Talk:Daniel Pinkham

December 06 edits

I did a big overhaul of the article to wikify it, so to speak. If there is material that was lost that other users feel should be reinstated, it can all be found in the article's history, but I would suggest and recommend keeping it in the format that I (rather haughtily) imposed, as there is some consensus that wikipedia articles should look vaguely like this.--Dmz5 06:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, it needs sources and I have found a bunch - I would like to cite the Grove and some newspaper articles, I am just too lazy to do it right now, but I will come by in the next couple of days and source the article as best I can.--Dmz5 06:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Please list the statements that were removed, thanks. Badagnani 07:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh my gosh it was a lot of stuff, is it not obvious by looking at the diffs? My first edit vs. the version immediately prior? If you don't think so I will specify here.--Dmz5 07:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the diffs is confusing. Here are some of the things I removed that did not find their way back into my version in a different form.

• • "Much of his concert music was within the technical ability of amateurs, and brought contemporary music back into the home. And in recent years, he had acquired an extremely young audience with his music based on Robert McCloskey’s children’s classic Make Way for Ducklings."
  • "“My Wedding Cantata paid for the mortgage on this house,” Pinkham said from his home in Cambridge in 1993. The Christmas Cantata was written in 1958 for Lorna Cooke de Varon and the New England Conservatory Chorus. Adults who have performed his choral song cycle Bugs as children—with generous coaching from the composer, who did not see a youth choir as beneath him—have come back to sing the work in adult choirs."
  • "But let there be no misunderstanding: while Pinkham wrote to please, and his roots as a church composer were in the Baroque and in traditional harmony, he was not afraid of experimentation, whether with electronics or in trying to create new sonorities with old instruments. While working with electronic music, he created a score notation as peculiar as anything from Stockhausen or Boulez." (This is original research; the statement I adapted from the Grove about a "20th century trends" sums this up effectively.)
  • "When illness made it impossible for him to maintain his teaching load in the fall of 2006, he was described as “irreplaceable” due to the unique approach to conveying knowledge that he had developed over the years. His support for New England Conservatory, beyond his work as a teacher, was both financial and in kind. On more than one occasion, he contributed instruments of high quality, most recently the Bennett & Giuttari continuo organ used in NEC’s choral concerts this semester."
  • There was also a paragraph that gave a (IMO random) sampling of some of his recent works. --Dmz5 07:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Organization

On a different note, do you think the increased sectionalization of the article might be a bit excessive? In my opinion, the article is short enough that the broken out sections fit neatly into "Life" and "Work". --Dmz5 07:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It was just an attempt to eliminate the "miscellaneous" section, which was unnecessary. If there's a section for "Musical works" then the other sections seem logical, as in the Alan Hovhaness article on which I've done a lot of work. Badagnani 08:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your reorganization, but I question the utility of the extra headings. They are usually used to break up long sections of articles and provide structure; here they seem, in my opinion, to interrupt rather than improve the flow. I tried a modified version, what do you think?--Dmz5 08:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Removal of tenure at various universities

How did this material get removed? This sort of thing is very careless and no good at all.

Pinkham’s teaching career paralleled his years as a composer. In 1946 he was appointed to the faculty of the Boston Conservatory of Music. In 1953 and 1954, he picked up teaching appointments at Simmons College and Boston University. Following a stint as visiting lecturer at Harvard University, in 1957–1958, he joined the faculty of New England Conservatory, where he remained until his death. At New England Conservatory, Pinkham taught harmony and music history in addition to composition. At one time he also chaired NEC’s early music performance department and led the NEC Collegium Musicum in concert. When illness made it impossible for him to maintain his teaching load in the fall of 2006, he was described as “irreplaceable” due to the unique approach to conveying knowledge that he had developed over the years. His support for New England Conservatory, beyond his work as a teacher, was both financial and in kind. On more than one occasion, he contributed instruments of high quality, most recently the Bennett & Giuttari continuo organ used in NEC’s choral concerts this semester. Badagnani 08:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not mean to assume anything other than good faith, but it seems as though you did not read my version of the article. All of that pertinent info was in my edit. The only stuff that wasn't was the dates (which IMO were irrelevant) and the second half of the paragraph, which is unsourceable. Who says he was "irreplaceable"? Is this quoted somewhere? Who says he donated that stuff? Is there a source? Other than that, this information WAS in my edit. Furthermore, you could have re-added information you found pertinent rather than simply reverting to a clearly inferior version (in terms of tone and layout).--Dmz5 08:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I apologize that I apparently left out the Boston Conservatory reference, as you can see the previous version of the article was quite confusing and poorly laid out, which is why we have the "history" feature. I tried to incorporate as much as possible from a less-than-great original.--Dmz5 08:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

also regarding the "biography" heading, the article isn't a biography per se, it's an article. Part of it is his biography - that is, the timeline of his life - and part of it is an (attempt at) an overview of his music. But yes, it could be retitled to "Life" or something. I don't have strong personal feelings either way. I would just prefer that the sections be somewhat substantial and that every two-sentence-long chunk doesn't get broken into a new section - purely a stylistic concern on my part.--Dmz5 08:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

There were other universities deleted as well, not just the Boston Conservatory. Just edit in a deliberate way so that we can all follow what is going on and make sure no important information is left out. Badagnani 09:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, I purposely did not include the dates because I thought they were irrelevant but that you were welcome to include them if you wished. Reverting the article is NOT necessary. Furthermore, nothing other than BoCo was deleted. Please cite a specific example of another school that was not included. Furthermore again, I repeat my request to you to NOT revert to a disorganized, unformatted version of the article. I spent time and effort wikifying this article, and you have the previous version immediately available to you via the page history. It does not need to be reverted. I don't want this to turn into an edit war, but I wish you would acknowledge that the new page layout is better, and agree that content issues can be resolved without reverting. --Dmz5 09:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Let me emphasize that I'm sorry I left a particularly relevant fact out of my edit - I hope you realize that I am editing in good faith and want to create a good, encyclopedic article about a great composer. At the risk of repeating myself, please add more content to the article in its wikified form and do not revert it again.-Dmz5 09:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I put the dates back in - your edit summary seems to indicate this was the chief bone of contention. I might suggest that your reversions border on WP:POINT. You could easily have put the dates back in without reverting to the unwikified version of the article. Also, I didn't mention that paragraph in my comments above because I thought I had included the pertinent info in my big edit. I am not conspiring to hide the years that he was adjunct faculty at Simmons College. You are a long time user with some breathtakingly valuable contributions especially to articles about American composers so I am frankly a little disappointed at the tone of this discussion.--Dmz5 16:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, regarding editing deliberately, I think you will agree that the previous version of the article, while clearly written by knowledgeable editors, is confusing and disorganized and has a thoroughly unencyclopedic tone. I don't know how else I could have edited it other than "overhauling", as I put it. I don't think I have been purposely misleading, and the history button is there for you to compare the versions side by side. For the third time I apologize that specific facts were left out.--Dmz5 16:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

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