Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Archive 33

Julia Usher (for example)
I've recently written a number of articles on composers based on the requested articles and female composers lists. My latest on Julia Usher was immediately tagged for speedy deletion. On review, the article was not deleted, but was left with a "lack of notability" tag which means it's likely to be challenged later on. So, I need to ask about composer articles. Are the listed composers considered to be notable within this project or not? Am I wasting my time in writing these articles? Should I be making some decision about notability before I start to write? There's very little info available on some of these composers. (See list of articles at my talk page.) Pkeets (talk) 23:37, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The trouble with these kinds of lists is that they get a lot of drive-by additions over the years. So even if it started out (in 2003!) with only notable composers with entries in music encyclopedias and other reference works/scholarly publications, many on the current list may not reflect this. It is always a good idea to assess the notability via the sources available before you start, and incidentally, they don't have to be online. If you have access to a reference work in hard copy, simply include the full bibliographic information with exact page numbers. A link to the work in Google books also helps. From a quick search here, here, and here, I think Julia Usher would pass the notability test. But references like these need to be added to the article. I also have access to a subscription archive of newspaper and some journal articles, e.g.
 * Dannatt, Adrian, "In from the cold: the Shiel thing Derek Shiel's scrapyard musical sculpture is a direct descendant of Italian Futurist art", The Evening Standard (London), January 27, 2000:
 * "The second breakthrough came when a composer, Julia Usher, discovered she could notate the timbre and pitch of these strange objects and so compose music for them. This led to a series of collaborations, notably A Celebration of Blake's Vision at St James's Church, Piccadilly, in 1987, and Soundpaint performances where Usher plays while Shiel paints; he recently splashed out in colour for eight hours in front of a live audience."
 * Another good idea is to check the incoming links, which might give you some leads. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 06:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

User:Naxoshk adding Naxos links and media
It seems as if User:Naxoshk is claiming to be the copyright holder of Naxos recordings (perhaps Klaus Heymann himself?), and not only adding quite a number of Naxos recordings to composer pages under a CC license (which is good if legit, but I have to wonder), but also adding links to Naxos homepage and Naxos Music Library -- which is NOT good, as they are obviously contrary to WP:EL under any interpretations. There's a LOT of links though, and yes it's lazy of me but I don't feel like going through and removing them all. Anyone up to the task? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 06:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The full list of contributions is at Special:Contributions/Naxoshk and it is very big. The files would be a great resource, but I suspect without an OTRS ticket, they'll soon be deleted. I've left a note about these issues with links to further guidance at User talk:Naxoshk. Voceditenore (talk) 06:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Despite my note on their talk page, they have continued to add the spam links. I've reported the issue + the huge number of files with dodgy permissionsto AN/I here. Voceditenore (talk) 07:59, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: User now blocked indefinitely and someone from WikiProject Spam is reverting their additions. Voceditenore (talk) 08:26, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Birth and death dates discussion
There is a discussion/straw poll at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) concerning removal of full birth and death dates from the parentheses in the lede. Basically the proposed recommendation is that
 * Gioachino Antonio Rossini (February 29, 1792 – November 13, 1868) ...

would become
 * Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792 – 1868) ...

– Voceditenore (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Philip Sparke article
I'm in the Brewer Hometown Band, which is currently doing Philip Sparke's "The Roaring Forties". Unfortunately, his article essentially consists of "Sparke is a composer" plus discography. Anybody feel like taking a swing at it? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:11, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Category:Genius
Just been created today. Various composers are being added even as we speak. Now up for deletion here for members who wish to comment. Voceditenore (talk) 11:05, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Copy editing needed?
The sentence beginning with the words "Two of his other scores" is a sentence fragment desperately in need of completion and rewording. Even when it's completed, it should probably be postponed a sentence or two, since it seems to interrupt a discussion of "Spellbound" with something of a non-sequitur. I think the intention was to include the information that score for "The Lost Weekend," similarly to the score for "Spellbound," called for theremin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jro571 (talk • contribs) 14:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

New composer articles needing some work
The following articles have been created by ArtMusicPromotion (until blocked for promotional username) and then by Contrappunto71:
 * Paul Steenhuisen
 * James Harley
 * Gordon Fitzell
 * Bob Pritchard (composer)
 * Howard Bashaw
 * Keith Hamel

Needless to say, they're all represented by... er... Art Music Promotion. ;-) Having said that, they all seem reasonably notable and have other references. I've had to remove copyvio from a couple and have tagged all of them for various maintenence issues. So a heads up to anyone here who wants to improve them. I've also bannered them for this project and for Contemporary Music (in some cases), but is it worth it? That project looks a bit dead. Voceditenore (talk) 12:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Contemporary Australian classical composers
If there are any members familiar with contemporary Australian classical composers can you shed some light over at this discussion on WikiProject Opera? Voceditenore (talk) 18:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

More seeming Naxos spam
I seem to remember we had a user a while back who would spam both Naxos ELs and add a bunch of media files under CC which they probably weren't copyright holders of (one imagines this would have to be Klaus Heymann himself...). Well, is either the same person again, or Naxos is giving people the wrong kind of work to do... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:25, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've reported it at AN/I . Some of this stuff is useful, but others are pretty redundant. He's even created a template so he can do it faster Template:NaxosDotCom. Voceditenore (talk) 19:19, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have proposed the template for deletion, and it has been deleted by an admin as per WP:EL. Regards. Francesco Malipiero (talk) 20:04, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

FAR notice
nominated Rebecca Helferich Clarke for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.-- Cirt (talk) 21:06, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for new infobox: POSTHUMOUS ALBUM
There has been some talk that this project should clearly see and be involved in - it has led to a proposal of sorts for a new category called "POSTHUMOUS" for the Template:Infobox album ... Pls see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music.Moxy (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Felix Mendelssohn
To anyone who mighr be interested - I have put up (after tinkering around with it extensively over recent mon ths) Felix Mendelssohn for a GA assessment - at the time of writing, it's waiting for someone to pick it up and start a review page. All comments, brickbats, etc. gratefully received.--Smerus (talk) 14:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)o
 * now GA; compliment sof the season all round!--Smerus (talk) 14:44, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Tony Zilincik
For members who may wish to coment, this article is being discussed for deletion at Articles for deletion/Tony Zilincik. – Voceditenore (talk) 06:57, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I worked on it a little. Pkeets (talk) 05:41, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Minako Hamano
For anyone who would like to comment, this article is being discussed for deletion at Articles_for_deletion/Minako_Hamano_(2nd_nomination). She's on the list of women composers. Would it qualify for assistance from the BLP Rescue Project, maybe? Pkeets (talk) 02:39, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Edward Gold composer
The article on composer Edward Gold has been tagged as an unreferenced biography of a living person since June 2008, which is the current focus month of the BLP Rescue Project. It's also had a notability tag for the same length of time. I have tried, and failed, to find reliable sources to support this text. I've added one (weak) source but it's really not good enough. I'm posting here in the hope that someone might be kind enough to take a look and help. If it stays poorly referenced much longer, it may be nominated as an AfD.--Plad2 (talk) 21:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * He looks to be more notable as a pianist than as a composer. I added a paragraph with references on his piano recordings and added a selected list of works from the Delian bio; more are listed in Classical Archives, but I'm not in favor of complete lists--they get too long. Will that be sufficient to remove the tags? Pkeets (talk) 05:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think this gets near satisfying notability criteria. Maybe it is time to nominate it for Afd? -- Klein zach  10:02, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Paganini spelling
Some input is required at Talk:Niccolò Paganini about the spelling of his first name. I have once reverted the questioner's changes on the basis of "conventionally predominant spelling", mainly derived from the spelling in interwikis. I am aware that some sources spell the name with one "c", but haven't yet had an opportunity to consult Grove. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:50, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This is evidently connected to the article on Maestro Alex Gregory written by the same editor, who insists on the inclusion of 'Maestro' in the title because it was conferred by "the British government". -- Klein zach  01:04, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Silly question/Henry Mancini and Mark Mancina
Are Henry Mancini and Mark Mancina related in way? They sound almost as though they could be father and son, or otherwise related (albeit possibly distantly). TomStar81 (Talk) 00:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think so -- have you found any suggestion that Mancina may have changed his name from Mancini? Mancini had one son (Christopher) according to this part of our article. Antandrus  (talk) 01:11, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I didn't find anything to suggest the two were related beyond possessing similar sounding names, it was just something that tickled my curiosity. Both have careers in music, both compose, both had similar names, it seemed to me therefore that perhaps both may have shared some common family history. At any rate, thanks for the reply. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:12, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Hsiao-Lan Wang
An article on this Taiwanese woman composer has been listed for deletion, for anyone interested in checking in on the discussion. Pkeets (talk) 21:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Discussion at Articles for deletion/Hsiao-Lan Wang Voceditenore (talk) 10:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Pan Shiji
Taiwanese woman composer Pan Shiji is also proposed for deletion. Pkeets (talk) 23:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Discussion at Articles for deletion/Pan Shiji. Voceditenore (talk) 10:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Chen Shi-hui
Taiwanese woman composer Chen Shi-hui is also proposed for deletion. Pkeets (talk) 00:01, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Discussion at Articles for deletion/Chen Shi-hui

Woman composer lists
The List of female composers by name and the List of female composers by birth year are now pretty much filled in with stub and start class articles. Some of these might not be defensible as highly notable, but two of the women above were nominated for deletion even though the The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians was listed as a reference for their biography. It might be helpful to keep an eye on deletions from the lists. The nomination of three Taiwanese women at once appears discriminatory. Pkeets (talk) 00:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Pan Shiji and Chen Shi-hui are definite keeps and I opined so at the AfDs. They both have articles in Grove and linked from Music encyclopedia topics. I wish people would check "What links here" before proposing articles for deletion. Hsiao-Lan Wang is quite young and at the start of her career, with not a lot of coverage. I'm neutral on this one. By the way, I don't think this was discriminatory. The nominator is an active member of WikiProject China and has created many articles on China and Taiwan topics. I think he/she was just going through their articles checking for ones which might not be notable. We do that at the Opera Project periodically. Voceditenore (talk) 10:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Help for Book:Franz Liszt
I just created a book on the guy. I've had some problems organizing the articles, but I did my best. However, some thing did stick out as odd to me.

In particular, I placed La Campanella as S.141.3, and I'm not sure about that. Does it have a Searle number? Also, I came up with my own "numbers" in some cases, like in the Transcendental etudes which I numbered S.139.1 to S.139.12. I don't know if I'm allowed to do that. Also some the S351+ pieces have articles, and I sort of included them based on my own "gut feeling" about their relevance. That should probably be doubled checked too.

Not sure I got all the "relevant" people in the appendix section. One could probably argue that some composers (Wagner?, Paganini?) are very relevant to a book on Liszt. But I would leave that to this project to decide. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:11, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Ludwig van Beethoven's religious views
Didn't know he had any. See Articles for deletion/Ludwig van Beethoven's religious views. – Voceditenore (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Leoš Janáček
A discussion about Janáček's nationality started here. Anyone interested is invited to the debate. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 09:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Stats on music projects
See Table showing productivity/size of the 48 music projects for information about this project and other music groups. -- Klein zach  07:48, 11 March 2011 (UTC)