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Template:Infobox classical composer nominated for deletion

User:Pigsonthewing has nominated this template for deletion. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 April 22. – Voceditenore (talk) 10:57, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps just archive the above discussions about the catscans and how to use the box and come back in a week (i.e. once the TfD has been closed on way or the other) to re-evaluate it all? The template won't transclude properly, anyway, while the TfD template is present on the template page (see my sandbox); thus, we can't actually use it unless either that TfD template is removed or the transclution problem is fixed --Jubilee♫clipman 00:03, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

FYI - Closed as Keep. The closing admin feels we still ought to discuss things further (!) though --Jubilee♫clipman 20:02, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Please let's ... not. --Ravpapa (talk) 05:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Aww... not fair! I WANT TO DISCUSS THIS MORE!!! {Throws tantrum}
Then again, the actual documentation page is a bit of a mess and we still need to decided how best to use this box judiciously. Thoughts? --Jubilee♫clipman 22:44, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Nationality Question for Composers born before their respective modern nationality was a political entity

I am currently working on the Antonio Salieri composer page - and a recent change made by another editor has raised a question in my mind, and I would like some advice.

The article when I began editing it listed Salieri as being "Italian", a recent editor has changed that to "Venetian". This makes a great deal of sense to me - there was no "Italy" in 1750, and Salieri was born in the Republic of Venice - however, even the Oxford University Press produces an history of Italy, that stretches through ancient to modern times, and Salieri would have most likely been identified by his contemporaries as an "Italian", so which is the better approach?

The same could be said of Bach - is he a "German" composer - there was no Germany, and Bach lived in multiple German states; Handel was often called the "Saxon" by his English associates and contemporaries.

Please advise. And my thanks in advance. Eric W. Cook 12:50, 22 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric W. Cook (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia:MUSTARD#Nationality (biographies). #2 states: "Nationality should not be anachronistic/retrospective, i.e. for historic figures it should not be defined by present-day borders and states, but by contemporary ones." Thus, Salieri is Venetian and Bach and Handel are...(?) (I am not very familiar with the borders in 17th and 18th century Europe, so someone else will have to field those two.) --Jubilee♫clipman 21:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
On a humourous note: perhaps Handel is an Anglo-Saxon composer? :) --Jubilee♫clipman 23:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the note from Nationality (biographies), and yes since Handel naturalized as a British subject, I guess that makes him a true "Anglo-Saxon"! Eric W. Cook 23:27, 22 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric W. Cook (talk • contribs)

Glad I could help! I think Germany is a special case though: it is almost impossible to state whether a person living in that area before 1945 lived in the "Holy Roman Empire", "Prussia", one of the numerous duchies, the "German Confederation", the "German Empire", the "Weimar Republic", the "Third Reich" (even), or where ever else might be suggested. "Germany" is the only rational option, IMO, therefore Handel was "German-English" and Bach was "German". Perhaps MUSTARD should make that clear? Quite a minefield... --Jubilee♫clipman 23:43, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
I would think we'd go by what sources say in these cases. The MAJORITY of the ones I've seen would list Bach and Handel as German, Vivaldi as Italian, etc. Even if there was no "Italy" as a country, weren't the people in the region considered Italian people, by virtue of the language and culture? I'm no expert on this at all, but I do know what I've seen the majority of the time. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:23, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
That's true, but MUSTARD gives the opposite advice. Then again MUSTARD gives all sorts of strange advice... we had to completely reverse the advice about the use of "The" mid-sentnce recently after lengthy discussion: the document told us always to capitalise it, it now says never to capitalise it except in particular cases. See WP:MUSTARD#Names (definite article) and the huge discussion that resulted in that change. I am presently auditing both MUSTARD and MUSICMOS, in fact, and am waiting for Tony1 etc to finish with the more pressing issues before continuing with the reworking. See here for starters, though --Jubilee♫clipman 00:35, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on google's front page

I though I would make a book for this occasion, Book:Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. However, I'm no Tchaikovsky expert, so if someone could check that I got everything, and that the presentation order makes sense, etc... that would be nice. The "related ballets" section needs a good look too. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:25, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Will take look later today. Thanks for the heads up! --Jubilee♫clipman 13:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah, that answers the question of why all the sudden vandalism. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Ouch... Yes, indeed. Now watchlisted --Jubilee♫clipman 15:18, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
BTW, books can be usefull to watch for vandalism. (Recent changes link in the lower right corner of {{saved book}}.) Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I have requested Temporary Semi-Protection while the article is featured. The present level is too high to catch at our leasure, IMO --Jubilee♫clipman 15:50, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 Done protected for a week (though, I'm not sure if the admin responded to my request and forgot to tick it off on the RPP page or protected it independently of my request) --Jubilee♫clipman 16:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Jonathan FeBland

Comments welcome --Jubilee♫clipman 00:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Charles Jerome Hopkins

I've just discovered an article on this composer, contributed by a new and inexperienced editor who could probably do with a bit of help on formatting and citing references if anyone has time to spare. --Deskford (talk) 00:00, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Nadia Boulanger

During all the years I've been reading wikipedia I've never actually read the wiki article on Nadia Boulanger until now. To my surprise, the article is one of the most poorly constructed composer articles I've come across. It needs some major attention if any of you care to help.4meter4 (talk) 16:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Split-apart of MUSTARD

Following my audit of MUSTARD a couple of months back and the more recent move over to Wikipedia space, it has been suggested that the page be split apart into the other Music Guidlines. See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (MUSTARD)#Page Split. Thanks --Jubilee♫clipman 21:34, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

  •  Done - See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (MUSTARD) for the full discussions and rationale behind the merge. Some sections were merged into MOS:MUSIC, the rest were left out of the merge. MUSTARD has been marked as Historical. Please let me know if I have left anything unresolved; I will clean up the Music MoS as soon as I can. Thank you to all all those that have helped, encouraged and advised me throughout this long procees --Jubilee♫clipman 23:09, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Query about page content: finding sources

Hello, I think this project page is very well organized and filled with good advice to editors. However, I'm puzzled that it says nothing about how to go about finding reliable information about composers so you can put it into articles. I would like to suggest a section that gives advice in this area. I'm not committed to what such a section should say, but the following might be useful:

  • Google Books and Google Scholar are ways of quickly accessing high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarly material ...
  • ... but it is better still to go a library and get the complete book. Publishers usually only allow a fraction of their books to appear on Google.
  • Many WP editors are students at research universities, which implies a library offering access to scholarly books and journals. Also, universities usually give their students access to outstanding on-line scholarly resources such as Grove Music Online and JSTOR.
  • Another benefit university students have is that they can usually access an Interlibrary Loan service that will get them access to books not in the university's own library.
  • Lastly, I think it worth saying that amateur web sites are usually not as reliable as published scholarship and should be used only as a last resort.

Would something of this sort be useful? Or, if it already appears somewhere else on the WP help pages, could we provide a link? I am curious what people think. Cheers, Opus33 (talk) 04:57, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

The Opera Project has a guide like this. See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Online research. A lot of the more general stuff also applies to your project. You could adapt it for use with composers (some of the sections are less relevant as they pertain specifically to opera or are phrased to assume the reader is researching that subject.) If you'd like, I could do a bare-bones adaptation for you at the end of this week, and members could then edit to add more stuff, etc. Let me know if you'd like me to do it. Voceditenore (talk) 06:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
These are very useful suggestions (both from Opus33 and Voce): thanks. There isn't really a page that explains exactly how to source articles beyond WP:RS and my own User:Jubileeclipman/How to source an article as far as I can tell. I need to work on that a bit more I think and promote it to the community. However, it never hurts to give specific advice on sourcing for particular areas of interest, though. I have seen this kind of thing on other project pages (not only the Opera one) and have been thinking of doing something similar for CTM (I have made a start, in fact, on our guidelines page). Contemporary figures are especially hard to source from truly reliable sources: tons of sources, most of them self-published books/pamphlets, fan sites, social networking sites, etc. Independent critical analysis of their life and works is hard to find and we are usually tied to short reviews, liner notes, and the odd newspaper column if we are lucky... Then again, it is hard to find any sources for the lesser composers and performers from earlier ages! I do get frustrated by the paywalls and snippet previews thrown out by Google... but that just means I am being lazy, perhaps: I need to get there and visit my local library or bookshop and borrow or even buy more actual books! --Jubilee♫clipman 15:07, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. I see now that in a way, composer bios are easier to source than other topics: they are a standard item of academic scholarship and the material is designed to be accessible (i.e. to those who can access a good library. I'd be happy to take up Voce's offer. Opus33 (talk) 15:31, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Seconded! Please go ahead, V. We can flesh out the skeleton at our leisure --Jubilee♫clipman 15:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, Voce --Jubilee♫clipman 23:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Alkan 'Selected recordings'

I have placed a note on the Charles-Valentin Alkan discussion page, concerning a proposal by User:Varlaam. He first edited the page with a header 'Selected recordings' but did not add any recordings or content under the header. When I deleted the header as pointless, he re-entered it and added as content a deleted and obscure recording of some Alkan chamber works. I am not in principle against adding some recordings in the article, but by what process would one select them? Or is it better to suggest a separate article 'List of recordings of music of CVA' without making pretensions as to 'selection'? Anyway, if you have any comments, please add them to my note on the CVA disucssion page. Thanks - --Smerus (talk) 19:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Jacques Marnier Companie

I invite help determining whether Jacques Marnier Companie was a French composer as claimed in the article. I have just removed a large part of the article as a hoax but there remains a slight possibility that this was a real person. Any comments on the article's talk page, or help with expanding the article, would be appreciated. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Seigneur Maret de Bassano

Another possible hoax, while not nearly as funny or obvious as Jacques Marnier Companie ("His known works have been catalogued by Bernhard Schattenfreunde and are numbered as B.S.V. (Bernard Schattenfreunde Verzeichnis). Works include: Débâcle idiot de bureau d'affaires [B.S.V. 12]; Air sur sonner dans mon oreille [B.S.V. 27]"), is Seigneur Maret de Bassano. Can anyone find any evidence that this person existed? Nothing in Grove; nothing in Google Scholar or Books; nothing in JSTOR; and also -- most curiously -- he allegedly published collections of works with French titles in the very early 18th century with opus numbers. It's subtle, but can you think of anyone who did that? Of course I'd love to be wrong, and this be a real person and all, but -- any other opinions? Antandrus (talk) 03:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I guess a hoax in the form of a try-on ('will anyone spot it?'). See WP Duc de Bassano - 'The titles of Comte Maret and Duc de Bassano were created by the Emperor Napoleon I of France in 1807 and 1809 respectively for Hugues Bernard Maret, the diplomat and statesman. The titles became extinct in 1906 on the death of the first Duke's grandson.' French WP 'Famille Maret de Bassano' gives a family genealogy back to 1697, doctors and engineers, no musicians. 'Helene Andrewes' has the feel of an in-joke. No other information anywhere. Hence at the very least non-notable. A la lanterne!--Smerus (talk) 15:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
I see also that the article's creator has form in havng previously created a non-verifiable article. S/He has also added the Seigneur to the List of Baroque composers, by the way. --Smerus (talk) 15:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
Looks very suspicious to me — I can't find any references anywhere to either form of the name given. Curious that most of this editor's work is focussed on early 20th-century English viola music. Is this all some kind of obscure viola joke that I haven't yet figured out...? --Deskford (talk) 16:01, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Rebecca Helferich Clarke

While following up the discussion in the section above, I came across this article. I am sceptical that it would achieve FA status udner today's system. Does anyone want to update it?--Peter cohen (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Avet Terterian and Thomas Simaku

Any experts on these composers around? Please see my recent postings on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Contemporary music. I'm cross-posting here because WP:CTM seems to have gone very quiet lately. --Deskford (talk) 17:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Vincent d'Indy

I hope this is the right place to mention this, and apologies if not.

I am just reading a book on Cole Porter called simply 'Cole', edited by Robert Kimball and published in 1971 by Holt, Reinhart and Winston. In its introduction, Brendan Gill writes that Porter studied composition in Paris "under the austere classicist Vincent d'Indy". So perhaps it would be of interest to note Porter's name among 'the many pupils' of d'Indy?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian100 (talk • contribs) 13:04, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

info box

i saw that the composers havent got an info box. how is that?-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 14:21, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

See the link at the top of this page: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Infobox debates. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:54, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
k thx.-- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 16:45, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Theo Verbey

Hi, is there someone who would be kind enough to read the new article about this Dutch composer? I'm new to Wiki, Stevey-22 (talk) 13:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Composers articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Composers articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Stravinsky mess

Hey everyone. I've been building {{Igor Stravinsky}} for most of the night, based on Igor Stravinsky Discography and List of compositions by Igor Stravinsky (plus the search function to try and find existing articles on these compositions). A few issues are present:

I don't know anything about this guy, so I'm basically clueless about what to do here. Thanks. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 10:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand why you're making a navigation template for someone you don't know anything about. Talk about torture. ;-) Was this a request from another project or editor? I have just edited the template so that its default display is "collapsed". See Template:Igor Stravinsky. It's terribly intrusive in its uncollapsed state and can easily overwhelm shorter articles, especially as it is at least 50% red links. I'm not sure I understand this. Why have items in a navigation template when there's nothing to navigate to? And was there some rationale as to why those particular red links were included?
And no, discographies and lists of compositions should not be merged, in my opinion. They serve two entirely separate purposes. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 11:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
Long story short, I'm developing a script that converts navboxes like these to books like Book:Igor Stravinsky. I've tested it rather extensively on bands, but I want to test it for other types of navboxes (composers, sports teams, films, ...) as well. Since I knew there was a book on Stravinsky, I thought to test it on the Stravinsky navbox, but turns out it didn't exist... so I made one.
As for the red links, there's some guideline out there saying that redlinks shouldn't be in navboxes. I've always vehemently disagreed with that, as navboxes are a great way to track what should be created, where to create it, as well as encourage its creation. If an editor knows something about Ragtime for Eleven Instruments (currently non-existent), there's a much better chance that the editor will create the article if they are reminded that it needs to be created than if the lack of coverage is hidden. It also makes sure that the article will be created at Ragtime for Eleven Instruments (and not say Rag-time For 11 instrument) and saves us the trouble of hunting down which articles have been created since we last visited the template, incorporate them into the navbox, etc. since that will already have been taken care of. (It goes without saying that what shouldn't be created shouldn't be in the navbox.)
As for which redlinks are in the navbox, I based myself on the discography and the list of compositions, indiscriminately including them. I have no idea which are notable and which aren't, or if the division make sense, which is where this project comes in. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
On which other template did you base this one? For a start, I think its name is unusual. Other templates with this naming pattern which spring to mind are the Classical composer templates {{Ludwig van Beethoven}}, {{Haydn}}, {{Franz Liszt}}, {{Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart}}, {{Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky}}; these serve a very different purpose.
Then, I strongly suggest not to transclude the red links by surrounding them with <noinclude> … </noinclude> tags. For an example of this technique, see {{Müller plays}} or {{Hagen operas}}.
The template also needs a category, e.g. Category:Works by composer templates.
I notice that at least one work is duplicate in the template: Credo (Stravinsky) / Mass (Stravinsky), and that Tarantella is misspelled and it links to the same target as Suite italienne: Pulcinella (ballet)#Suite italienne. On the other hand, I don't understad why Les noces is not linked at all.
But most of all, I fail to see its usefulness; all works are part of the Category:Compositions by Igor Stravinsky or its subcategories, so a reader is only one click away from a navigatable (and automatically up-to-date) list, and only two click from List of compositions by Igor Stravinsky.
I suggest to remove the template from all articles until its usefulness has been discussed and its implementation has been evaluated. Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I support everything that Michael Bednarek (talk) says above. I also notice that the main article on Stravinsky needs a significant overhaul - it seems all over the place. So much to do - so little time to do it!--Smerus (talk) 12:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

  • I have say I agree with Michael too. There really are a lot of problems with it and it currently is not a help to the reader, who should always be the first priority. For example, what is the difference between the Piano and the Piano-player fields? By "piano-player" do you mean the mechanical "player-piano"? Everything he's written for piano can be in theory made available for player-piano, I don't think that field should be in the navbox at all. All the blue links in Piano-player are repeated elsewhere, e.g under Ballets and/or Piano thus making it very confusing to a reader approaching the subject for the first time. Frustrating too, because they will find themselves taken repeatedly back to the same article when the navbox implies they're all different ones. The same is true of the double listings of Rite of Spring, Firebird, etc. under both ballet and piano. There might be some piano arrangements of these ballets, but they were not originally written for solo piano. Incidentally the link for Suite from Pulcinella should be to Pulcinella (ballet) not to Pulcinella. Voceditenore (talk) 12:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Concerning the original navbox: I really hate these things because they cripple a far more useful WP function, namely the "What links here" button -- if there's a navbox, clicking "What links here" gives you a whole batch of quite useless hits because they're all on the template. So I advocate either (a) no navbox at all; or, (b) if absolutely necessary, a very short one. Opus33 (talk) 15:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't mind trimming it down to something shorter, but how should things be organized? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
One way is to creates articles like "List of concertos by Stravinsky" and link to them rather than to individual articles. Opus33 (talk) 21:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
  • You really should model it on {{Ludwig van Beethoven}} or {{Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart}}. But if not... first of all, eliminate the Player-piano field (or as it's called erroneously on the template "Piano-player")—they are all arrangements of existing works. Then:

    1. Eliminate all other duplicate listings. List an article once and in its primary category only.

    2. There should be no listings like "Suite on themes, fragments and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi". An article on the Suite does not exist and Pergolesi has extremely low relevance to Stravinsky, apart from this one composition.

    You should eliminate all red links too (which are against the guidelines for navboxes), but at the bare minimum, they should be missing articles of key importance that already have several genuine incoming links, although that's impossible to tell now because the template's been put on zillions of articles.

    I think you need to ask yourself what the cost/benefit ratio of this template is as you've conceived it. As far as I can see the "benefits" are potentially recruiting more people to write new articles (but frankly, I doubt it), not having to add new articles by hand (a minimal job, and a rarely occuring one inthis area) and generating wiki books directly via the template. None of those are of any benefit to our readers (who as I said should always come first) and are done at the cost of presenting them with a navigation box, half of whose "links" lead nowhere. It's also a net cost to editors working in the area because they can't judge incoming links properly. Anyhow, that's my two cents/pence. Voceditenore (talk) 22:16, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

… and until then, the template should be removed from all articles, urgently. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
I second the motion.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:43, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
I third it, unless the red links are completely removed (even untranscluded they are still distorting the incoming links), but see my suggestion below. Voceditenore (talk) 09:51, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Alright, I condensed most of it, and placed the redlinks in a separate sections in the template (which won't transclude in articles). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Well, it's looking a lot better now. But it hasn't solved the problem of distorted number of incoming links to the red-linked articles. What is the purpose of leaving them (albeit undisplayed) in the actual template? Once one of the articles is created, it will still have to manually moved into the correct field in the template, thus removing a supposed benefit of having the red links there, even undisplayed. How about doing something like we have at Template:Donizetti operas where the missing articles are listed on the template page. If necessary you can add a link in the navbox to "Stravinsky compositions lacking articles". Voceditenore (talk) 09:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
I think the links you observe are due to the lag in the Wikipedia software refreshing links from templates. They will eventually disappear once each article has been purged from the server cache. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


André Messager

I've begun my first attempt at a GA review for this article here. I would be grateful for comments (on the article itself, and meta-comments on my notes if thought appropriate) from all and any.--Smerus (talk) 13:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

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