Talk:Hammersmith (Holst)

A fact from Hammersmith (Holst) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 March 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst was acclaimed by Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Hammersmith (Holst).

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle (talk) 08:33, 27 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Gustav Holst, the composer of Hammersmith

~~... that Gustav Holst's (pictured) Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo was lost after the premiere, but rediscovered in 1954 by the band director at Carnegie Mellon University?~~ Source: Pease, Andy (2013-10-28). "Hammersmith by Gustav Holst". Wind Band Literature. Retrieved 2022-11-24.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Supermarine S.4

Moved to mainspace by MyCatIsAChonk (talk). Self-nominated at 20:01, 27 January 2023 (UTC). Note: As of October 2022, all changes made to promoted hooks will be logged by a bot. The log for this nomination can be found at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Hammersmith (Holst), so please watch a successfully closed nomination until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

Thank you for your work on this article, I quite enjoyed reading it. However, I am concerned about the sourcing. The instrumentation and music section are entirely uncited, and several other passages are cited to sources that are not obviously reliable. The crux of this story rests on what appears to be a blog, which we consider a self-published source; for this to be usable at all, its author would need to be an authority in the field, and even so it's somewhat questionable. There seem to be some decent sources cited elsewhere in the article, so I am hopeful these concerns can be resolved. Vanamonde (Talk) 06:45, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: Hi there, thanks for reviewing. Here's an alternative source from a 2005 book, found in Google Books; I'll recite it in the article now. The page should be linked, but if not, it's on page 21. Is this good? MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 17:57, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk: That's a better source, but does it cover all the uncited content? If not, you'll need to find other sources to cover the rest of it. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:25, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: I've added two more sources; a journal article by the band director and an episode from a public radio station. I'd consider both to be reliable. Does this cover it? MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 23:47, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk: That helps, but the instrumentation and music sections are still completely uncited. I don't work in classical music, so if this is standard practice you should tell me, and we should discuss it at WT:DYK. Otherwise, those do need citations. Vanamonde (Talk) 01:18, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: I added citations to instrumentation. As for the music section, WikiProject Classical Music has guidelines related to the inclusion of descriptions of the music, found here under "Descriptions based on the score". The guidelines state, "In general, it is permitted to make factual observations based on examination of the musical score of a work." Do you feel this applies here? MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 02:03, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MyCatIsAChonk: I think it's tricky, but perhaps workable; it would be a shame to omit the content, but I assume secondary sources don't examine this work in such detail. I'd suggest the following; first, ruthlessly prune anything that could be considered analytical (for instance: "lyrical" or "fugue-like"). Then, start a discussion on WT:DYK about whether this is acceptable. I'm on the fence myself, and I think this could benefit from wider input. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:27, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Chiming in: "lyrical" may be analytical, but "fugue-like" can be read in the score objectively. This is like plot for a fiction book, doeesn't need external sources, or like you can say "yellow" for a picture shown, without needing an "independent" source. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt:@Vanamonde93: I have cited the music section; I used SFNs linked to the Cantrick journal article and the 2005 Rapp book. I added some quotes from those books too, but most of it is cited to pages within the books. Is it good now? MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 19:31, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for the delay. I'm still concerned about the hook source; the google books source doesn't actually narrate the entire story about rediscovery, and I'm unsure about the reliability of yourclassical.org, which the hook rests on. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:12, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How about a different hook? The current one has two other problems (for me): the possessive - then pictured - then the name looks complex, and the image is not in the article. The caption is too long. The article has an image of a house for an infobox lead image, which is a bit surprising. That hook doesn't prominently say that it is a composition, nor for a wind band (only indirectly). ----Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanamonde93:@Gerda Arendt: Ok, how about this:

ALT1: ... that Frederick Fennell once said that Gustav Holst's wind band work Hammersmith, "represents some of the most treacherous stretches of music making in all of the band's literature"?

That's really the best I can think of right now. Not much of the facts in this article seem interesting enough to appear on DYK; my initial nomination was the best once to me. Thoughts? MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 03:21, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea, and to me, just that he wrote this piece was new and interesting enough. The quote is very long, and to begin with a name that people may need to look up is not a good idea, - how is this?

ALT1a: ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst (pictured) has "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making in all of the band's literature", according to Frederick Fennell?

For the image caption I suggest just his name. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:32, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's better, but "the band" is very confusing; which band? Has not been alluded to in the hook. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:25, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
any band - it's music for concert band, but we should not link from a quote, and saying it twice would be repetitious. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:53, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps shorten the quote, then; it's the difficult that's interesting; and explain what Fennell was referring to? Vanamonde (Talk) 22:53, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I hope MyCatIsAChonk will do that who knows the topic best. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:22, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gerda Arendt:@Vanamonde93:

ALT1b: ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst (pictured) was acclaimed by conductor Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making in ... band literature"?

I removed "the" before band, because I perceive Fennell's claim to be generalized; it's a very difficult piece is band literature in general. Thoughts now? (P.S. I added the image of Holst to the article) MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 23:38, 3 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Other possibilities based on it:

ALT1c: ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst (pictured) was acclaimed by band conductor Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature?

ALT1d: ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst (pictured) was acclaimed by Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:59, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We're close here. New enough, long enough, hook issues addressed. ALT1d is good, per discussion above. The remaining minor point is that the story used in the original hook still isn't supported by the cited source, so we have a verifiability issue. Fix that and I'm happy to approve. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:42, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanamonde93: I'm unsure of whether you're referring to ALTd or ALT0. Nonetheless, I think the current plan (ALTd) is cited correctly. The cited page from the book directly states: During a visit with Frederick Fennell on 9 December 1997 he remarked to me that Hammersmith stil represents some of the most treacherous stretches of music making in all of the band's literature. I interpret this in that the author talked to Fennell and is quoting a real life interaction. I would think this book is reliable, as the author is a doctor in fine arts and is featured on Yamaha's website. I hope this clears up any confusion about the citations. On a side note, @Gerda Arendt:, the Wikilinks in your proposed hooks were to the articles about the Hammersmith district in London, not to the article about Holst's composition; I fixed it, but wanted to clarify this in case a confusion arose. Thanks! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 01:41, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@MyCatIsAChonk: I should have been clearer; I mean the story about rediscovery in 1954, used in ALT0. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:00, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanamonde93: I cited the Cantrick journal article and the Rapp book. The linked page in the Rapp book details the details of the second performance by the Kiltie Band under Cantrick. The Cantrick article is not open access on JSTOR, but I used SciHub to access it. The article states: Miss Holst... dispatched a letter post-haste to the publishers of the orchestral version, Boosey & Hawkes, requesting a copy of the original band score for examination with a view to possible performance. Then came the first of a series of surprises. Boosey & Hawkes replied that there was no such copy available. A second letter elicited the reply that, furthermore, they could not furnish any information about where to secure a score. Then one day came an airmail reply with happy news: Miss Holst had located the original manuscript and was making it available to Boosey & Hawkes. After the score had been duplicated and a copy for examination had finally arrived, it turned out that there were no parts in existence. At some time in the past parts had been written out for rehearsal purposes by the R.A.F. Band, stated the publishers, but these could not now be found. They had disappeared without a trace. If there was to be a performance, a complete new set of parts would have to be extracted. The present writer undertook the job. The present writer in question is Cantrick. I hope this verifies what you're concerned about. MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 14:13, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
per above, approving ALTd. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:22, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]