Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (pieces of music)

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See also discussion started at category talk:musical compositions, derived from a RfC topic

[edit] Language

What language to use for the titles of works?

I haven't seen this discussed, and it's apropos because I recently noticed two articles about the same opera: Samson and Delilah (opera) and the original title Samson et Dalila. What should be the "main" entry? (of course the other should be a redirect).

It isn't obvious to me. My slight bias is to say this is the English language WP, so use the anglicizations (Marriage of Figaro) unless the work is always or nearly always referred to, even by Anglophones, in its original language (Cosi fan Tutte). Another approach would be to use the title that informed/educated English speakers most commonly use, which wasn't intended to be as elitist as it sounds.

But since I expect any of my original contributions will be about British music, I'm not so fussed about it.

p.s. why isn't this page laid out with section headings instead of ----? Is it improper to reformat talk pages? David Brooks 07:17, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think we can just follow the convention laid out in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English): "Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form." In other words, pretty much what you said above (Marriage of Figaro but Cosi fan tutte, and, say, The Rite of Spring but Les Noces). But of course, so long as there is a redirect, it doesn't really matter much one way or the other (so the fact that the article is actually at Le Nozze di Figaro isn't a big deal, even if it's not where I'd've put it myself).
By the way, this page doesn't use headings because most of it was written before such usage became the norm (headings didn't always produce a table of contents, so there wasn't so much point in using them on talk pages). If you want to reformat it, that's fine (but at the same time there's no pressing need to do so if you don't want). --Camembert

[edit] Major/minor conventions

Shouldn't the word "Major" be spelled with a capitol M and "minor" with a lower case one? Usually, I see both lowercase. Also, shouldn't the key letter of a minor piece be lowercase, as in a minor vs. C Major? -- Asmeurer 00:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I had just been following the conventions that others are using here. Always capital key letter and always lower-case 'm' and no hyphen between key and accidental. "C major", "C minor", "C sharp major", C sharp minor", "C flat major", "C flat minor". That's the convention I've seen widespread here -- I don't have strong personal opinion to do anything other than be consistent with what is most widely used. I do understand that often the minor key is denoted with a lower-case letter by itself. "C major" = "C" and "C minor" = "c". Double variation uses some of that in its table, but in the text this is usually avoided. DavidRF 11:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
There are a number of different wikipedia style guides for musical keys: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Classical_music#Capitalization_of_musical_keys and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(music)#Major_and_minor. Sometimes I go a little overboard with minor format edits, but I always try hard to make sure the content that the original edit contains remains unchanged. DavidRF 14:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. That was what I was looking for but couldn't find. I will use those conventions, even if it does annoy the hell out of me to see the word "Major" lowercase. Asmeurer (talk • contribs) 00:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I am adding this information to this page. Asmeurer (talk • contribs) 00:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Even among musicians, like on concert programs and stuff, if you're spelling out the key, it's always capital key letter, small m. The capitalization thing is only for abbreviations. If the abbreviation consists of only one letter, capitalization tells you whether it's major or minor. If it consists of two letters, then the key is always capitalized, and the M/m tells you whether it's major or minor (i.e. CM, Dm). If it consists of more than two letters, it's always big key letter, small m (i.e. "Cmaj", "Dmin").
In other words, you only ever futz with the captialization where it's necessary to distinguish between major and minor. SFT | Talk 08:01, 19 October 2007 (UTC)