Talk:List of Renaissance composers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Why?
What is this page for? Does it serve any useful purpose?
- It most certainly does: this is the list of redlinks I've been using for the last year to write bios of these people. In order to start a new article, you need to start with a redlink somewhere. A list is one convenient way of doing it.
- It also gives the dates of all the composers of the Renaissance. Frankly, I'd rather break it out by country or stylistic group, and order chronologically within (for example, all the Spanish composers together under a subheading) but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
- Yet another purpose served by this list is that it is one of the only ways Google can find the articles on these guys since otherwise the articles are orphaned. Personally I'd rather have the list directly in the Renaissance music article since that has a higher Google score overall, and the links therein get higher scores as a result. Antandrus 14:58, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
-
- So these would be the first entries in wiki for the composer? I know you can automatically generate these list by asking for all renaissance composers, so this list is a duplicate in some ways. I prefer organization by date of when the composer fourished. Three broad categories initially perhaps: early Ren., high Ren., and late Ren. DrG 2005 May 3
-
-
- Well, no you can't automatically generate the list: you can only look at the list of existing composer biographies that have already been added to categories. In order to start a new article you need to click on a redlink: this is an extremely useful feature of lists such as this one.
-
-
-
- I added back the transitional composers of the late Medieval era and early Renaissance, with an explanatory note. Most music histories--at least all the ones I have--start the Renaissance generally around 1400, rather than 1450, though they indicate that there is no definitely agreed-upon date, somewhat in contradistinction to the situation at the other end, around 1600. Reese's immense Music in the Renaissance begins with the Avignon repertory, and considers the composers of the Burgundian school to be representative of the "Early Renaissance". I think we do our readers a service by including transitional era composers in both Medieval and Renaissance music lists and articles. Antandrus 15:25, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Regarding including Dunstable in the Medieval era, I surveyed 4 Renaissance books (Atlas, Brown, Fenlon, Reese) and 4 Medieval books (Hoppin, McKinnon, Reese, Yudkin) and the results were 4 to 4. Their decisions were made by the number of pages in the book, and as long as the next book in the historical series picked up where the previous one left off, there were no porblems. I checked 2 textbooks. One (Stolba) said 1450, the other (Grout) avoided the issue, but started the Renaissance with Ockeghem. I strongly support 1450. Dunstable dies; the 100 years war ends; but more importantly, in my experience as a teacher, students understand and remember it better. Overlapping the composers is better than omitting them. It is possible to chose one book on Medieval music and one on Renaissance music and have no mention in either of Dunstable! User:DrG 2005 May 10
-
-
-
-
- You're right about the danger of picking books that miss the period between 1400 and 1450. I think the safest course is overlapping the lists. I'm fine with 1450 as the start of the "Renaissance" -- though whenever I teach this stuff I make a point about how utterly gray it is starting and stopping eras in even numbered years (think of the Portuguese Renaissance polyphony in the early 17th century, the obviously medieval music in England in the mid 15th century, the Baroque monody in Florence around 1580 ... ) One of these days we should take on rewriting that Renaissance music article, which really could be quite detailed. Antandrus 04:01, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
-
-
[edit] By Country?
Categorization by country would be useful as well.
[edit] Monteverdi
Monteverdi is in this list, but not in the "Renaissance Composers" category. Was it an intentional choice, or might we add him?
(PS - This is probably the case with several other composers on the list, but Monteverdi was the one I was listening to, tonight.) MIP | Talk 22:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- That sounds like a definite "oops" -- he's certainly both a Renaissance as well as a Baroque composer. I'll fix it. Thanks for pointing it out! Antandrus (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Ordering
Is anyone else bothered by the ordering by first name? There are other choices, but it's quite a lot of work to fix, so I'm not going to do it without strong encouragement:
Example ordering possibilities:
- birthdate
- country/geographic region, birthdate
- century, surname
- country/language region, century, surname
I think it could be useful to have the Spanish composers together, the Franco-Flemish together, the Italians together, etc. Maybe by birthdate within the groups. When the dates are just "flourished", subtract twenty years from the first of the two dates (admittedly arbitrary, but it usually gets close). Antandrus (talk) 01:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reorganised the page
With some help from Antandrus I've reorganised this page to be split into individual countries to make it more useful and practical. IMO the pictures add a lot to the list to making it look pleasant - I initially included more, but removed some to prevent it from becoming over the top and a menace to 56k users.
The convention is to minus 20 to 30 years (at your discretion) from the date of composers who only have a flourished date to achieve an approximate date of birth.
All the birth/death mentions are uniformly formatted, and I'll fix any new ones which aren't if neccessary to make the page neat. If anyone has a suggestion of an improved way to present the dates (eg. no space after circas and/or between the hyphen seperating the b/d years) feel free - I couldn't find any mention of something this pedantic in any style guide. Lethesl 03:07, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] To do
- Germany, Spain, Poland and Portugal also need an introduction paragraph and I'm not sure how to write them at the moment.
- Also, should anything be done about music codices and annonymous composers who can be distinguished from others? The German article lists a few - I have been entertaining the idea of a list of music codices for a while, but don't know how workable that would be. It would certainly be of at least some use, plus it's an interesting subject. Lethesl 13:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Comprehensiveness
Another long-term thing to work on, in fact the only main issue for the list:
As we cannot arbitrarily declare how many works (or surviving works) are required for entry to this list, I am having to add composers even with only one work extant. This is making the list huge (I am hoping not unmanagably so). While it may not be a problem for making this as a reference, it creates a big problem (IMO):
The composers of substance who have dozens of surviving works are being swamped by people who either have not even been recorded or only have one piece recorded or even extant. Initially this may seem like no problem as it's a list, but this should be a list of some use, and I am unsure how listing all these people is of use. I was thinking perhaps the ones who produced more than a handfull of works could be boldened to stand out or something. For example, many many musicians (opposed to career composers) tended to publish study or practice works, or the occasional mature collection. This is adding so many more insignificant entries.
Another problem is that these one-work composers also need their listing to be explained, as they may be difficult or impossible for a second person to research and verify them (due to their total obscurity). This means that the page is going to get many times more text than is needed for just the composer name and date links, looking a) messy and b) (loading time) big. For example compare the England list (which I am working on at the moment) which is full of caveats and notes, versus other sections. Ideally this information could be put into individual articles for each of these obscurities, but a) that would take (possibly) years to do, and b) some don't even have enough information on them to not have an article on them get proposed for speedy deletion.
This seems a bit like between a rock and a hard place... Lethe 21:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Query
A user removed a chunk of English composers due to him considering them belonging to the baroque. Isn't it the case that England's composers was a little late to join the renaissance, and equally reluctant to leave it? Lethe 14:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
- It is legitimate to consider many of those composers "Renaissance", due to stylistic similarities; I don't think they should be removed from here. Also, a lot of the recently added composers of the trecento are most commonly associated with the medieval, not the Renaissance eras. The best way to solve problems like this is to put composers on both lists, when classification is not obvious; for example Sigismondo d'India, another the anonymous visitor removed, can be classified as both Baroque and Renaissance. Antandrus (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
