Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Archive 3

Template
Dear all, I’ve just created a version of the older template Template:Composers1 and suggest to use it, ad libitum, together or instead of the Template:Composers at the talk pages. I think it is a bit more attractive and has some subtext:

Any ideas, agreements or objections? Yours, (meladina 00:10, 7 June 2006 (UTC))


 * This looks good. I wonder if it is possible to make the bust a little sharper and clearer, maybe larger? - Kleinzach 11:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It was my intention to make the bust a little less sharper to make an impression that this is not necessary Beethoven. I can make him a bit bigger. (meladina 09:31, 8 June 2006 (UTC))


 * Ah, I see. I think it's fine to have Beethoven representing the others . . . any other comments. Assuming of course that there is someone else here to comment! Seems a bit like a ghost town . . . - Kleinzach 18:51, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Composer of the Month: Hans Werner Henze
The Opera project composer of the month for June is Hans Werner Henze (1926- ). Contributions are welcome. - Kleinzach 18:48, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Trivia??
Do trivia sections on composers really belong in articles? For example, Antonín Dvořák has a small section labeled trivia. Should we keep this as it is, incorporate the information into the article, or just delete it? Heavy Metal Cellist talkcontribs


 * This one is particularly insubstantial. I'd be in favour of just deleting it. Any other opinions? - Kleinzach 19:25, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I tend to dislike trivia sections, especially in composer articles. If a piece of information is not trivial, it should go somewhere in the body of the article. If it is trivial, it should probably not be in the article. Trivia sections tend to be a spam magnet, and draw things which are very crufty, like "Dvořák wrote the music for the third and a half level of WoW 12.5:The awakening", which is the sort of thing which could maybe go in the WoW article, but not the Dvořák article. Mak (talk)  20:09, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Here is another example: Pagliacci in popular culture in Pagliacci. Should this be hived off? - Kleinzach 20:20, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
 * My view of that sort of thing is that if a whole notable (ugh) work is strongly based on another work, that should probably be included, for instance, IMHO, Purcell's The Fairy-Queen and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (opera), should be somehow mentioned in the page on A Midsummer Night's Dream, because they are important cultural artifacts which owe a lot to that specific work. However, let's say that in Billy Budd someone said something about Bottom, that shouldn't be included, because it's not major enough, and it doesn't owe that much to A Midsummer Night's Dream. In short, "in popular culture'' sections should be heavily weeded, and if nothing of substance is there, then should be removed altogether. Mak (talk)


 * My stance on the issue is that there should not be a separate trivia section. Whether the information in a particular article's "trivia section" is worthy of inclusion in the article or not is something that will have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I just think that any relevant information needs to be worked into the article, instead of off in a trivia section. Heavy Metal Cellist talkcontribs


 * The Dvořák trivia (which I checked and seems to be authentic) is short but sometimes that there is a lot of it (see Pagliacci in popular culture in Pagliacci) with far more than can be absorbed into the article. What do we do in these cases? - Kleinzach 23:33, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

A Voice in the Wilderness
Sorry, I don't know who is in charge of this project. I created about 20 new entries on different (mostly Russian) composers (see at the beginning of my users page), however nobody except Kleinzach gave me a hand with editing. I asked a few questions at this page, and they were answered by the same Kleinzach, who, as I understand, is actually not a full participant of this project. Here are the three completely new entries. They need your care: Yours (meladina 14:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC))
 * Vyacheslav Artyomov
 * Viktor Suslin
 * Boris Tishchenko

The first one has been done. I've cleared up the grammar and spelling errors, wikilinked and made the article gleam a bit brighter, but I myself have absolutely zero knowledge concerning this subject, and so therefore unfortunately can add nothing new to these articles. Incidentally, I have got nothing to do with this WikiProject either. Cheers, Moreschi 20:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Suslin has been cleaned up. Moreschi 21:01, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

As has Mr. Tishchenko. I don't claim to have caught everything, but they're certainly much better than they were. Moreschi 21:12, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * My gratitude and best wishes to Moreschi. (meladina 13:49, 15 June 2006 (UTC))

Don't worry, no one is in charge of the project. It's fully wiki. =) I'll take a look at your articles and watchlist them too so I can edit when I geta chance. --Sketchee 05:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Canadian Music Centre

 * There are a fair number of biographical pages for various composers on the Canadian Music Centre website (www.musiccentre.ca). I've started turning a few of them into Wikipedia articles (rewriting all the way, of course!), and think that there's a lot of good material to be made into articles there.  Anyone else up for transposing some things from there to here? --AlbertHerring 07:29, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0
Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Arts WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Walkerma 17:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Composer of the month: Gaetano Donizetti
The Opera Project's composer of the month for July is Gaetano Donizetti. Our main focus is with the operas themselves, but I am quite sure that there is enormous room for expansion in his under-developed biography. All contributions are welcome. Best to all, Moreschi 16:41, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

A Friendly Reminder about WikiLinking
Just a request of all of you... if you ever write an article and Wikilink to the article about composition, be sure the like is to "music composition"; "composition" will only take the user to a disambig page, and it will need to be cleaned up by a DAB repairman later on anyway. Thank you! SingCal 04:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for article or category
I think there should be an article called "Composer-Pianist". I hear the phrase all of the time, to distinguish those who earn a living via composing AND performing, as opposed to a standard "concert pianist" who only performs (i.e. Liszt, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Hamelin, etc.). There was even a book written on this subject, which can be found here Would this make a legitimate article? Or should it be another Category? --Crabbyass 20:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... I would say the scope is too narrow. Many of the most popular composers living today are non-pianists; Libby Larsen and Jennifer Higdon play flute, John Adams is a clarinettist, John Zorn is sax... and many of them are avid performers on their own instruments as well. Perhaps "composer-performer" would make a better topic? SingCal 00:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Invitation
I just wanted to let you know that the Biography WikiProject has been reorganized and we wanted to see if you guys were interested in merging with us? We've reorganized it so that it's more like the Military history project with task forces for the specialized areas. One of the task forces we could create could be Musicians-- by merging with us and becoming a task force, you wouldn't lose anything! You'd keep your same page here, it would just be redirected to Musicians task force (which we'd create) and you would continue as before, except that instead you'd also gain the benefits of being part of a larger project. We would give you a parameter to our Project banner (musicians-task-force=yes) and a note would appear that says the article is a part of that task force (see example on military history article), plus having peer reviews and collaborations, and being able to grade articles by class and importance so that the articles can be part of the WP:1.0 project and much more... Let me know what you think! If you are interested, you need to add your project to the task force vote we're currently having plange 16:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Alternative UBX for "WikiProject Composers"
just place on your page.

(meladina 10:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC))

Are my edits helpful?
On 12 August 2006, User:Musikfabrik posted this on WikiProject Music/Noticeboard regarding my edits:

''I have noticed a great deal of edits done by Dafoeberezin3494 concernings the catagory of pages devoted to "composers". While it seems that there are a great many catagory pages such as "List of composers by name: S" and "List of Irish Composers" which are very short, there are enough composers whose names begin with "S" and enough Irish composers (as a visit to the Irish Contemporary Music Center site at will attest) that these pages should eventually be full. Now that the Zarzuela composers catagory has been deleted, where are people supposed to be articles by the very good composers who are listed here? ''


 * While some cleaning up needs to be done, I'm wondering if there isn't just a little too much going on? Could we perhaps rethink all of this and perhaps keep some of these useful catagories open, since they are going to be needed at some point? Musikfabrik 20:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

On my talk page he mentioned that some of my edits may have been in violation of policies related to this WikiProject. Here is a brief summary of my edits:


 * nominated "Category:Zarzuela Composers" for deletion (capitalization, now at Category:Zarzuela composers)
 * nominated "Category:19th century classical composers" for deletion (successful)
 * nominated "Category:Classical composers by nationality" for deletion (successful)
 * merged "List of Irish composers" and "List of Malaysian composers" into List of composers by nationality
 * nominated the 7 lists of composers by name (C, D, G, K, R, S, U) for deletion, with help (successful)
 * reorganized the List of composers and merged "List of uncategorized composers" into it

If any of these were unhelpful or blatant violations of this WikiProjects policies, feel free to tell me on my talk page and/or revert them. Thank you. Dafoeberezin3494 04:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hello everyone. I wasn't going to say anything here, but since I'm mentioned by name, I would like to clarify. I didn't say that Dafoeberezin3494's edits were either violations or unhelpful.  What I did say was that what he or she was doing could be seen as undoing the whole structure of the catagorization of composers and adding another structure which seemed to me to much less flexible and which could easily become problematic.  I did suggest that he or she might want to discuss all of this with this group, since the lists that he or she is creating directly relate to the work that you're doing.  It seemed to me to make sense.  I'm very happy that he or she has decided to do so.  Hopefully you can all make introductions?  I hope that this will be positive for everyone involved in your project.  Cordially Musikfabrik 11:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Useing the Da Capo Guide for worklists
Does anyone else have/use The Da Capo Catalog of Classical Music Composers, by Jerzy Chwialkowski? It's a fantastically comprehensive works list of 132 composers (every major one from Monteverdi and later, outside of Telemann, plus some ones not-quite as well known). I bring this up, because in general, it seems that the standard of work listings is all over the map...major a good project for the Project would be to solidify what should and shouldn't be there. Of course, huge lists aren't nessesarily the way to go, but many of them seem woefully incopmplete compred to others. Any thoughts on the matter? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 20:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Miles Davis
Miles Davis is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 19:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi
I’ve been working on updating the page for John Coolidge Adams (the composer), and I just found your project by accident. How can I help, and where do I sign up! S.dedalus 06:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

New stub type
For your editing convenience, WP Stub Sorting has created a template for Russia-composer-stub which puts articles into for now; once there are more of them we can create its own category. Cheers, Her Pegship 16:16, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Feedback please! Miguel Bernal Jiménez
I don't know if this is the right place to post this request...

I wrote this article for the Spanish language Wikipedia on September. I tried to translate it, but found out I wasn't up to the job, so I asked for help to the guys at Translation_into_English/Spanish who did almost all the translation work. The translation is very good, and only some parts are missing translation (it is hard to find out the english word for motete). I want this article to be at least good. This composer is very very important (just read his biography), he is almost unknown due to lack of cultural promotion. There is also very few information available about him. I could only find information about him in his only published biography (by Lorena Díaz Nuñez). If anyone can add (or remove if you please) information to the article please do it. I am going this weekend to the school he founded in the City of Morelia to get more info about him and to take a picture of his statue and add it as an image to the article (and if I can get a PD scan of a photo of him better yet).

Maybe I could propose a fact for the "Did you know..." section of the Main Page? This way more people could find out about the article and make corrections (or at least read it).

Please, if you have the time, tell me what to add, what to remove and what to correct, even if you know nothing about this composer. This is also the first article I write at Wikipedia.

Thanks a lot! --pptudela 06:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
 * User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
 * User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wetz, Smyth & Draeseke
Hello,

I'm a music friend from Germany. On de.wikipedia there are articles regarding to composers Felix Draeseke, Ethel Smyth and Richard Wetz, which were honoured as "lesenswert" and "exzellent". It would be fine, somebody would use them to improve the English articles here (about Wetz there isn't even an article on en.wikipedia). The German ones could be found on that page: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Klassische_Musik

Greetings from Germany, Goodbye

Template for Articles on (Classical) Symphonies
DavidRF has recently cleaned up a spate of Haydn symphonies using a very simple standardised format that I developed for the half dozen or so articles on the Haydn symphonies that I have gotten around to writing so far. This excellent effort reminds me that this template could probably be felicitously applied to our other articles on symphonies so we have a standard structure across the body of articles on individual symphonies (easily extendable, of course, to other pieces). My template consists of: I think templates have been proposed in the past (as with naming conventions), but I am not sure of their fate. Any thoughts? Eusebeus 13:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Overview of the work
 * 2) Date of Composition & Scoring (includes history & first performance information)
 * 3) Nickname (where applicable)
 * 4) Movements


 * That template seems to cover all essential information. I'll use it myself...when ever I find myself first editing the article of an individual work. Chris 04:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * My personal opinion is that the movements should be moved up higher on the page. I always have to scroll down on the Beethoven Symphonies for the movements, whereas in his sonatas, the movements are at the top.  It would seem that the movements of a piece are the most basic information about it as they are what little objective information about the piece that the composer actually supplies.  At any rate, I think that pages of the same type such as symphonies should be uniform across all composers, not just by each composer.  Asmeurer (talk  ♬  contribs) 05:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Stablepedia
Beginning cross-post.
 * See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★ MESSED  ROCKER ★  23:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

''End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.''

Gregorian vs. Julian Dates
I'd be interested in hearing project members' perspectives on a matter of style - the use of Gregorian vs. Julian dates. I'll present as a case study the particular item that I'm interested in, but I bring the discussion here to the project page to obtain a wider response as to whether we'd have general guidelines when such things are in question. Here's the specific instance that I'm considering: Italian early Baroque composer Giulio Caccini published a collection of madrigals and songs called Le nuove musiche. The publication date is 1601 or 1602 depending on the reference source. The print sources that I have available at this moment (15th edition Britannica, New Oxford History of Music, and Grout's History of Western Music) all give 1602 as the publication date. The Caccini article, and some web pages which I located by Google search on "Giulio Caccini" and "Le nuove musiche" give 1601 as the publication date. I do not have access to a copy of Grove at the time of this writing. The Here of a Sunday Morning web article on Caccini was helpful in explaining the apparent discrepancy - it gives the date of Le nuove musiche as 1602 (1601 old style) (i.e. Julian). So, given the different usage in reference sources, which do we use in Wikipedia? Apparently there has been some discussion of this topic in WikiProject Years, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years. If we go by which calendar was in usage in the applicable country, "most of" Italy was using the Gregorian calendar from 1582 on, per Gregorian calendar, which would probably mean we use 1602 for publication of "Le nuove musiche".

Thanks in advance for your consideration on this question. This topic is of particular interest to me because I've been adding musical publications to the Year in music pages, want to add them to the appropriate year, and would like some more guidance other than just my own opinion. Cheers, Lini 12:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The resolution of the above, that I determined on, is: as some sources have 1601 and some have 1602, and as the difference is explained by Julian date vs. Gregorian date, I have listed the publication on both 1601 and 1602 "Year in music" pages, with a footnote on each page mentioning the alternative dating. Sincerely, Lini 03:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Composer's interpreters
I believe every composer page should have his/her most important interpreters shown in some standard way. I think this can be NPOV (you don't have to say they're the best, only that they are remarkable).

I don't see why we should mention Bach in Glenn Gould's article and not Glenn Gould in Bach's, as that's what I'd be searching for if I didn't know the composer and wanted to listen to his works.

Please, I want to know your thougts on this idea. Sdistefano 01:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use with permission
I have removed the guidelines on "fair use with permission" from the project page. While it is nice that the copyright holders do not object to their works being used on Wikipedia, and indeed, we would like them not to object to our use, it grants the use of the work no special status on Wikipedia unless it is released under a free content license, and should be treated as any other "fair use" media. This composers project, much as I like its subject matter, may not set special guidelines for this use that differ from the global project guidelines. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 21:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Kat's right. Wikipedia is not just about Free as in beer, which these fair use things sort of are, but free as in free content, which can be used in other ways, including commercially, or in a non-educational context. Mak (talk)  21:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * And as an aside, there is nothing about our educational use that gives us a free pass on copyright. I wish there were.. I pay a lot of taxes to support the local school district buying books. :) As you can see, our use of such recordings is bound to leave us in ugly legal positions even were it permitted by our policy. --Gmaxwell 22:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

List of compositions by (composer)
Greetings,

There has been some discussion of list of compositions formatting, but I would like to address an more fundamental issue: the placement of such lists. Should they be in a separate article, or incorporated within the article itself? See Category:Compositions by composer for a list of all such lists. I would prefer to standardize this across all composers' articles. For example, Jeanne Demessieux suffers from a double list of compositions, and a user has questioned the separation of Leo Sowerby's works list. To contrast these, I like the approach taken by Johann Pachelbel and List of compositions by Johann Pachelbel. I personally am in support of separate articles for works lists, but I am open to the other approach as well; it's just that I think we need to set a standard for this. Thanks, &mdash;Sesquialtera II (talk) 00:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I just recalled a previous discussion regarding a specific instance of this matter: Talk:George Frideric Handel. This may prove helpful in this discussion.  &mdash;Sesquialtera II (talk) 23:34, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that any list more than a reletively small amount should get its own article -- it's needless whitespace for the main article space otherwise. Importent pieces should get mentioned in the text somewhere, idealy, anyway. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 01:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I see this is not exactly a hot-button issue, so I'm going to edit the project page to make a recommendation to create a separate compositions list article whenever the composer has written more than, say, 12-15 pieces, unless there is a sufficient objection soon. &mdash;Sesquialtera II (talk) 06:13, 26 December 2006 (UTC)