consider extracting the information from the CDs/LPs themselves original research. The unencyclopedic still stands though. -- Koffieyahoo 07:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete - Ridiculously incomplete, and if anyone tried to make a serious list, it would be completely unwieldy - Amazon lists over 1000 hits on his name. Franck is a fairly major composer, there are hundreds of recordings of his work. Particularly notable recordings of his work should be listed in the César Franck article. --Brianyoumans 07:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete - same arguments as above - it is very unlikely that this discography will ever be complete: the discography itself had only 3 edits since april.  A short discography with milestones, historical recordings, etc., that would be interesting though.--Dr. Friendly 18:27, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * "Weak Keep If I go to the library and get a book about a composer, it may well have a section of "essential repertoire" recordings of the composer's works. I assume that at the time the book was written, these were the best performances on record: that they represent an acknowledged interpreter of the works, well recorded. I would appreciate the same thing in a Wiki article about a composer. The problem is, if Wikipedian Joe Blow writes the list, and says "These are the best recordings of Franck's work" that is obviously OR. The article would have to come from a verifiable source, such as a music book or music magazine, or at least a reputable website (and how is that detremined?). Then there would be the problem of copyright infringement: The list is the property of the magazine or book. One out is to include in the main article on the musician a link to a website listing essential recordings. Then some deletionist is likely to complain the website is spam, if they also offer products for sale. Checking a few musicians randomly: I don't see such a discography for Beethoven or Carl Czerny, just a listing of  compositions. For Wagner, many compositions have their own articles. Lohengrin lists 6 recordings chosen by someone. Is their inclusion OR? Why not 6 other recordings? For Gershwin, the article on Rhapsody in Blue identifies 6 recordings as "Notable" without citing a source for that opinion. Clearly the precedent is set for an inclusion of "Notable" recordings in the Franck article itself or in a split off article such as this, or go to the other articles and remove the discography as OR. For Wagner's Die Meistersinger, the article has an external link to a Geocities blog where someone in 2000 listed the best recordings (in his opinion)of the work. That site does not offer products for sale, so does not appear to be spam. If such a site had reviews or selections made by someone with credentials such as a distinguished conductor or professor of music, it would seem to meet general Wiki requirements of verifiability, and to be a usable approach, preferable to the editor just listing the recordings he owns. Edison 23:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * But this list doesn't even claim to be a list of "notable recordings". As I pointed out above, it doesn't attempt to cover such well-known works as Franck's Symphony or Violin Sonata.  It is restricted to organ music. Grover cleveland 00:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * My point was that in any article, for the editor to say These 6 recordings are Notable or The Bes is OR unless they cite some verifiable external review or list to say so. Such lists should be deleted as OR unless tyhey have an outside source for the selection. It would not matter if the Franck articlelisted a couple of recordings of every composition by Franck. Still OR. But for consistency, why disallow a list of recordings ONLY in this article? Surely there are collections of reviews such as John von Rhein's: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-0608110217aug11,1,1683241.story  which identify the most notable recordings, old as well as new,  of a given workEdison 14:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep so that editors can expand it. This article is a stub. Wikipedia has about a million stubs. Wikipedia does not require that articles be born whole. Fg2 00:17, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * True, but writing a discography generally takes a significant amount of work. If anyone was really serious about making this article more complete, they could, for a start, add entries for the 581 recordings of Franck available at ArkivMusic, and then investigate out-of-print recordings.  Does anyone seriously expect this to happen?  If not, this article should be deleted. Grover cleveland 00:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * See above. Other articles list perhaps 6 "Notable" recordings of a given work by a given composer, but I challeneg th editors' selection of those 6 as OR, the equivalent of the editor saying "Here are my favorite recordings" unless they cite, say an article by a music critic listing those as the critic's favorite recordings.Edison 14:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * We seem to be drifting off-topic here. If you want to challenge lists of "Notable recordings" in other articles that are not backed by references as OR or "Citation needed" then go ahead.  I'm not sure what relevance that has to this particular article, which does not claim to be a list of Notable recordings, but rather a "List of recordings of compositions by Cesar Franck".  Imagine as a thought experiment that I created an article entitled List of all recordings of anything ever made and populated it with two CDs from my collection.  That list would also have clear and verifiable criteria for inclusion and a finite limit.  In fact, all the arguments that are being used to defend this Franck list would also apply to my imaginary article.  It would need a bit of expansion, to be sure, but so then does the Franck list!  Yet surely no-one would deny that that article should be deleted because it is hopelessly overambitious and pathetically incomplete.  The same points apply to this Franck article.  Grover cleveland 16:08, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Checked at my public library and found 2 guides to classical recordings. They do not list hundreds of recommended recordings for Franck. In fact, Rough Guide only selected 5 of his works other than organ works, and had a few recordings of each. "A Basic Music Library" by the American Library Association only chose 3 of his works other than organ works, and listed 1 to 4 recordings of each. Obviously there is zero merit to listing a duplication of Schwan's catalog with every recording in print, then supplementing it with all out of print recordings. But there is a place for "Notable" or "Recommended" recordings. So rename the article to avoid the accusation that it does not include every recording ever done, and either include representative selections from such guides as are found in a library, or from a reputable online website. Please take a look at my additions, which include 1 or more recordings of each of the works recommended in either of the 2 guides found. Edison 23:05, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for your work. I've created a new section "Notable recordings" in the César Franck article and copied the recordings you added there.  However, I still think that List of recordings of compositions by César Franck should be deleted. Grover cleveland 00:06, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep It can be expanded and if necessary split into pages by instrument or whatever. It's not great now but there are many wikipedia pages that have gone from being terrible to featured. Mallanox 21:25, 21 August 2006 (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.