Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Archive 2

sound excerpts
What's the protocol for using sound excerpts? Tony 00:06, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

It's less a protocol issue than a copyright issue. Sound excerpts are definitely desired, but for almost all commercially-produced recordings the only way we can use them is quoting short snippets under Fair use (and I'm not an expert on copyright; I don't recall how much is acceptable), and even that discouraged. Recordings made by Wikipedians of public domain music are encouraged, but as much as I think a Wikipedian orchestra would be a fine thing, the airfare to fly us all somewhere for a recording session, well... There are sources of PD music recordings available, if very few, and whatever you can find, do put it in. Mindspillage (spill yours?)

I can probably find some good recordings for quite a few composer articles: I suspect that some recording companies and artists would be pleased to be promoted (I presume their name and a link to their web site can be provided ...). Tony 00:02, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines for using sound excerpts
Wikipedia's growing number of composer articles lacks sufficient use of sound excerpts. This is a pity, because sound excerpts could contribute to Wikipedia's unique presence on the Internet. There are a number of issues that concern the use of these excerpts. I welcome comments or edits to this section. Tony 00:36, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

'Fair use' without permission
Copyright law is in a mess. However, it appears that under fair use provisions, we can use short sound excerpts from commercial recordings without gaining permission, but only if the following matters are observed.
 * Duration: a maximum of around 30 seconds or 10% or the duration of the track—whichever is shorter—is probably fair.
 * Ensure that the excerpt is used in an educational context, and does not appear to have any negative impact whatsoever on the company's market (better the opposite); brief mention in the accompanying main text of some feature of style or technique in the excerpt will strengthen a claim of fair use.
 * Detailed attribution on the information page is necessary, including:
 * **the names of the performers, and if possible, the date and venue of the performance;
 * **the name of the recording company, and its website address;
 * **the title and number of the track, and the name and catalogue number of the CD from which it was taken, and the year of release; and
 * **the file size.


 * Justification of your fair use must be added to the info box. You may consider pasting in the following text and modifying it as necessary:
 * 'This is a sound sample from a commercial recording. Its inclusion here is claimed as fair use because:
 * **it illustrates an educational article that includes a historical and critical examination of the excerpt;
 * **it is a sample of about 30 seconds from a much longer recording, and could not be used as a substitue for the original commercial recording; and
 * **it is not replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted sample of comparable educational value.
 * I believe that this use of the excerpt is in good faith, and that its inclusion enhances rather than reduces the commercial value of the recording from which it was drawn; however, if the owner of the copyright wishes to challenge my use, I will be happy to remove it promptly, with apology.'

When uploading the sound file, use the copyright tag Template:Music sample

This is what will then appear on the info page:

Permission to use longer excerpts
Do not use longer excerpts or whole tracks unless you have written permission to do so from the recording company. It is probably best if this permission explicitly allows the excerpt to be used under 'fair use' provisions; the permission should specify tracks and/or durations; the advantage is that the company can retain copyright at the same time. You need to state in the information box that the written permission has been given; it's probably a good idea to offer to provide a copy on request, or to paste into the info box the relevant part of the written permission (although this may have privacy implications).

If you're lucky enough to obtain written permission to use a whole track, provide the same Detailed attribution on the information page as above, including:
 * **the names of the performers, and if possible, the date and venue of the performance;
 * **the name of the recording company, and its website address;
 * **the title and number of the track, and the name and catalogue number of the CD from which it was taken, and the year of release; and
 * **the file size.

When uploading the sound file, use the copyright tag Template:PermissionAndFairUse

This is what will then appear on the info page:

PermissionAndFairUse

For an example, see the excerpt at the top of JS Bach; hit 'info' to see the information that relates to 'fair use' of the track at the top. Please note that it's hard to get permission from companies. We probably need a 'boilerplate' letter for the purpose of seeking permision. NB This recording has been removed, because User Tony1 successfully arranged for the copyright permission to be withdrawn for this item. Tony 20:29, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

The quality, number and location of excerpts
All excerpts should be of high-quality recordings, in my view; it's better to use no recordings at all if very good ones can't be found.

Short excerpts may be a valuable component of a composer article if they give readers a taste of the composer's style in general, or illustrate certain aspects of that style. It's best if you can find an excerpt that fall naturally into a short duration; otherwise, the next best arrangement is to start at the opening of a track (or musical section) and fade down after about 30 seconds. Try to avoid unpleasant glitches at either end of the excerpt. Fade ups at the start of an excerpt are less effective.

Excerpts can be closely integrated with the flow of the text if they appear at strategic locations. Try to make the visual appearance of the link as unobtrusive as possible: short titles help in that respect. Consider rationing their number: don't try to be comprehensive; leave the reader wanting more.

Large repositories of longer recordings at the bottom of a composer article may add little to the value of an article.

Please add to this section. Tony 07:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd suggest that the duration should be limited to 30 seconds or 10% of the work, whichever is less. Also, there should be no more than one excerpt from a given work on all of Wikipedia: enough 30-second excerpts, and a dedicated person could re-construct the entire work. --Carnildo 19:04, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I think that Carmildo is referring to 'fair use' excerpts used without permission. If you're lucky enough to obtain full permission by the owners of the copyright, you can, of course, use whole tracks. Then, the only consideration is that readers with slow connections may find it inconvenient to download. In those cases, consider adding 'large file' or 'x Mb'. Tony 02:41, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Suggested points to be covered in the 'Style' sections of composer pages
I'd like to put forward the following points that contributors may wish to consider covering in composer articles. Of course, the needs of every article are different, so this is only a 'shell', a template that needs to be adapted for each article. Some of this information may be useful at the opening, but in not much detail; most of it should probably be located in a separate section on style.
 * State, in broad, non-technical terms, some attributes of the composer's style; briefly position the composer in terms of the broad history of the genre.
 * State the style and/or school of composition in which the composer might be located.
 * Explain whose music influenced the composer, and in what ways.
 * Decribe the composer's style in more technical terms, both in relation to other composers of the period, and in terms of the evolution of the style during his/her lifetime.
 * State whose music the composer, in turn, influenced.

Please comment on and/or modify this list as you see fit. Tony 03:01, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

New classical works infobox
I've created a new infobox to detail information on classical works in a similiar manner to the infobox for music albums. An example can be seen at Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff). I would welcome any comments at Template talk:Classical work infobox. Cheers! TreveXtalk 00:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Mozart in FARC
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been listed as a FARC. --RobertG &#9836; talk 10:56, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Guidelines for using sound excerpts
Does anyone object to moving them to the project page? Tony 10:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * No. Go ahead; good idea.  Antandrus  (talk) 15:28, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Steve Reich
We were the recipients of a not-entirely-favourable review in the U.K. publication The Guardian. The criticisms of the Reich article I think are reasonable, and it could use a rewrite. I'm not sure how much time I'll have this week -- "real-world" issues, and probably some of you can relate -- else I'd do it myself. If no one else gets to it I'll attempt to do so soon. Antandrus (talk) 15:28, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, the link to that Guardian article should be splashed around WP to convince contributors of the need to raise the standard of prose, among other things. Tony 16:47, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Formatting Style
I was looking for formatting style somewhere here, but I couldn't find anything, so I'd like to propose a couple of things:


 * that numbered works (i.e. piano sonatas, concertos, symphonies, etc.) are referred to as "Symphony No. n" instead of "nth symphony" -- or, if the work has a nickname, with the nickname
 * My reasoning for this is because Symphony No. n is typically the actual title of the work, and should be referred to as such.
 * that works are always referred to as "his/her"   (e.g. "he finished his Piano Concerto No. 3 that year", not "he finished the Piano Concerto No. 3 that year")
 * Multiple people wrote Piano Concertos No. 3. It seems sensible to distinguish between multiple versions of the same piece by saying that one version belonged to one particular composer.
 * that in the body of compoer articles which have a complete wiki-linked list of works as a section of the article, that names of works in the rest of the article are not wiki-linked.
 * This is to avoid double-linking to the same work.

What does everybody think? TheProject 17:20, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project
Hi, I'm a member of the Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. I saw your list of 10 FAs on the project page, this is useful. Would Johann Sebastian Bach and Henry Cowell rank as A-Class yet, in your opinion? (These don't need to be FACs, merely at a stage where FAC might be considered) Can you suggest some other A or decent B-class articles we might use? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot, Walkerma 04:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm hoping that Bach will be up to FAC standard over the next few months, but I don't think it will happen promptly—there are major issues to resolve with respect to the 'style' section. Tony 22:44, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

use of music notation examples
Dear fellow participants

I wonder whether other people feel the need, as I do, for advice on the inclusion of score excerpts in composer articles. I wrote the advice on including audio excerpts, but I don't have the knowledge to do the same for scores.

Anyone got any ideas?

Tony 02:40, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe this falls under the same "fair use" as audio excerpts, with one exception: it is likely better to recreate the excerpt yourself, using Sibelius or Finale or whatever. That way, you can control all aspects of the presentation and format it to best fit Wikipedia.  For the composers' pages I am working on, I was planning on getting the "best edition", entering the excerpt into Sibelius, turning it into a jpg, and uploading to Commons with an explanation of fair use and which edition was the source.  I hope that answers, in part, your wondering. -Sesquialtera II 03:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * That seems like a fairly intensive process, though, unless your skills are better than mine (I use Finale which may be more cumbersome than Sibelius). Imagine, for example, of including an extract for a Mahler smphony!  Wouldn't short scans from the standard Urtexts, etc... be permissible?  Eusebeus 08:09, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * That's probably also fine - I'm pretty sure encyclopedias like New Grove do their own typesetting, though. I suppose it depends on what the purpose of the excerpt is.  If it's "Here is the beginning of Mahler's 8th symphony", or "Here is the massive orchestration of Ives' 4th", then probably an Urtext scan would be much quicker.  I had in mind examples of three staves or less that would be incorporated into the wiki at full scale, e.g. an example of Schubert's text-painting or a Bach keyboard piece. -Sesquialtera II 16:24, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Have a look at what I've been doing at Olivier Messiaen. I think the samples, obviously scans from the actual scores, look fine (perhaps the layout needs tweaking).  I feel they may even give more confidence to the reader, since s/he sees they are obviously the real thing, and not possibly-sanitised examples created to support original research.  For simple, copyright-free music, such as Sesquialtera II outlines, I think Sibelius is fine, provided the output is top-notch (anything less and a scan would be better :-) ).  For copyrighted works, scans may possibly be more clearly fair-use than a recreation in Sibelius: a Sibelius copy of the fragment has to be created for the sole purpose of distribution (even if only in image form), and the resulting .sib file, which then has an independent existence outside Wikipedia, obviously has more features than a jpeg (a Sibelius file can be used to create midi files and sound excerpts which a jpeg can't).  Or is that a bit abstruse or paranoid?  Also, much more pragmatically, those of us without access to Sibelius are stuck with scanning (unless you are putting yourself forward as a resource to whom we can delegate creation of these samples!).  I think the golden solution would be for a developer to incorporate some functionality in the Wiki software that allows us to specify stuff in the same way that we can incorporate $$stuff$$ .  I'm sure it's feasable, but I don't think that will happen any time soon!  --RobertG &#9836; talk 17:36, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, your use in Messiaen looks just fine. Looking at it reassures that scanning will work well.  I, myself, am in the opposite situation of having music notation software but no scanner.  As to the copyright issues, the length is the same for the score, midi, or audio, so it probably all constitutes fair use.  I ran across User:Andrewa/sandbox recently, and it looks like he was possibly working on what you are suggesting. -Sesquialtera II 19:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Something tells me that there's no difference between Sibelius/FInale and scanning when it comes to copyright. Fair use should probably be based on the criteria for sound excerpts, modified, of course. I wonder what the equivalent of the 30-second limit for fair use is when it comes to musisc scores. A focused educational function will be important, so that it will be much safer if the text refers to one or more features of the music that is quoted. Tony 22:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * For non-copyirghted music (a Haydn sonata) that is in the public domain, a specific edition is nonetheless presumably copyrighted whereas a notation software version would be public use(?) For copyrighted music, a transciprtion would surely be in violation.   But tony's point about Fair Use above seems legit to me.  That said, I have just finished articles on the English Suites and Partitas by Bach and am looking for a scanned page or two to round them out if anyone has anything.... (I don't relish transcribing into Finale; i am not that dedicated).  Eusebeus 06:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I can't really see any justification for scanning a copyrighted edition of PD music- one of the fair use criteria is the non-availability of PD substitutes. Mark1 20:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Do we have any kind of policy about full scores? I was following Sesquialtera II's suggestions and the example set by illustrations from Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) and did a few images for Ariadne musica and Johann Pachelbel in Sibelius 4. Right now I've got a problem with the "Preludes" section of the latter. I was going to rewrite it and add an example of a one-of-a-kind writing Pachelbel used in a single prelude. I did the illustration using Sibelius and, um.. well, its 9 bars and its the whole prelude. So my illustration is like, the full score. I can't think of a nice way to quote less (its hard to make a logical excerpt from a 9-bar piece). What do you think, would it be acceptable to include it anyway? I'm thinking maybe a rationale with "if the owner of the copyright wishes to challenge my use, I will be happy to remove it promptly, with apology." included is a good idea, but it seems that I can't write one myself. Any ideas? Jashiin 13:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Unless I'm misunderstanding the question, I think Pachelbel died long enough ago that he's out of copyright. Markyour words 17:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I assumed that any score is a copyrighted work and on Wikipedia we can only quote small parts. The illustration I want to make is a full score, not a small part of a score. Now, I realize Pachelbel's music is in PD since he died long ago, but does that mean that full scores of his works can be freely legally distributed over the Internet? Provided that the scores are made by the same person who's spreading them. Jashiin 17:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't see any problem with that.  The publishers of a new edition will have copyright over whatever they've added, but if we're just talking about Pachelbel's notes then you're free to do what you like with it. Markyour words 19:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, I understand now. Thanks. Jashiin 19:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What I would do is find an old facsimile and make an edition from that, especially for nine bars. But I'm a big dork. Mak emi 23:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Standardised Naming Convention for the Taxa of Individual Compositions
I apologise in advance if I am bringing up something that has been worked through before. In pitching in to help get the JSB article up to FA quality, I have been putting together some subsidiary (daughter) articles that will eliminate existing redlinks from the principal article. This has raised the issue of how to title specific composition articles. In the case of Bach, there appear to be four or five different ways of doing it and I would appreciate any feedback about the preferred approach. It seems to me based on a perusal of articles within the taxa of individual compositions that the preferred system is to composition title with (Composer). Consistency, however, is sorely lacking and the system seems to be adhered to principally where confusion over other competing works bearing the same name may exist, being in other cases elided (Violin Concerto No. 1 (Mozart), for example v. Exsultate, Jubilate, or Symphony No. 4 (Beethoven) v. Fidelio). Thus, in the case I ran into, English Suites links to the Bach keyboard works. However, when I put up the article for the Partitas, I named it Partitas for keyboard (825–830), bracketing the BWV, per what I have observed other articles about specific Bach compositions. However, this clearly should be changed for the sake of consistency, as should a host of existing articles on Bach compositions which are all over the map with regard to a consistent naming procedure.

Hence, is the preference here for following the example of articles on works by other composers? English Suites (J.S. Bach) or in the case of Bach, would the BWV be useful to list? English Suites (BWV 806-811) (J.S. Bach)

Eusebeus 14:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * See Naming conventions (pieces of music). I personally support always including the composer in the article title - BWV accomplishes that implicitly with its "B".  My personal preference is something like Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 for Bach.  However, if it's multiple pieces, then I would prefer English Suites (Bach), because having BWV numbers in the title will make it rather cumbersome. -Sesquialtera II 19:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, in case of Bach, I believe the title should always be COMPOSITION, BWV xxx or COMPOSITION, BWV xxx-xxx. That is, if a single system has to be introduced (I'm not sure renaming The Well-Tempered Clavier is really called for, although I agree that something coherent is needed for articles about less known works). Including both BWV and "J.S. Bach" seems excessive to me. I can see the logic in what Sesquialtera II suggested for multiple pieces but what about single-BWV collections like Goldberg Variations or The Art of Fugue (besides, wouldn't "Goldberg Variations (Bach)" look weird? Since there's only one work with that name). Another thing I'm thinking about is that including the BWV number(s) in titles might help new listeners to memorize the numbers. Jashiin 23:04, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, I should have looked harder for the convention. Thanks for the heads up.  I think Title + BWV would work fine, particularly if we are diligent about setting up redirects (thus English Suites is redirected to English Suites (BWV 806-811). Per Sesquialtera's point, it would seem to me preferable to employ the same system for all pieces, single or multiple. Eusebeus 12:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think titles should be any longer than they need to be to identify the piece: adding the composer's name (or BWV number) is just a form of disambiguation. Keeping titles simple also makes for easier wikilinking (fewer pipes). Mark1 20:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

In any case, please use an n dash, not a hyphen, to represent "to": e.g., Partitas for keyboard (825–830) Tony 13:13, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Naming of Composers
I've read a good bit of the WP:NAME, and it seems to me that the general preference is to make it easy for a page to be linked to and searched for with the least amount of redirects possible. In English wikipedia this seems to mean no accents in the title, with a redirect from the title with the accents to the title with no accents. There are a good number of composers who seem to have accents in their titles, eg. François Couperin, Frédéric Chopin. I propose moving all such titles to their unaccented name, with the accents included in the first mention of them in the intro, eg the title is Francois Couperin but the first sentence has François Couperin. I mention it here so it doesn't have to be discussed separately on each composer page. Makemi 18:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Since this is a question of naming articles in general rather than specifically composers, the appropriate place for discussion is probably Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English), and certainly not here. But since we're here, I think (no promises, though) that there's some software automagic which allows links to one form to find the other. Mark1 19:06, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, there seems to be no consensus in general for diacriticals, and I was hoping we could come to consensus just for composers, maybe. In either case, the "software automagic", also known as the redirect I mentioned above, would allow for the page to be found. The idea is to minimize time in interwiki linking (how long does it take you to find ç below?), and to reduce server load, as each of those redirects takes up resources which could be better used making wikipedia faster. Approx 150 pages redirect through Frederic Chopin, which seems like too much to me. Makemi 19:19, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * There are 48 hits for "françois couperin" and only 9 for "francois couperin" . 11 hits for "Chambonnières" and 1 for "Chambonnieres". Maybe I'm not searching the right way (I've got no idea how you figured out the number of articles that redirect through "Frederic Chopin" so maybe I'm using the search function the wrong way - if so, please correct me), but if I'm not, there's no need to rename those and similar articles. As for Chopin and similar cases (what are those by the way? Can't think of any), well, personally, I believe that other articles should be edited instead of renaming Frédéric Chopin. Its just not right.. his name is what his name is.


 * Besides, "Frédéric Chopin" right below "Frederic Chopin" (as you suggest) will result in a lot of questions from casual readers. We will have to explain to each new editor that the article is named wrongly to speed Wikipedia up, and many will find that reason ridiculous and debate, etc.. better just leave Frédéric Chopin the way it is and edit the articles that spell his name wrongly. Jashiin 20:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Firstly, there is no such thing as truth. In an English-speaking publication it is not particularly more wrong to name him Frederic Chopin than to name him Frédéric Chopin. The reason that there are more "hits" for Frédéric is that that is the official name for the article, and some conscientious person or bot has gone through and changed these.


 * Secondly, if you look under "What links here" in the toolbox at the redirect for Frederic Chopin, it will show you what routes through there, and you can approximate how many it is. It's not that hard to leave a brief note on the talk page saying that it is simply the English spelling, which there has been consensus about (if there is consensus), and please don't move the page. Makemi 21:33, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Wait, I gave this some more thought and I can't understand why this is discussed the way it is discussed. If its possible to set up a bot to change all those articles to bypass the redirect and solve the problem that way, the only question is whether "Frédéric" is the more widely used spelling or "Frederic"? I mean, I did what you described (thanks for the explanation by the way!, it was silly of me not to think about that) to Frédéric Chopin you'll have 200+ results, against around 150 for Frederic Chopin. Doesn't this mean that if you rename, you'll still have 200 pages redirecting? And deciding on what spelling is the more used one could be done, I don't know, with something like New Grove I guess? Jashiin 22:08, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Trobairitz peer review
I've put the article Trobairitz, about medieval women troubadours, up for Peer review. I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks, Mak emi 06:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

List of composers on The opera corpus
For the past few months the Opera Project has been working on articles on composers. There is a list of 389 articles and stubs on The opera corpus. Could there be some useful synergy with the Composers Project? Many of the biographical articles need developing from the non-operatic, musical point of view.

Kleinzach 10:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

An invitation to all members of this project
 '''WikiProject Arts Announcing the creation of WikiProject Arts, an effort to create a collaboration between all arts projects and artistically-minded Wikipedians in order to improve arts coverage. If you think you can help, please join us! H AM  17:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Mozart and Liszt on WP:AIP
Both Mozart and Liszt have been nominated on Article Improvement Drive; you're probably familliar with the process, but basically the article with the most votes at the end of the week becomes a collaboration between various wikipedians to make it up to the standard of a featured article. Slightly more complicated than that, but there's more info on the page. I think this would be a great opportunity to bring more wikipedians in on these articles and could be a great way to improve them on more formal issues such as referencing, writing, etc. Some more votes would really be useful, thanks M A Mason 15:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

UBX for "WikiProject Composers"
I didn't know if you guys already had a userbox for the group or not. This one's just a modification of user composition. (Thanks to Helohe for the original). If you don't like userboxes, just pretend this isn't here. n.n ~Kylu ( u | t )  21:20, 11 May 2006 (UTC) 

Editing of Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Some substantial editing of this article is going on - possibly by people who have worked on the publishing project. Does anyone know what this is all about? - Kleinzach 08:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, thanks for pointing this out. I left a note on the talk page.  Some of those additions are questionable, to put it mildly ("fraudulently date-stamped...")  I didn't revert it right away since there appears to be good material mixed with the original research and POV.  Antandrus  (talk) 15:54, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Bach Peer Review
Johann Sebastian Bach appears to be a damn fine article. I have listed it for a peer review.

Peer review/Johann Sebastian Bach

SilkTork 14:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Logo "Composer"
I suggest to use a logo at the end of the articles of this project:



This Composer article is part of the Composers Project


 * (Meladina 00:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC))
 * Absolutely not. It is Wikipedia policy to avoid links to project pages from the article namespace.  --RobertG &#9836; talk 12:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The nationality question - again!
We have had problems decided the nationality of composers - Handel, Christoph Willibald Gluck and Florian Leopold Gassmann come to mind - and we have just had a debate about Ukrainian/Russian/Soviet identity at Talk:Ivan Kozlovsky. I am wondering if we could work out a policy on this? Here are my ideas (so far):

1. Nationality should refer to national identity, in other words the national group with which the person identified, not the state of which the person was a citizen or subject. 2. Nationality should not be anachronistic/retrospective, i.e. in the case of historic artists it should not be defined by present-day borders and states but by contemporary ones. 3. If there is any doubt about the nationality, we should be inclusive and use a double designation both in the introduction and in the categories.

I'd be grateful for comments. - Kleinzach 22:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)