Talk:List of classical pianists

Notability

This list should require that only notable entries with their own main articles can be included here, as in other similar lists. If a person does not even have their own article, it is dubious as to why they should be mentioned here. Shawnc 01:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

No doubt it could be "trimmed" (I do try and keep an eye on new entries, but I've never had time to go through the whole list), but it's also perfectly possible that a genuinely notable performer has not yet had an article written about them, a red-link here will hopefully give someone the idea of writing that article. Do you have an example of a similar list wehre all red-links have been removed? David Underdown 11:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a sort of vanity in the idea that if you are not in Wikipedia you are not notable. There are indeed many pianists who have had distinguished performing and recording careers who are not yet on WP. Rconroy 23:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Comparing the recorded pianists list to this one, I found that many, many names appeared on only the former. I've just finished importing all such names under "b"; please note that some are not familiar to me and may well be insufficiently notable for this list (or, perhaps, even for that one). Moreover, while recognizing that the level of notability required to merit inclusion on this list is a subject not yet well defined, I'm wondering whether Jedadiah Bernards and Michael Born, who do not appear on the recorded pianists list, should be here either. A quick Google search suggests that both are teenagers; the former seems to appear only in YouTube and MySpace, while the latter is apparently still a diligent student with some compositions listed on a Sibelius site, as best I can tell. Has anyone encountered either in more "formal" surroundings? Drhoehl (talk) 21:31, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

At the same time as the first posting above, Shawnc added a concealed note at the top of the article reflecting what the foregoing admittedly sketchy discussion reveals to be a personal, not universal, view that red-linked names were not allowed. That note has lived on, unnoticed, and now someone has acted on it by deleting all the red links (some undeniably consequential names, some doubtless deserving deletion) from A through N without discussion but with a promise to kill the rest later. Unfortunately, the same user's subsequent edits preclude reversion. To head off further such action, I have deleted the now-revealed admonition from Shawnc and added a visible note directing that no wholesale deletions should occur without discussion. Of course, I'm fully aware that in doing so I may be guilty of the same "my view is the correct one" sin; hence, I'm noting my action here in hopes of comment from others. Meanwhile, if no objection is forthcoming shortly, I intend to start the dreary chore of restoring the summarily deleted red-linked names. Drhoehl (talk) 19:38, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

There is an objection. Please see and discuss in #Pianists without articles, below. TJRC (talk) 20:11, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Pianists without articles

I've started to clean up this list, part of which is eliminating the links to articles that do not exist. After I started, the comment "Only notable pianists with their own main articles should be included in this list. See WP:MUSIC for notability requirements" was changed to "Please note that existence of a Wikipedia article can suggest notability, but absence of such an article does not necessarily denote its lack. Do not engage in wholesale removal of red links below without first raising the issue on the discussion page." (Actually, it was also changed from comment to actual article text, which appears to have been an error; I put it back to being a comment, but did not change its content.)

What's the consensus here? This type of list is a magnet for spurious additions of non-notable persons. My own take here is that if the person is not sufficiently notable that anyone has bothered to create an article on him or her, the person should not be listed here. Stubs are cheap, and if a person is truly a notable pianist, requiring an article is no big impediment.

Furthermore, without an article, there is almost no information conveyed by including the name in this list.

I will hold off further redlink deletion pending a discussion here. My apologies to User:Drhoehl, the editor making the above-referred to comment change, for my edit earlier today; it was made concurrently with his/her comment.

What's the consensus? TJRC (talk) 19:47, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pausing to discuss matters. My view is in line with one expressed by a couple of others above, probably the closest thing to "consensus" that has emerged for this list--judicious trimming of the red links may be in order, but deletion en masse is too much; more a matter of "my opinion only," when in doubt, I'd err on the side of inclusiveness. For example, of the pianists deleted in the "A-N" round, several off the top of my head are undeniably notable: Ethel Bartlett (half of the celebrated, and much-recorded, duo team of Bartlett and Robertson), Emanuel Bay (accompanist of Jascha Heifetz, again with whom he recorded), Andre Benoist (recorded as a soloist for Edison and recorded and performed in concert as accompanist to a host of major singers in the first couple of decades of the 20th c.), Coenraad V. Bos (possibly the most respected of accompanists of the late 19th-first quarter 20th c., with a direct link to Clara Schumann if memory serves)...well, that's just a few names from "B" about whom I have facts in my head, and I could cite others from that letter alone who recorded significantly but about whom I'm not as fluently conversant. I'm sure others yet are significant but not known to me personally--and, of course, that some are dubious or outright insignificant, and hence deserving deletion. In many cases, though, I think the lack of an article on Wikipedia is not a matter of "not notable" but a matter of "you can't find much on the Internet and must go to the library" because the artists in question were active in the early recorded era and haven't been much in the news since.

I see a further reason to preserve red links (again, not entirely a unique view): I think that they have value to the user. First, they provide a central listing of pianists deemed worth remembering, whether they have drawn an article or not. Second, they offer a "road map" of article topics needing to be addressed. I know that I have referred to the list (or its sister list of recorded classical pianists) on numerous occasions looking for reminders of artists about whom I might enjoy writing articles. Drhoehl (talk) 21:36, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Red links should be certainly be preserved at Wikipedia:Requested_articles/music#Classical_musicians_and_conductors... that's the appropriate "road map" article. There should be an effort to copy the ones deleted from here to that page. As for the whether or not they should be included here, I'm undecided. In some ways, this page is not very informative at all, it just duplicates the functions of the categories. On the other hand, with so many subcategories a global list starts having value again. Plus an article like this is a great way to keep new articles from being tagged as orphans. (though perhaps not what it was intended for).DavidRF (talk) 22:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

My experience of similar lists for composers, singers etc. is that red links are usually not included. Has anyone checked through Category:Lists of musicians by instrument? --Kleinzach 22:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I just took a look. 37 of 59 (not counting "classical pianists" in either stat) have at least some red links or, in a couple of cases, names that are simply not linked; some have no more than a handful, but a couple (oboists, harpsichordists) are almost entirely red links, and of course, as expected, others fall in between. There are some odd splits, too; jazz saxophonists, for instance, does not, but saxophonists has quite a few. Drhoehl (talk) 03:34, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

• Good idea to expunge the redlinks. Eusebeus (talk) 22:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Drhoehl's position about the red links: if the list is properly maintained, they are a good thing, but – it requires significant knowledge and research to determine the inclusion of entries, and, as TJRC remarked and as can be observed on many other lists, lists like this are a magnet for spurious additions. In the face of this dilemma, my position is rather radical: do away with such lists; they are not encyclopedic, they're borderline almanachian, they incur huge maintenance. I don't think this position has much support, and I'm not proposing any deletion, but I think a lot of unnecessary work could be avoided if lists like these could just be abandoned by serious editors and be left to their own devices. Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:39, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Red-link lists have sometimes been kept as project pages, see for example Wagner singers. Here there are a lot of lists (see Drhoehl above), so I think this might be discussed on the project talk page. --Kleinzach 03:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm of two minds about this. They are difficult to maintain, and ones for performers particularly attract spurious additions. On the other hand, for those subjects that are blue-linked, they are useful navigation tools. The proliferation of sub-categories makes it very difficult to use cat pages for navigation, particularly if the reader only knows the name but not the nationality. There are three (classical-related lists that I know of which have red links and they work OK:

• The Record of Singing has clearly defined inclusions, i.e. they are included in the recordings. It is useful to readers to know which ones were, even if they are currently red linked and useful to editors writing singer bios.
• List of zarzuela composers has so many red links because English Wikipedia's coverage of this genre and its composers is so poor. I've tried to make it useful to readers by giving some of their notable works and providing at least the birth and death dates and place of birth (with links in the Notes section to the relevant article(s) on other Wikipedias or music encyclopedias). I think it has encyclopedic value.
• The opera corpus. There is only one case where both the composer and all their listed works are red linked (Thomas Clayton (1673–1725): Rosamond, Arsinoe). The list states at the top that the composers have articles on WP or in other music encyclopedias. There have been very few spurious additions, although some disagreements as to whether some of the additions have been notable enough, as well as what the role of this list is, e.g. [1]

One thing that I think is always a bad idea is have sections in articles about a genre, instrument/voice, or composition that lists notable performers. They are invariably unreferenced, include people who may have an article but are pretty marginal in importance, attract drive-by, ill-informed additions, and end up swamping the article. I'd nuke 'em all. ;-) Voceditenore (talk) 08:25, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, let's use one mind and be clear about this. The Record of Singing (with blue/red links) — which like The opera corpus I started myself — has been no trouble, but it's an exceptional case because the names were not chosen by us. They already exist in print publications/recording reissues. That confers a kind of notability guarantee on them.)

The opera corpus (with blue/red links) has been high, high maintenance. We've seen dozens of dubious additions - complete works of marginal composers, minor composers listing their own works, non-English speaking editors promoting lists of virtually unknown operas in obscure languages — many, many titles that were obviously not going to get articles which had to be weeded out. (If I've written to one editor to ask if they were going to write an article on Zpynek Shizirmai's Zplut igrosh fulopski, I've written to a dozen. The answer was always 'no'.) The opera corpus was vital in developing WP article coverage, but less important for ordinary readers, except arguably for the unique statistics section (which has information available nowhere else). This hasn't been updated since Sept 2008, so from that point of view this red/blue list might just as well have been a project page like Wagner singers. --Kleinzach 10:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

classical pianist: performer or composer?

Hello,

I think it might be opportune to separate the list between pianist composers of classical music, and performers of other classical pianist

composers.. Or maybe it would be better just to specify whether pianists in the list are composers or performers..

Obviously I couldn't do this massive job all alone but I could help.

I think this might be important.. In my case, I was going to research all the notables pianist composers of classical music because

(I know, I'm quite crazy but, for me, music is life) I'd like to listen to ALL of them.

I'm waiting to receive opinions on this subject..

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alekos985 (talk • contribs) 00:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but on the whole I can't say that I'm in favor. For one thing, we already have separate lists for pianists who recorded and for pianists who played in multi-pianist teams; while I consider both subdivisions useful, the thought of maintaining and policing yet another one is, shall we say, not inviting. For another, leaving aside the problem of how to categorize pianists who merely dabbled a bit in composition on the side, it would probably end up largely placing all the pre-20th-century artists in the "composer/pianist" list and all the ones from the recorded era in the "played the music of others" list. Drhoehl (talk) 23:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I see. So, It might be easier without separeting lists. I mean just adding (composer) enclosed in parenthesis on the right of the name of the pianist.. It's just an idea.. If you think it can't work, that's ok (as I'm new to editing wikipedia..) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alekos985 (talk • contribs) 17:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal

I suggest we change the wording "This is an alphabetized list of notable solo pianists who play or played classical music." to "This is an alphabetized list of notable solo pianists who play or played classical music and have dedicated articles in Wikipedia.". --Kleinzach 00:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose The proposed wording would be a self reference, which should be avoided in the article text, per the WP:ASR guideline. We should put the inclusion criterion here on the talk page. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:34, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know the latter was possible. Are you saying there is a template or something to do this? --Kleinzach 13:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

As I've outlined in earlier discussion, I think judicious inclusion of red links is appropriate in this list as it has developed to date. Given that mine seems not to be the prevailing view, in practice if not as a matter of consensus, however, I'd endorse the suggestion as a good compromise. It avoids leaving the ordinary reader with any impression that inclusion in or omission from the list carries any significance beyond "hey, there's no readily available information about this guy on the web from which easily to assemble a Wikipedia article," and it actually takes what has been just a list of names and expressly repurposes it as a convenient portal leading to articles of interest to a defined readership. The "self-reference" objection strikes me as no real impediment. This is a list, after all, not really an article as such; under the circumstances any transgression seems minor compared to the benefit to be achieved. As to placing a notice on the talk page, in practice it might as well appear in one of those "Newspapers of General Circulation" that publish bankruptcy filings and probate notices—and that nobody but a law clerk ever reads. Drhoehl (talk) 00:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Red links are a real problem here

This list is becoming a spam magnet. Virtually every recent adddition of a red link has been a COI. These types of unreferenced lists are meant to be navigation aids only, not aide-memoires to projects for articles that should be created, or ways for non-notables to get their name mentioned on Wikipedia. Such lists belong in Project space or at WP:Articles for creation. I strongly suggest removing the following from the editing box:

Please note that existence of a Wikipedia article can suggest notability, but absence of such an article does not necessarily denote its lack. Do not engage in wholesale removal of red links below without first raising the issue on the discussion page.

And explictly stating on the list page that it is for pianists who already have an article on Wikipedia.

- Voceditenore (talk) 20:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Song Siheng

Song Siheng has been removed. The notability may well be there but the recently added article has been deleted for "unambiguous advertising and copyvio from http://www.kammerorchester.com/en/artists/view?id=4304". The French Wikipedia has an article fr:Song Siheng, but if anyone wishes to re-create the article do not do a straight translation from French Wikipedia as it is a copy vio from Radio France. Voceditenore (talk) 06:03, 18 October 2011 (UTC)