Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 14

Archive 10 Archive 12 Archive 13 Archive 14 Archive 15 Archive 16 Archive 20

ibid, op. cit, etc

It looks like the SmackBot is cracking down on the use of these in citations and adding maintenance tags all over wikipedia. I've cleaned up a few of these that were on my watch list, but I'm sure there's more. Ibid's are fairly easy to clean up with named references, but often Op. Cit's are a pain because the page number has changed. I usually create a "reference" entry and have each ref-note point to it with an abbreviated note (e.g. "Landon (1958), p. 38."), but I must admit that I wish there was a cleaner way to do that.DavidRF (talk) 22:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Felix Mendelssohn's 200th birthday

Felix Mendelssohn's 200th birthday is this coming February 3. I thought it might be appropriate for the relevent music project's to acknowledge this in some way. What do you all think? Please joing the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers‎. Cheers.Nrswanson (talk) 00:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll add that little fact to the "News" section of P:CLM - how did I miss this? Thanks. :) —La Pianista (TC) 00:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
In addition to this, there are two big "death anniversaries" this year as well: Handel's 250th (April 14th) and Haydn's 200th (May 31st). Orchestras are making special note of all three of these this year. The birthday is of course a happier occasion.  :-). Since we have all the data here, one who knows more about scripting could probably mine the composer categories for coming anniversaries. DavidRF (talk) 00:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
These are all good points. If we can try and make remarks at the composer project talk page I would prefer that. That way members from all the projects (opera, classical, composer) can be on the same page. Maybe we should try and coordinate stuff for all three of these guys now since we are talking about it.Nrswanson (talk) 01:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
That's a good idea - the more organized, the better. Fyi, I've added those last anniversaries.
On a side note, does anyone know of a reliable source to feed in the news? It desperately needs updating. —La Pianista (TC) 01:16, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Piano music - cleanup request

The old lists of lists of lists of piano pieces were just deleted via the WP:AFD process. Any remaining information — both relevant and irrelevant — is now listed here. If anyone would like to help make the information presentable in articles (or removed altogether), I would appreciate it! Timneu22 (talk) 19:47, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Peer review of Portal:Classical music

I've submitted a peer review for P:CLM here. Any comments/reviews are anticipated and appreciated.  La Pianista (TC) 04:45, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Gymnopédie

Any Satie experts out there? This article is a complete mess (*seven* banner-level maintenance tags!) and seems to be heading in the wrong direction as well. DavidRF (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm no expert on Satie, but you could at least consolidate the tags by using {{Articleissues}}. Timneu22 (talk) 19:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Classical music

Hi! I've been helping WP:WikiProject Opera out with sound files for Portal:Opera. I'd be delighted to do similar work for the Classical music portal if you'd be interested - a large amount of non-operatic works are also available to me. Obviously, I'm limited by what's available, but I can probably do a fair bit for various composers. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 13:57, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

PLEASE DO SO. I've always wanted an extra hand for things like this. :D Thank you thank you thank you, —La Pianista (TC) 06:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Right! Well, I'll try to get some Mendelssohn together, to start (given the big anniversary coming up) I'll try to get two or three by Monday, depending on what's available. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 15:19, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I have a fair bit of Elijah, about five, six parts. I thought I'd do that to start. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
All right - we'll add those for March (sorry I missed this earlier!). Feel free to fill in the calendar here. —La Pianista (TC) 20:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Linda Brava

Could someone from this project have a look at the Linda Brava article. It seems to be growing at quite a large rate due mostly to just a couple editors. The article is still either unrated or rated as just a start class article by the WikiProjects mentioned on the talk page. Thank you, Dismas|(talk) 19:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

  Done - sorry for the delay. —La Pianista (TC) 02:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Enigma Variations "Current Event"

Anyone hear about this:

The text said it happened today (Feb 4). I'm skeptical of a current event in such a old piece of work. Does anyone have a link to the news? If its a real article, should WP be waiting a while for the academic community to digest it? DavidRF (talk) 01:54, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I would most certainly wait until the academic community receives it. As it stands, there are no references for it - maybe it's a spoof? A Google search (which normally brings fresh news every minute) is fruitless. I say the text be removed until sources are found. —La Pianista (TC) 02:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I killed it. Between the lack of references sourced, lack found, added with no edit summary or formatting, and it happening supposedly today, it screams 'hoax' at me. Of course the IP could be the violinist himself, or someone who knows him, but that of course then would be WP:OR. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Tutoring required

Could some kind soul please advise or tutor Gregedg (talk · contribs) regarding the article (and I use the term loosely) Oboe Quartet, presumably about Mozart's K. 370? I'm asking here because I fear exasperation will make me forget my manners. Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:20, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

(Groan). I'm tempted to 'prod' it. May someone else has a subtler approach? --Kleinzach 04:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
We could just rewrite it for him. There's plenty of smaller stubs around. DavidRF (talk) 04:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
OK. I rewrote it. I put the unsourced content on the talk page and replaced it with information from Berger. Thanks for finding the article so quickly. It didn't have any links or cats... sometimes those can be hard to discover. DavidRF (talk) 05:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Original article was lifted verbatim from the naxos website: [1] (starting with second sentence of third paragraph). Tutoring lesson #1 for Gregedg (talk · contribs): Don't copy liner notes verbatim from another website and have that be your entire article. He didn't even cite what was copied verbatim. That's not even trying.  :-)DavidRF (talk) 05:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Anyone have access to the 'Early Music Online'? List_of_oboists#Classical_period_1730-1820 is pointing me an article here[2] which looks interesting. Anyone subscribe who could mail me a copy? Thanks.DavidRF (talk) 06:01, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Guatemala city choirbook: article proposed for deletion

Guatemala city choirbook has been proposed for deletion. I'm not quite sure what should be done with it - it has content that could probably be merged into other articles. Graham87 17:27, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Right. This is a pretty random collection of information - in fact it looks like someone's notes. I think it should either be processed or put up to Afd for deletion. --Kleinzach 07:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I've had anther look at this. Does anyone have knowledge (at any depth!) on this subject? --Kleinzach 04:56, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
I ran across this a while back when in showed up on the new opera article bot. The article is oddly named. For one thing, there were several choir books, all in the archives of the Guatamala City Cathedral. This article refers to the first one to be published and annotated. There is more about Snow's book here [3] and the actual book with most of the historical introduction available for preview is on Google books [4]. Perhaps the article should be about the actual book by Snow? Hard to say... Voceditenore (talk) 08:23, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Update. I've re-written the article completely.[5] It's still more or less a stub, but at least it's properly focused. I also put the Classical Music banner on the talk page, as I doubt of the Central America project are going to pay much attention to it, and its content is now more clearly related to classical music. But feel free to remove it, if you don't think it's appropriate. Voceditenore (talk) 15:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
    • It's much better now - good work! I knew that there had been a lot of work to preserve music from Spanish American cathedrals in recent years; I just didn't know where the Guatemala City Choirbook(s) fitted into this process. Graham87 05:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Mozart KV Anh. C Harmoniemusik

Greetings It was suggested that I ask here about adding a new article on the subject of Harmoniemusik attributed to Mozart. I am the editor of first editions of K. Anh. C 17.04, 17.05 and 17.07. There does not seem to be any mention of this material.

I would welcome any thoughts or suggestions on this matter. Shortrock692 (talk) 19:23, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

If this is your first time here, I suggest you do a draft on your user page and then invite us to make comments, help with formatting etc. Best regards. (P.S. I've taken the liberty of removing some extra line spaces in your message above.) --Kleinzach 02:22, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Are the pieces authentic? I don't know if we have any works in the "Anh. C" section of the Kochel catalogue listed here and I couldn't find the works in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (though they could be there and I've missed it). Do you have any references for them? Thanks. DavidRF (talk) 02:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Angelin Chang

New article, Angelin Chang. Anyone want to improve it, have at it. TJRC (talk) 23:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Moravian music

I would like to change the title of this article. It deals with the music of early Moravian expatriates in the USA. Moravia is first of all the region of the Czech Republic. There is not such a term "Moravian music", except Moravian traditional music. It's confusing. Any suggestions? --Vejvančický (talk) 08:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Right. I agree this could be clarified. Perhaps the article could be renamed Moravian music (America), Moravian music in America or Moravian Church music? What would be best? --Kleinzach 09:05, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Moved to Moravian Church music. Thank you for tips, Kleinzach. The WP Classical banner may be appropriate for that article, I think.--Vejvančický (talk) 18:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Piano roll spam

Most of Special:Contributions/Ovens_for_sale for 27th December last consists of adding a link to a piano roll website for a large number of turn-of-the century musicians. I think this counts as spam. Anyone know of a bot that can undo those edits?--Peter cohen (talk) 13:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you give us a bit more background on this? Why do you think it's spam? It's not commercial is it? --Kleinzach 13:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The wikipedia usage doesn't apply purely to commercial links. In this case each link does not connect to a page specific to the subject of each Wikipedia article. Also many of these artists made both piano rolls and electrical recordings but the individual is only linking to the piano roll page rather than to a representative list of the whole of the performers' recorded legacies.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it just doesn't link directly simply because of the way the page is. It looks like the whole list is all on that one page, and is simply what piano rolls exist for each pianist. Probably not really needed, but it's not really spam per se. I'd say remove them for the fact that it's not particularly special and doesn't give much incite to the subject. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
I only checked one link, but as Peter wrote, they all to point to the same web page. That page just lists some kind of catalogue; I can't find any audio files. The main purpose of the site seems flogging their book. I don't think those links represent any value to readers of the Wikipedia articles. Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
I've added their link to the Piano roll article. Maybe that's enough in itself? --Kleinzach 05:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Symphony No. 1 (Rachmaninoff)

Could somebody give a rating to this article, please? OboeCrack (talk) 11:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

  Done, after a cursory look. Good luck with that GA. —La Pianista Speak · Hear 18:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Template:Pieces-style

Hi. I just noticed Template:Pieces-style, and I'm wondering if it needs an overhaul, or a just merge/redirect somewhere? (Its parent is the defunct Wikipedia:WikiProject Compositions, hence I'm asking here.) Thanks. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps both of these could just be deleted? --Kleinzach 13:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

New article

Ero e Leandro. It's not great, but, to be fair, it's not an easy work to get information on. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 03:02, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

New Assessment page by NocturneNoir

NocturneNoir has made a new assessment page for the project together with new categories, see [6]. In view of previous discussions here (see Assessments etc. in the archives) about this I am going to revert his edits and ask him to discuss his ideas here first before anything is implemented. Some of the ideas on the page are good, but IMO examples etc. should be appropriate to this project and not merely copied over from other ones. --Kleinzach 23:35, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

My original intention, way back when I first decided on what articles I was going to work on, was to help out with classical music articles. Unfortunate for me, I had no clue how to write articles, so I decided to mess around in WP:ANIME's territory (I thank them for both their kindness and their aid to my growth). Now that I'm pretty much done there and now that I have a good grasp on how to write a proper article, I've moved over to here. Unfortunately, I am 100% sure that WP:CM was both confusing and unorganized upon my entry. It is my plan to change the WikiProject to something closer to those large projects with good amounts of contributors (like WP:MILHIST or WP:VG), so I began messing around on the Project pages. Now of course, I (correctly, it appears) assumed that you folks wouldn't enjoy massive changes to your front page without discussion.
Let me first discuss the changes I made to the Assessment page. I've read the arguments for and against assessment, and I frankly believe that it isn't hurting anybody if we just allow the option of assessment. I doubt this project (considering the conversation you linked) would appreciate mass assessing of articles, and that is hardly my plan. However, I have found, especially for me, that assessment can be a very useful tool for judging an article's place in development; one can only go to WP:PR every so often before you've overstayed your welcome.
The examples you brought up are defaulted. I agree that they should be examples from this project itself, but as of right now, consensus does not exist to add them. I was planning on asking, but unfortunately got caught up with my busy life. We can discuss the examples at a later date, but making an assessment page available would create more of a user-friendly environment, in my opinion. Are there any other major concerns besides the examples? I would be happy to address them. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR (t • c) 23:46, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
WP:CM is a large project (about 10,000 articles) with relatively few participants. More concentrated effort has gone into the closely related Composers Project which only has about 4,000 articles. The Composers project has an active assessment section, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers/Assessment in which MagicPiano has been active, see Reviews. While going ahead here will require a thorough-going consensus, whatever we do should be based on the successful work done by our sister project. --Kleinzach 00:16, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Hello Nocturne, I know that article assessors mean well, but I have to say I think that it's mostly a waste of time. What really would improve the WP's coverage of classical music is a persistent effort to read the articles, visit the Talk pages, and make concrete suggestions for improvement. Even better, read serious reference sources and make your own improvements. The graphics, glitz, and grades of official assessment programs strike me as basically just annoying. Yours very truly, Opus33 (talk) 00:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Let me clarify a bit. I have no intention of rampaging through 4000+ unassessed pages just to slap a single grade on them. Rather, my intention is to allow for criteria for an assessment. Theoretically, as of right now, every Classical Music page tagged with an assessment is entirely incorrect, as WP:CM has no criteria against which to grade. Hopefully, through the edit that I made, an assessment criteria can be solidified.
I actually have an issue with the assessments of WP:Composers. For example, Eugène Ysaÿe, a page with no inline-citations whatsoever (a grievous error I intend to remedy) was ranked as a B-class when B-class criteria, by definition, require "inline citations where necessary." I feel that with a proper assessment criteria and assessors who follow this criteria, editors can gain a better feel for the articles they are working on.
That being said, however, I don't intend to spend a single second assessing articles unless there is a request on the requests page. Like you said, assessing is largely a waste of time. Oh, and I have every intention of improving Classical Music articles myself; I'm not an assessor in the slightest (I've assessed maybe ten articles), but am rather a content contributor.
To Opus33's concern that assessments are annoying, I realize many editors feel this way. I respect this and can understand it, which is why I believe assessments should only be based out of the requests section. Often, I like to see just how I am doing in terms of an article's grade so that I may improve certain sections of it without having to drag the article off to WP:PR. Assessment to me, is the quick, easy, and painless way of receiving very basic criticism of an article; a B-class checklist, when applied correctly, can easily direct an editor (I speak from experience) to the areas of an article that need the most improvement. Thanks for your time. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR (t • c) 00:49, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
(ec) "Even better, read serious reference sources ..." Yes. Personally, this is what I would like to see above all. Even if the reviewers were uncomfortable making the changes themselves -- and that's something I can completely understand, if someone is assessing in an area outside their expertise -- a reviewer reading serious scholarly material and then making suggestions for improvement on the talk page, based on those sources, I would find exceedingly helpful. All the best, Antandrus (talk) 00:52, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
To comment specifically on the criticism of Eugène Ysaÿe: the absence of inline citations is not necessarily problematic, and should not preclude the awarding of a B rating; see the Composer project assessment standards, which differ from those of the Editorial Team in this and probably other points.
In response to Antandrus' comment: it doesn't take an expert to suggest that an article is missing or deficient in certain categories of information (e.g. critical appreciation, or historical background). Is the feedback that these things might represent an improvement unwelcome? Paraphrased, would a more detailed "roadmap to improve this article" review (a la my Composer reviews) be useful here? (The problem with those, of course, is that they are time-consuming to perform and write up.) Magic♪piano 01:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Magicpiano, let me be clear: I am not saying that your assessments have no value. Quite the contrary. What I said, I thought clearly, was that a reading of scholarly sources with specific suggestions derived from those sources would be the most helpful kind of "assessment." By the way, I do not seriouly expect this to happen. Even though we are writing an encyclopedia, and reference to serious scholarly sources is an absolute necessity if we are ever to approach being "the sum total of human knowledge," from my five years of experience here I do not expect people to go to that kind of trouble on individual articles -- primarily because most Wikipedians are hobbyists, not scholars.
As an aside, the current assessments are a great improvement over the odious, destructive, and militantly ignorant "Wikiproject Biography" drive of spring/summer 2007, where a gang of non-writers, assessing articles at a rate of two to four per minute, blasted through biographical articles and stamped them with "grades" based on -- who knows? Maybe their general length, infobox deficiency, image absence, or whatever. (Opus, you remember "Lord of the Flies," yes?) Magicpiano, I do find your comments to be useful. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 01:48, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I didn't think you were saying that. I was just making a point, hopefully for NN's benefit. Magic♪piano 11:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
It was more like 20 per minute.  :=)
Let me add that even when you're not up to reading reference sources yourself, feedback on the question, "Is this clear and well organized?" can be useful. But above all -- feedback, not just rating, seems important to me. Cheers, Opus33 (talk) 02:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. My suggestion is that we keep the 'moratorium' on assessments in this project until and if Magicpiano and others wish to start a scheme here. Doing this for 10,000 is not a trivial matter . . . .

I'd like to invite NocturneNoir to help us on the Composers Project. We currently have a problem with Category:Unassessed Composers articles due to the "Wikiproject Biography" drive mentioned by Antandrus above. I can explain more if NN is interested. --Kleinzach 06:00, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Is there any demonstrated link between assessment and editing practice? Magicpiano's work is admirable, but has it produced tangible improvements in any way? Certainly the biography exercise came across as so much editcountitis. Eusebeus (talk) 06:21, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I only have anecdotal evidence (occasional feedback from contributors) that my composer assessments are actually helpful (either as a confirmation of contributor's work, or as a map toward improving the article). They do not frequently spark dialog; when they do, it is usually agreement. I'd estimate this has happened on 5-10% of the the 250 or so articles I've assessed, within the 2-3 week window in which I watchlist the articles after assessment. I've also run into one or two grumpy owners. (I also run into the effects of the WPBIO drive, since inappropriate B ratings are most often found in that project's banner.) Magic♪piano 11:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
The assessments are a kind of insurance policy. The original justification for the Biography Project mass bannering (and nominal assessing) of composers, musicians etc. was that our projects were not doing assessments. Keeping everything neat and tidy makes us less likely to suffer the unwanted attentions of non-contributors. --Kleinzach 13:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Again, I have no intenion of mass assessing. I therefore have no interest in running through an entire category of unassessed pages. However, as a potential contributor in this group, I would like to see the articles I worked on assessed upon request. Seeing as this is unlikely at this point, I might as well drop this altogether and just get to work on articles... I guess I'll just have to use WP:PR, WP:GA and WP:FA to judge... ɳOCTURNEɳOIR (t • c) 11:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
I will point out that the Kleinzach added a banner for assessment requests to the top of the Composer project talk page. Perhaps something similar, and/or a place where people who are willing to do assessments (or give PR-like feedback) can list their availability, would be a useful addition to this project. The list of volunteers could go on the Assessment page, and be somehow "publicized" on the project page. Magic♪piano 00:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I suppose we could have a request for informal comments banner, however starting assessments, however limited, does imply having a project assessments table with criteria/examples and deciding whether or not to adopt C-class (which the Composers Project is not using). --Kleinzach 02:41, 16 March 2009 (UTC)