Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Compositions task force
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[edit] Welcome!
Hello to all those who have just joined this task force. Currently I am using AutoWikiBrowser to tag all the articles within our scope. This will take a few days so bear with me! Centy – reply• contribs – 06:13, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
- Nice to see this mess finally sorted out. I always wondered why "Classical Music" should cover compositions but not everything as if there was something wrong with a classical music person editing a composer article...but anyway I'm happy to do what (little) I can with compositions articles. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Music in popular culture
This topic is one of considerable contention, and I am one of the contenders on the wrong side. Here is my case:
"Such edits ... are usually of little interest to readers who want to know about the musical work." It is hard to know what readers of articles on musical compositions are looking for, but my own guess is that the use of a piece in movies and elsewhere would interest most readers. Who are some of these? High school students doing papers - the fact that Rite of Spring was used in Fantasia might be just the thing to catch their fancy. Casual radio listeners who have just heard a piece for the first time and want to find out more about it - it certainly might interest them. Serious music students studying a piece and looking for analysis and background - well, it may or may not interest them, but, on the other hand, they are probably going to look for the piece in Tovey or Cobbetts, not in the wikipedia.
But what most readers want to read isn't really the determining issue - after all, if the content of the wikipedia was determined by popular vote, there would be nothing in it at all. The main contention against popular culture sections is that they are "unencyclopedic". I don't buy this. There are plenty of serious academics - ethnomusicologists, people studying the sociology of music or the history of music - for whom derivative works of a piece are of great interest. And really the only place they can begin searching for this information is right here - in the wikipedia.
No, the only real reason for discouraging lists of derivative works is snobbery: people who learned their esthetics from Kant and Nietzsche don't like John Doe mucking up their articles with Batman and John Grisham. Well, they should read Didera and MacLuhan. --Ravpapa (talk) 09:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
- I agree with you for the most part, but we seem to be in the minority. I especially find it stupid that someone who hears Schubert's Unfinished Symphony won't care where they heard it, but that someone who watches The Smurfs will care what the normal Gargamel music was. It seems to me it should go both ways. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
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- My view (and I think the practice on most other projects) is that items in trivia/PC sections should be sufficiently relevant to be of (probable) interest to an average reader of the article, otherwise they are best deleted. After all we wouldn't include non-trivia if it was not relevant, would we? Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 10:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
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Of course I agree. But we should err on the side of accepting rather than rejecting.
The real problem with these sections is not the information in them, but that they are so badly written - usually just barren lists. When a piece is used in a film, it says something about the piece as well as the film, and we should point that out.
Without trying to blow my own horn, I suggest looking at the PC section of the Grosse Fuge. There I tried to show how appearances of the fugue in derivative works says something about the piece itself. --Ravpapa (talk) 09:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
- Yes indeed. The PC section of the Grosse Fuge is entirely different from the listcruft seen on other articles. It meets the 'sufficient relevance' criteria in my view. Maybe there isn't any real difference of opinion on this after all? -- Kleinzach (talk) 10:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
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- The problem is with pages like Symphony No. 9 (Dvorak). Look back in its history to see the sort of uses in popular culture that is discouraged. Centy – reply• contribs – 11:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
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- Or Pagliacci on 7 August 07. --Kleinzach (talk) 14:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
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Yes, well, you see, I think deleting those sections was a mistake, a really bad mistake. One of the most important things about the history of the New World Symphony, and of Pagliacci, is that they have worked their ways into our collective consciousnesses, through their repeated quotation in popular culture. Now, that important aspect of these pieces is completely missing from the articles. You should have rewritten the sections - perhaps pruned them a bit of the irrelevancies, tightened them up, but certainly left at least half of them in some form or another.
Before you deleted those sections, someone who heard the Dvorak on the radio and thought, "Now where did I hear that before?" could have looked in the Wikipedia and found out. Now, that person may very well suffer from a consuming curiousity that grows into an obsession, that leads to his eventual suicide, and be it on your heads.
That was a joke. But, at the risk of being pedantic, I will quote from the relevant guideline:
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- This guideline does not suggest removing trivia sections, or moving them to the talk page. If information is otherwise suitable, it is better that it be poorly presented than not presented at all.
--Ravpapa (talk) 10:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
- Well, maybe we disagree after all. I don't accept your first premise - about "our collective consciousnesses" etc - but let's leave that aside, as well as the WP liturgical analysis, and get to the point. We are all volunteers. We can't expect editors to spend their time reworking listcruft into paragraphs of coherent information. It can be done, sure, but it takes a lot of effort. In practice very few people will be willing to try, meanwhile the listcruft continues to accumulate unrelated sentence by unrelated sentence. --Kleinzach (talk) 11:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
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- I have created a compromise with which, I believe, everyone will be happy. I have created an article Classical music in popular culture. Whenever one of these offending sections crops up in an article, move it there, and put a link to it in the See also section. I promise to clean this article up when I get the time, pruning all the really, really irrelevant things (and I agree, there are many).
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- I think this is not only a compromise, it is also a better solution. This way, all the lists of music esoterica will be in one place, where it could actually be useful to someone doing ethnomusical research.
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- Please also note the page contains numerous other pages entitled 'X in popular culture' which were all deleted due to WP:NOT#DIR Centy – reply• contribs – 11:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
- Not to mention that such a page would end up being in the size range of mondo mega after a while. I believe the basic rule here outside of the dislike of so-called trivia is the "collection of losely related stuff" rule. I agree that it shouldn't all be just excised, as I've said before, but THIS way is one of the worst ways of doing it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
- Ravpapa - If you wanted to produce an example you really should have done it in your own user space rather than creating a new article. I'm not happy to see material I referred to in this discussion being republished. I think the best thing to do would be a creator's speedy deletion (or whatever it's called). -- Kleinzach (talk) 12:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
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Ravpapa - I think what we are trying to communicate is that we need a pretty hard line guideline on this otherwise, Wikipedia will do what the majority of editors seems best at (video games, TV shows, movies, pop music and other such topics with a large Internet based fan base), and will turn out a ever increasing list of instances Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven) has been used in popular culture. I, however, will concede that maybe we need to add that we should encourage editors to mention why a particular piece (eg Moonlight sonata) is used so much in popular culture rather than just a bullet point list.
Can you see the huge difference between edits such as those in Pagliacci and Große Fuge? You have used two literary 'pop' references in Große Fuge, one of which is a directly inspired poem, the other a demonstration of its difficult character. Whereas look at the list of useless trivia in Pagliacci? What do any of these uses say about the musical work? If they say anything why aren't they collected together into a section called Influences or Legacy explaining why its so popular in popular culture and what it says about the work. Centy – reply• contribs – 13:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
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- I certainly agree with you that there is a difference between the PC section of Große Fuge and that of Pagliacci. And I agree that Große Fuge is better by far (well, of course, I wrote it, didn't I?). And I would have minimal objections to the deletion of the article I created if I had an assurance that these sections would not be arbitrarily deleted, but rewritten. However, Kleinzach's comment above that "In practice very few people will be willing to try" to rewrite, and will simply do a knee-jerk revert, confirms my already dismal experience in this area. Fact: the PC section of Große Fuge was reverted three times before I saved it by the rewrite.
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- If everyone agrees that PC sections are best kept in the articles on the works in question, rather than concentrated in one place, I can live with that, as long as I know they will not be arbitrarily deleted.
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- I am, furthermore, willing to make an offer of great magnanimity. I am currently off in India (of all places) studying Indian classical music, but I will be back in a month or two. After that, I am working on a rather large wikipedia article of my own, which should take a couple of weeks. Then, I am willing to take upon myself the rewrite of such PC sections a la Große Fuge, as you feel require it.
I've now prodded Classical music in popular culture on the grounds that it should have been created in userspace. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:48, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
- Ravpapa removed the prod notice - as he is entitled to - and I have now sent it to AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Classical music in popular culture. --Kleinzach (talk) 09:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
For the record, a long and detailed debate followed at the afd. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Article titles
Regarding Six Moments Musicaux (Rachmaninoff) specifically, but it applies elsewhere: should this article title include "Six"? I suppose it was the convention to publish music with the number of pieces, but if so, then shouldn't pages like Preludes, Op. 32 (Rachmaninoff) be at Thirteen Preludes (Rachmaninoff)? (Note that "Six" is actually 6 in French) ALTON .ıl 05:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
- It all depends if the number is used commonly to refer to the pieces. For example the Chopin Nocturnes are very rarely referred to by # Nocturnes, Op. 9 etc. so their article name reflects that. Also Schubert's Impromptus are usually listed without a preceding number. But on the other hand Paganini's Caprices are usually called '24 Caprices'. I say it's your call, given you are more knowledgeable about Rachmaninov's piano music than I am. Centy – reply• contribs – 18:14, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
