Talk:Große Fuge

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Große Fuge is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, cleanup, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that aren't covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
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Yahoo pulls down their articles after about a month. Just check your link in a month. I would use a link like this. [1]

I might be off, but I am fairly sure that the theme is related to that of Opus 130, not 132 (it was certainly concieved simultaneously with the theme of 130, and resembles it much more closely). I don't think there would be any objections to a somewhat extreme expansion of this article when I have some more time?

   63.194.212.145 04:43, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
i have to agree with the article that the fugue is clearly connected to op. 132. just compare the openings of each; the overture of the fugue is just four variations of the same idea as the opening of 132. i don't know with which movement of 130 you're suggesting a connection. --Jeffcovey

[edit] Hard to believe that there is an edit war over this topic

As one who contributes occasionally to articles related to the Middle East, I have been a spectator of numerous edit wars. But who would have dreamed that there would be an edit war over a topic so abstruse, so remote from the eye of this world's petty but vicious political mayhem? Well, it just shows you how right was Henry Kissinger, who said, "The reason academic arguments are so virulent is that there is so little at stake."

To the matter at hand: I will summarize events for readers of this talk page who will drop by years after this edit war is ancient history: There was (perhaps will be again) a section of this article called "Grosse Fuge in popular culture", which listed a number of fundamentally trivial references to this piece in movies, plays and stuff like that. The section was deleted in a massive strike against sections like this in several hundred articles, by a user named Burntsauce. Mr. Burntsauce's talk page expresses a deep contempt for trivia and popular culture sections in articles of all types. This massive deletion was discussed with some bitterness on Mr. Burntsauce's talk page, and the discussion continued on WP:ANI#Removing pop trivia. Even before that discussion reached a conclusion, User:Equazcion restored the deletion, and User:Antandrus deleted it again.

Wow!

Now the real question is, what do I think about all this? The section "Grosse Fuge in popular culture" had three problems:

  • It had no references. Adding references would not be a big deal, but whoever wrote the section didn't bother to do so.
  • Three of the six items cited (the novel Fifty Degrees Below, and the two movie references) are trivial and (perhaps) not worthy of inclusion in the encyclopedia.
  • The title of the section is misleading. A string quartet by Schnittke, a poem, and even a composition by PDQ Bach, cannot be called "popular culture."

So what do I think we should do? I think we should restore the section, rename it (References to GF in other works?), mark it as unreferenced, and wait for someone to edit it so it is pertinent and pompous enough to be "encyclopedic."

I think Antandrus should edit it, as penance for his hasty and ill-considered redeletion.

I will wait a couple of days, and if no one adds to this post, I will restore it and do the editing myself (sigh!)

--Ravpapa 19:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Focus on content rather than behavior, please. "Hasty and ill-considered" -- you just might want to have a look at our assume good faith policy. It's an important one. Nor is your characterisation of my single edit as an "edit war" particularly helpful.
My deletion was consistent with our mission to produce a quality encyclopedia, with verifiable content. "X in popular culture" sections are weed-patches, where passersby add their memories, more or less reliable, of having seen or heard X on TV shows, T-shirts, coffee-mugs, video-game levels, or whatever.
I do not believe that lists of trivial items such as formerly existed in this section belong in an encyclopedia article. Others are free to disagree; it's a wiki, and such disagreements are in the nature of this editing environment. I see a couple of items that could sensibly be worked into a paragraph named, perhaps, "Influence"; the Schnittke is the most significant of these. I'm willing to write it myself, but I assure you doing so would not be a "penance", for there is nothing in deleting useless and unencyclopedic sections about which to be penitent. Such sections are little better than graffiti, in my opinion, and are generally added by people who know nothing at all about the topic to which they are affixing them, and thus are not qualified to assess their significance. Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 01:12, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
What you believe isn't a great argument because Wikipedia is rather divided on the subject of trivia, so it behooves us all to find a happy medium. See WP:TRIVIA -- As of now, we're supposed to keep these sections in for possible integration.
Equazcion • argue/improves • 01:25, 10/10/2007


Antandrus, I am sorry if you took umbrage at my characterization of your undocumented redeletion of the section as "edit warring" and as "hasty and ill-considered". I was apparently wrong about the edit warring part - I thought that three reversions of a section constituted an edit war, and yours, I thought, was the third. And it is clear from your comment that your act was the result of considerable thought, though you chose not to share those thoughts on the article's talk page.

To the point: you yourself acknowledge that at least one fact in that section was worthy of inclusion in the article (the Schnittke quartet). By wholesale deletion of the offending section, you would have made that fact go away forever, and a good-intentioned editor would then have been unable to rewrite the section, to weed the unweeded garden (to continue your conceit).

In any case, I have rewritten the section, preserving the information I felt contributed substantively to the article. I would appreciate your adding citations for the two quotes that I believe you inserted oh, so long ago. Also, the citation I have for Stravinsky's comment isn't a very good one - do you know where he said this originally?

Thanks, and I hope that, in spite of gently scratched egos, we have come up with an article we all can be proud of. (And so, ending this comment with a preposition, I am, sincerely,) --Ravpapa 07:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)