Wikipedia:Peer review/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/archive2

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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I've listed this article for peer review because there was several important Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart anniversaries in the past year, the most notable being on 5 December 2011, the 220th anniversary of the composer's death. Mozart was a well known composer of the classical period internationally. I am currently revising and updating it to get this article to at least a GAN or FAC. Editors, including Opus33, have been very generous in trying to help improve the article. I would like to welcome any further comments or suggestions on how we should improve the article.

Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 16:11, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

JS comments

Lead section has some weird bits, e.g. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. or was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era - it is written like it must cram facts and adjectives into a sentence. Should just write e.g. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. without the Salzburg at the end, or was a prolific and influential composer without cramming in the "Classical era". The lead section generally seems badly-written compared to the rest of the article. Also then it talks about his death, then suddenly there is another paragraph after that which is partly repeating what is in the first paragraph. It is a bit surprising that the lead is like this when the rest of the article is so well-written. JoshuSasori (talk) 05:56, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Brianboulton comments:

A major problem with the article at present is the proliferation of uncited statements. These occur throughout the text, but with increasing frequency in the later sections, particularly the "Style" section where entire paragraphs are citation free. Some of the statements in these sections read as strongly opinionated.
Overall the article is slight, bearing in mind Mozart's towering significance. Compare the (featured article) biographies of such as Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Rimsky-Korsakov and even relatively minor figures such as Walton and Delius. I am not suggesting that the Mozart article should be padded out with trivial information on the composer's life, but in terms of discussion of the impact of major works such as the late operas, the Requiem etc, details are sparse to non-existent. Da Ponte is mentioned in passing, but the nature and importance of his relationship with Mozart is scarecely examined. The "Influences" section is terribly thin; surely Mozart's enduring legacy needs to be expressed more convincingly than this?
Suffice it for me to say that at present this is nowhere near a featured article. In my view, it will require much dedicated work by (probably) several editors, to get the article into a FA-worthy condition. Not impossible of course, but bear in mind that there are more than 800 registered page-watchers, many of whom may want a say on whatever the working editors decide to do; many of these watchers will be well-informed. I don't want to discourage you, but it is best to be realistic; there are practical reasons why featured composer biographies tend to be mainly on those of the second or lower ranks, rather than Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Handel, Wagner etc.
There is, however, another approach which might have some merit. There are numerous subarticles connected to the WAM article via "see also" links: Mozart family grand tour, Mozart in Italy, Haydn and Mozart, Mozart and Freemasonry, Mozart's Berlin journey, Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart and Roman Catholicism, Mozart and scatology, Mozart and Beethoven, Mozart's compositional method – not to mention the numerous articles on individual major works. Rather than concentrating on bringing the WAM article itself to featured standard, work on improving the the subarticles, at least a couple of which are already featured articles in their own right. The WAM article itself could remain as a deliberately terse signpost to this array of detailed accounts, while remaining relatively free of detail itself (this approach would possibly have benefitted certain other composer biographies!). Because featured articles are required to stand on their own as comprehensive accounts of their subject, this approach might close off the FA option as far as WAM is concerned, but it could, overall, provide a better servive to the large number of avid Mozart readers. Brianboulton (talk) 18:18, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]