Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Contemporary music task force/Archive 16

Jonathan FeBland
Comments welcome --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Jonathan FeBland (2nd nomination)
 * I am troubled by this one. My instinct says delete.  It's a poorly-written article with few references and I can't find any reliable evidence of notability.  The article is largely written by  who here more-or-less claims to be "Jonathan FeBland, Composer".  And yet it is claimed his music is published by Universal Edition and recorded on the Meridian label &mdash; these are not minor players and would seem to lend credibility.  Is he just a very forceful self-publicist?  Does that make him worthy of a WP article?  --Deskford (talk) 15:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed the single user and potential COI, myself, but wasn't quite sure what to make of it. OTOH, if Brian Ferneyhough had happened to author his own article, I doubt we would quibble even if he edited as User:Brian Ferneyhough.  We would have a quiet chat with him and then clean up his article when he wasn't looking!  It is extremely rare, though, for such established names to even feel the need to go ahead and start an article on themselves, it is far more usually insecure self-publicists that feel such a need.  The only sure fire test, IMO, is WP:V: if it can't be sourced, tough.  Delete.  We have a few more left-overs from the sourcing drive, BTW; they are in the bot subpage (bottom of project page) but I have copied them over to a subpage of my own, here, and added a few tools to help source them more easily.  The others aren't much better than this one, TBO, but I am reluctant to send more than one to AfD after my last experience!  --Jubilee♫ clipman  17:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The article was started by and extensively edited by that IP alongside  which also makes me suspicious  --Jubilee♫ clipman  17:56, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just thought... I should notift Znethru of the AfD as a courtesy --Jubilee♫ clipman 17:58, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Er... something tells me that isn't necessary. ;-) - Voceditenore (talk) 21:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What sharp eye you have. And your next edit or two after the above one will make him jump out his chair! --Jubilee♫ clipman  21:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Er... what happened to that edit summary? I seems to have vanished my end.  Has it been oversighted or have I pressed a strange button my end I didn't know about to make it invisible?  [I was thinkin of something else I had been investigating, sorry about that!]  OTOH: try this --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:57, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Obviously, this has changed colour! The closing statement is worth a quick look, though  --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Ongoing work
--Jubilee♫ clipman 21:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Totentango by Matthew King (composer) - copyvio? Style?
 * King's Wood Symphony - check.
 * Brunel (opera project) - copyvio/paraphrasing?
 * The Snow Queen (opera) - check
 * Alexander Mosolov - check recent updates
 * Morris Pert - obituary added but body of article needs updating also

Talkpage template
has moved the page to sit at Template:WikiProject Contemporary music which technically means that we should now use WikiProject Contemporary music on talkpages. The move was per the standard for talkpage templates and it is one that I had discussed with a few admins a while back but forgot about. I have asked Xeno whether we need to change all the old banners and a few other technical questions but I suspect the move should not cause to many problems. BTW, I have archived a few things (including my 1001 messages about Wikibreaks!) to Archive 15. There is ongoing work in some of those posts, actually, so I'll post a summary shortly --Jubilee♫ clipman 21:50, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Update - we can use either WikiProject Contemporary music (recommended) or Contemporary music (template redirect). IIRC, the Composers Project has a similar situation.  No need to change the old banners, though it wouldn't hurt to update it on the more visible article talkpages, I guess.  I'll update out Project page shortly (I updated the template documentation last night) --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:42, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Shortcut
Oh and BTW, watch that you don't link to WP:CMT by mistake. I did it once but I think I got away with it... --Jubilee♫ clipman 07:30, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd noticed that once before somewhere! --Deskford (talk) 21:41, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

James MacMillan (composer)
Holy mackerel! There must be more sources out there for this guy?! His article needs a massive overhaul too! I'll have a go when I get a chance, of course, but if any one has any paper books about him that aren't online they would be appreciated! --Jubilee♫ clipman 02:56, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I found a few, added as "Further reading". The only trouble is, they are all in thick Glaswegian dialect (the German one is especially difficult to understand). A search of newspapers should turn up a couple of dozen interviews and the like.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Jerome! As long as it isn't thick Aberdonian, we should be OK!  Yeah, there should be plenty interviews and maybe a few transcripts if we hunt around a bit.  Church publications (especially Catholic, of course) should help  --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Comments savoured by a thick Aberdonian...! --Deskford (talk) 22:57, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Haha! I'll have a go at this tommorow  --Jubilee♫ clipman  23:51, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have added a few reviews, an interview and a couple of newspaper articles as well as his official site and the Intermusica Website bio (lots more reviews on that). I think I'll have a go at completely rewriting the article soon as it really should be at least a GA.  My mobile connection is still rubbish here, though (it keeps dropping out and takes an age even when it stays alive), so I'll need to get a cable broadband connection or something.  Hopefully they have such things in Inverness...  --Jubilee♫ clipman  23:03, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Daniel Dorff
Daniel Dorff is an unreferenced BLP composer. The article reads like a promotional blurb but does seem to make some claims of notability. Anyone know anything about him? --Deskford (talk) 16:33, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, but the article certainly feels as if it should be twice as long, at least: the Theodore Presser Company and those commissions hint at a lot more, IMO. It feels like Oscar van Dillen's article before it was expanded, in fact --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:57, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Joseph Hallman (the real one and the article)

 * Articles for deletion/Joseph Hallman The composer himself has expressed an interest in helping us source a new article. We could ask for Deletion review but I suspect a brand new article would be better.  Thoughts?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  07:27, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect it would be better to start from scratch if and when reliable sources come to light. --Deskford (talk) 21:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. We will need a fair number of sources, also, if we are to recreate after deletion by AfD, especially for a BLP article. He hasn't got back to Ravpapa yet, anyway, so this is all academic for now  --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:55, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Category rename
This is the category used by the talkpage banner recently moved to WikiProject Contemporary music. The category presently uses lower case for the word "contemporary" but should use upper case per "WikiProject Contemporary music". Probably a Speedy Rename actually but the criteria for that seem not to take WikiProject names into account so I played safe...
 * Categories for discussion/Log/2010 May 29

BTW, there was a bit of teething trouble with the banner rename: see here for the issues which were all caused by some weird argument being called in the WikiProject template. It seems that it has now been resolved by Happy-melon who removed the pointless "category=no" thing. This cat rename is part of the follow up to that template rename. A lot more to do yet... I'll keep you all informed of my progress --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:47, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Category renamed by who also updated the talkpage banner for us.  Getting there slowly but surely...   --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

AfD: Danilo Bestagno
Another one that looks like autobiography, with no third-party references and no reliable coverage that I can find. His article on the Italian Wikipedia was deleted long since. --Deskford (talk) 23:14, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Danilo Bestagno

Marcos di Silva
I prodded this on the 13th but forgot to post here. I can find nothing out there at all --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither, apparently, could the editors of the Portuguese Wikipedia, who have deleted his article there.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Bye-bye indeed, then... --Jubilee♫ clipman 20:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Useful project pages
Voceditenore has create two extremely useful guidelines for WPComposers which we would be wise to make use of: WikiProject Composers/Guide to online research and WikiProject Composers/Copyright guidelines Thanks Voce! --Jubilee♫ clipman 23:36, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Lyell Cresswell article created
I just started the article on Lyell Cresswell. Thanks Deskford for tagging it! Any help to expand it (massively) appreciated! --Jubilee♫ clipman 23:44, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Great stuff! --Deskford (talk) 23:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catting it: I forgot about that! --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Two articles recently bannered
Jesper Nordin and Ludmila Yurina were recently added to List of 21st-century classical composers so I bannered them with our template. Both seem notable enough but need refs. I have reworked the Nordin article to avoid copyvio and clean it up. Yurina's article needs work, too --Jubilee♫ clipman 00:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Both appear to be autobiographies created by editors with give-away usernames. I would be inclined to offer both for WP:AfD.  --Deskford (talk) 00:37, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have completely rewritten the Nordin article. It does make claims of notability: he is published by Edition Peters and the article claims that his music is performed by such orchestras as BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra and well as such ensembles as San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and that he was the composer in residence for SR P2.  If we can verify the claims, I think we can overlook the COI in his case.  The Yurina article also makes some claims that need sourcing that might just make her notable enough.  Sourcing though, as usual...  --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:47, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Nordin might be worth keeping &mdash; I had heard of him at least. Less sure about Yurina.  I'm just a little concerned that we spend so much effort on minor borderline notables who see Wikipedia as a self-publicity opportunity, when there are so many major composers with poor articles that could do with the attention.  If the self-publicists can't be bothered to do a decent job I don't see why we should clean up for them.  (Sorry, am I turning cynical...?)  --Deskford (talk) 21:48, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the problem is that we have so many of these borderline cases and keep finding yet more as we hunt around. What we really need to do is focus on both: the important composers, performers, works etc to ensure those articles are well written, give a decent account of the subject and are properly sourced; and the borderlines to decide whether a) we are simply getting a load of junk spam-mail through our door that should go straight into the bin or b) we are getting articles on genuinely notable people that might actually get binned by less informed editors.  Problem is: it is just me and thee still, with the occasional post from Jerome, Peter, Voceditenore etc when they get time!   We really do need more people so that we can split the labour between us.  Time for a recruitment drive?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed, though I'm not sure how we go about recruiting, other than stalking everybody who edits contemporary music articles. --Deskford (talk) 20:32, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've made some improvements to Jesper Nordin's article. He is indeed notable, but more work needs doing there. I'll see what I can find on Yurina. I agree that we need more hands on deck, but can't improve on Deskford's suggestion. Assuming that editors out there are fighting the good fight in our area, does it really matter if they are card-carrying members of the WPCM, though?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, Yurina is now slightly improved, as well. This one still needs massive work, though.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Jerome: great work finding Nordin's prizes. Can we now remove the COI/autobio tags, now that we have reviewed it? The Yurina article looks a bit better, also; any way to de-orphan it (only User and Wikipedia space links to it)? --Jubilee♫ clipman 22:24, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * With no false modesty, finding Nordin's prizes was more a failure than great work. I had expected to find something more substantial, but this was the best I could do. I have access to a number of academic tools, such as RILM, JSTOR, and Oxford Online, that make finding sources a lot easier than if I were restricted to what is available generally on the web. Even then, I am often surprised by what cannot be found using these tools, but may nevertheless turn up in publicly accessible websites by using a little ingenuity (or by blind luck!). I agree that the COI/autobio tags on these two articles may now be removed, and will do so if no-one esle beats me to it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:39, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I really must get hold of some decent up to date reference books: mine are years old now! BTW, we edit conflicted as we were working on Yurina, but I never bothered to merge in most of my edits: I tried to wikilink as much as I could but nothing was turning red...  I suspect she really isn't anything special and suggest we just PROD the article and forget about it  --Jubilee♫ clipman  23:15, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed the edit conflict and aborted my edit, since it was too complicated to merge. No big deal, and I have since inserted most of the changes I meant to make. I reckon you are probably right about the relative importance of this composer, but it raises the interesting question of how notable is notable? We have some criteria for what constitutes "notability", but above this threshold we have a huge number of composers and other musicians on our hands, covering a broad spectrum of notability, and opinions are bound to differ regarding who falls near the bottom, in the middle, or near the top of this range.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well at the moment we are supposed to follow WP:MUSIC... But if we followed it strictly, we would have to delete half of our composer articles, I suspect! We really do need to look at this issue at some point, though, and come up with something much more concrete than the blurb I created for our guidelines page  --Jubilee♫ clipman  23:35, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, but that is exactly the "threshold" I was referring to. The issue I meant to emphasize was how do we utilize our limited resources? Do we spend most of our time on shoring up marginal cases (as we have perhaps been doing here), or on improving articles about musicians we regard as of middling importance, or on polishing and perfecting articles on the most important figures? More important: what criteria do we accept for who falls into which category? Can we rank a person's notability based on the sheer number of references that can be amassed for an article, or what?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:45, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, to be honest, I'd favour ignoring the lower end for now and start by assessing the articles on major figures such as Ferneyhough, Adams, etc, and any related articles, to make sure they at least have no spelling or formatting errors and contain the basic facts. If we are happy enough with those (and most of them are fairly OK, IIRC) we can pass on to the next tier.  How we define the "levels" is bound to be pure POV, at this stage, but that doesn't really matter.  In fact, there is no way in the world that we will agree on who is "more notable" than whom: this discussion proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt!  But if we can come up with a short-list of relatively important composers, works, musicians, etc with articles that need work and another list of articles that need creation, we can either collaborate on one article (an Article of the Month, perhaps?) or work in a specific field on our own articles (say one takes on Polystylism, another Minimalism, and yet another New Simplicity, etc).  Would that work?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, a "to do" list (or several) is always helpful. ISTR there was one a few months ago. Whatever happened to it? Were all the articles needing attention attended to, and articles needing creation created? I thought that page was on my watchlist (and I relied on it to prompt me, whenever I had a little time). Have I just fallen down on the job, or do those lists need rejuvenating?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:16, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Contemporary music/Work in progress. I might move those back onto the project page, actually, as most of it still needs doing and we keep forgetting where it is!  There is also WikiProject Contemporary music/Articles with issues but has been dealt with, more or less (it came out of the mass-sourcing drive) and could probably be deleted unless we have any need for it?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  03:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And WikiProject Contemporary music/Unreferenced BLPs. Only six uBLPs is pretty good!  We still need to focus though: start at the "top", as I suggested?  Or work through the WIP page first?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  03:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The bot apparently missed one other Unreferenced BLP, and that is the horribly résumé-like article on Franklin Cox. I have added two references, and made a start at cleanup, but the biography section in particular needs beefing up. It is completely overwhelmed by endless lists of appearances, lectures, etc., which could usefully be folded into the main text.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:15, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see why the bot missed this one: it was not flagged for our project. I have done so now.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:21, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yuck! Good luck with that one...  Seems fairly important, though.  Good work on New Complexity, BTW.  I am keeping out you way for now but the article has been massively improved since you and Hagar started working on it  --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:50, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is a regular Augean stable, all right. I would guess it was made by cutting and pasting the subject's résumé directly into the article—ineptly formatted multiple tab characters, hanging indents and all. It's too bad that Hagar333 seems disinclined to help out with these composer articles. Something tells me he would be just the chap to expertly correct this one—he clearly knows this subject extremely well.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:27, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed he would. OTOH, the NC article has been needing expert attention for quite a while.  New Simplicity next, perhaps...?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  06:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Since the New Simplicity article has been largely my work so far, I am too close to it to see the obvious defects. Some suggestions for what needs doing would be most welcome. One thing I have considered is reorganizing it so that the slightly earlier Danish group of composers comes before the much better-known (and, in general, diametrically opposed) German one. That would elevate the Danes from their apparent "me-too" status, which is hardly a fair characterization. The chief difficulties with this are that, outside of Scandinavian studies, the term most immediately conjures up Wolfgang Rihm, and that the non-Danish, non-German composers named are generally meant to be associated with the German neo-tonalist/neo-Romantic/anti-construcionist/subjectivists, rather than with the Danish hyper-constructionist/objectivists. (I suppose at this point we should adjourn to the Talk page of the article in question).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:06, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Chronological order does make sense. The Danes are pretty important, obviously, so they do need a wee bit more than they have!  In fact, the article seem pretty short for the subject it is covering.  I'll have to read the entire article through and get back to you over there.  It won't be immediately, though, since my real life is becoming fuller again.  I am going to look at our front page again, also, to try to make it more helpful.  I have just realised that all the tasks are stuck at the bottom of a fairly long page... and even then you have to click through to other pages to find the actual tasks.  I might place them back on the main page and use collapsible boxes, perhaps.  I'll have a go in user space to figure out what works best  --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, well, that's why I asked a few paragraphs back about what had happened to the "to do" lists. Important to make these lists more visible. I've made a few fairly obviously needed changes to "New Simplicity" (such as actually naming Reimann's canonical list of seven New Simplicity composers). I'll think about how to reconstruct the article to give the Danes a fairer shake, without failing to make plain that it is the Germans who became the main claimants to the title. And of course you are right that the whole thing needs expanding. I've not actually received much help or constructive criticism since I started this article some years back, which has resulted in stagnation.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:31, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I will get started on reworking the project page tonight, hopefully. I think the issue is that we work in such a specialist field of interest that it takes a long time for anything we write or create to be found and reviewed by other Wikipedians.  Pages I have created are still pretty much as I left them, for example, beyond a little bit of tweaking from such editors as yourself, Deskford, Hyacinth and Kleinzach.  I don't believe for one minute that I create a near-perfect article for any of those subjects!  By contrast, articles on pop genres and musicians are vandalised almost daily and often stagnate simply because the serious editors cannot do any serious editing to them.  I wonder if the Pending Changes thing will help in that respect?  Of course, it won't help us much except in articles such as Paul McCartney...  --Jubilee♫ clipman  14:27, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes? Is this something like they have on the German Wikipedia? Are we going to get it too? Sorry, I'm getting way out of touch with WP developments. At the moment I only manage the odd couple of minutes here and there on WP &mdash; long enough to spot the latest self-promotionalist but not long enough for any in-depth work. I might have a bit more time to spare in January...! --Deskford (talk) 14:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, not quite like what you are referring to on German (and others, such as Catalan) Wikipedia. Pending changes is a trial project aimed, as I understand it, at streamlining the process of dealing with frequently vandalised pages. You might want to ask to have your account enabled for the trial of this tool.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I was talking about. It is different to the other WP pending changes but it might represent a move toward their system...  Anyway, don't worry about how much time you can spare: a little goes a long way, especially if it is of high quality (as your edits tend to be).  My edit count is plummeting due to RL also: but see below for hope! Recruitment is a priority, perhaps?  We need difference of opinion as much as we need consensus: the recent work at the NC article proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt!  We three tend to agree with each far too often...  :)  --Jubilee♫ clipman  19:28, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, we don't!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:31, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes we... oh wait. :)  New opinions can only be a good thing though (even if they are wrong...)  --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:08, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that link to Pending changes. It seems such a good idea I'm surprised nobody has thought of it before.  Maybe they have...!  --Deskford (talk) 23:09, 29 June 2010 (UTC)