Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Contemporary music task force

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Template

Being relatively new here I’ not an expert with such complicated templates. I would appreciate it if someone with more experience than I could set up the project template correctly. It can then be saved in template space. (Note the current template is a modification of Template:Genre.) --S.dedalus 05:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion

Its been argued elsewhere that any project should try to have one, or if necessary more than one, specific categories in which all the articles relevant to it could/should be placed. Adding a more formal declaration of the scope of the project along those lines might not be a bad idea. John Carter 14:41, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I've found my new home, but there are some things going on elsewhere you might find interesting. Besides the current composers of the month at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera (well, at least I remember when Krenek was contemporary- Antandrus, do you know his Ockeghem books?), it's looking like there will be a Divas of the avant-guard singers of the month project in December. Sparafucil 02:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Userbox

Hey everybody, I’m working on creating a project userbox for those who like them. Here’s my proposal. I’m using an image of part of Schoenberg's Op. 11 No. 1 as the image for all these templates since it seems to me to be one of the single most symbolic work of 20th century music (as the first of Schoenberg truly “atonal” works). I also tried to create a design that would be both eye caching and a bit contemporary looking.

This user is a member of WikiProject Contemporary music





Comments? Suggestions? --S.dedalus (talk)
It's going on my user page! Matt.kaner (talk) 11:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Matt! If no one objects I’ve created the template page for the box and listed it on our mainpage. See {{Template:User WikiProject contemporary music}} --S.dedalus (talk) 22:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How does one fit this in with one's language boxes (as, for example, on my user page)? I tried putting it in there and it keeps showing up on the left, rather than at the bottom of the column of my language boxes. Thanks in advance for expert coding assistance (I don't have any) ;) Badagnani (talk) 22:06, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I had the same problem a little while back with userboxes. But after much head-scratching I solved it with the help of a neat CSS alignment fix I found on User:Giandrea's user page. --Bruce1ee talk 07:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's still showing up at the left side of my user page. How can I align it on the right, under my language boxes? Badagnani (talk) 08:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what I did on my user page (with the help of User:Giandrea):
{{Babel|en|...}}
{{Userboxtop|toptext = <small>[[Wikipedia:Userboxes]]</small>|extra-css=clear:both;}}
{{...user box 1...}}
{{...user box 2...}}
{{Userboxbottom}}
I hope this helps. --Bruce1ee talk 08:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

John Adams article

If it's still available in February, I'm planning on making it a class project for my Music 1960-present class, to write it. If anyone wants to edit it, go ahead, but otherwise, it'll be done (extensively) by early March. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 00:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great. Just remember the Wikipedia mantra: Document, document, document! (Oh, yes: and NOR).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly envy your students who get to edit Wikipedia as part of their class! To echo Kohl, sounds great. I look forward to having a better article for this important composer. It’s a project I keep planning to do myself but never seem to have the time (and probably would never find the time). --S.dedalus (talk) 08:15, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New category for music theory articles

I’ve created Category:Post-tonal music theory. By the way, does anybody know anything about Zeuxilogy? I don’t know if this is notable or not, but the article is currently incomprehensible and tagged as requiring an expert. --S.dedalus (talk) 00:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Zeuxilogy doesn't exactly sound like notable to me.. Google returns just 197 hits (excluding the homepage of the theory's author, as well as Wikipedia and its mirrors), and I reckon most are simple links to the theory's "homepage". There are no hits in books.google.com or scholar.google.com, and New Grove doesn't have articles on Zeuxilogy or Andrei Pogorilowski. Jashiin (talk) 16:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have put it up for deletion. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zeuxilogy. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pogorilowski (talk) 10:17, 12 January 2008 (UTC) Thank you for deleting the article. This kind of independent music theory thinking should be destroyed right away. It is an utter disgrace![reply]

John Cage

I've been working on Cage-related articles for some time now (see the list on my user page) and I thought I'd mention it here if someone would like to help out. Of these articles, Sonatas and Interludes was promoted to GA status a couple of days ago and is currently undergoing FAC (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sonatas and Interludes). I've also started a major rewriting of the article John Cage – so far, the two first sections of "Life" are completed and I'm working on the third one. Basically, I'd like to bring John Cage and the articles on Cage's major works to GA/FA status in the coming couple of months.

I'd be particularly grateful if someone could check my grammar in all those articles, as English is my second language and with this amount of writing I think its more than likely that I made mistakes. Jashiin (talk) 17:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great, I’ll try to help. I’m also writing articles for each of the five Imaginary Landscape pieces. I’ve posted Imaginary Landscape No. 1 and I’m working on No. 4, but I’ll probably have to pay a visit to the music library to find sources for the other three. --S.dedalus (talk) 08:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, thats just great! I've got a suggestion though, if you look at Talk:John Cage, we've discussed with RobertG that perhaps describing Cage's "series" in single articles (ie. all three "Constructions" in Construction (Cage), not First Construction, Second Construction etc) might be a good idea, at least for the time being. You can look at Construction (Cage) or Music for Piano (Cage) for an example, although of course its just a suggestion. Jashiin (talk) 09:19, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. I answered on Talk:John Cage since it’s hard to hold a coherent conversation on two talk pages at once. Cheers, --S.dedalus (talk) 03:06, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Project template

I think we need a template we can place on article talk pages. This will not only help with recruitment, it will also help us keep track of the articles within our scope. Here’s a draft I’ve done. What do you think?

{{Template:Contemporary music}}

WikiProject iconClassical music
WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, copy edit, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that are not covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this page or visit the project page for more details.Classical musicWikipedia:WikiProject Classical musicTemplate:WikiProject Classical musicClassical music articles

Compare to similar templates like Template:WikiProject Music, Template:Composers, and Template:Opera. --S.dedalus (talk) 03:25, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This looks great! Can we add it to talk pages now? :) Jashiin (talk) 08:52, 16 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think so. Any further changes that are made will be automatically updated for all transclusions after all. It might be nice to have that background color of the staves mach the rest of the box. The folks over at WikiProject Composers somehow did this with their template. It might not work with our template because of all the detail, but I’ll ask and see if it’s possible. --S.dedalus (talk) 03:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Right. I went through articles related to John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Olivier Messiaen and added the template to the talk pages. Its a start :) I had a problem inserting it into tables of the "this article is within the scope of multiple projects.. show/hide" variety; it just looked wrong, the width was wrong. I don't know if its my fault (I have no experience of this kind of tables) or something with the template. Jashiin (talk) 16:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I’ve asked the people over at WikiProject Templates to look over the design. They may be able to help work out any problems. The template worked fine in the nested format of Talk:Olivier Messiaen though right? It currently looks fine to me. Apparently there are also some bots that could help us tag large numbers of articles; could be worth looking into. --S.dedalus (talk) 21:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um...the bot adding the template

While I have no issues with using a bot to add templates to articles, I have to wonder what the criteria was. Adding this project to composers like Cecile Chaminade and James Horner doesn't quite seem right to me, considering what this project is supposed to be about. I'm guessing it went through 20th and 21st century classical composer catagories... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed -- Can the bot revert itself until we figure out the proper criteria for inclusion? I don't think Horner or Chaminade should be included. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 04:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Haha, sorry about that. It's my fault. James Horner was with the Category:21st century classical composers category. We may have to do that one and the Category:20th century classical composers by hand. Can we revert the bot edits then rerun it without those two catigorys? Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 05:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - "Contemporary classical music" would most likely incorporate all but a few styles; I recommend keeping the scope of this project as wide as possible and not restricting to only the most avant-garde, but keeping to the wide definition of "contemporary classical music." Let's tag all composers within this category, and remove tags by hand, as necessary, for composers who are found to be verifiably not representing "contemporary classical music." Badagnani (talk) 08:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
For anyone who doesn’t know where this discussion of the bot work is happening please see WP:BOTREQ#Project Contemporary music pages
Badagnani brings up a good point. It’s essential that we define our goals here properly. Originally when I proposed this project I felt there was enough work needed just on subjects Lou Harrison would have called the “research and development” end of music. It doesn’t seem to me that early 20th century composers are really contemporary anymore (Ravel, Stravinsky, Mahler?). The second Viennese school and onwards would be how I would try to define it I guess. As Badagnani suggests we could leave it much more open to any 21st century composers of all styles, which will inevitably include many film score composers and so forth. Besides the possible interpretations of “contemporary music” I guess it kind of depends on whether it’s easier to remove tags or add tags. Perhaps instead of “experimental” we could define this as “art music” composers? Suggestions? --S.dedalus (talk) 00:58, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, this project is free to look at whatever articles it feels is appropriate! But in the light of the tag already having been removed from Puccini, Mahler, Nielsen and Debussy, I helpfully list these composers here: my own encounters with their music suggests that they may also possibly be too "conservative" or too "early" to be considered "contemporary". Perhaps you could review whether the {{contemporary music}} tag on their talk pages is appropriate? Xaver Scharwenka, Ronald Binge, William Lloyd Webber, Walford Davies, Vincent d'Indy, Sidney Torch, Selim Palmgren, Scott Joplin, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Roger Quilter, Richard Addinsell, Reynaldo Hahn, Oscar Straus (composer), Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Max Reger, Hubert Parry, Hugo Alfvén‎, Haydn Wood, Granville Bantock, Gabriel Fauré‎, Edward Elgar, Edmund Rubbra, Christian Sinding, Arthur Wood, Arthur Wills, Arnold Bax, Alexander Scriabin, Alexander von Zemlinsky? Others, like Donald Francis Tovey, who were influential may not have been "contemporary" themselves? Best wishes. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Of those mentioned, Stravinsky is definitely "contemporary," as his aesthetics of the 'teens (changing meters, clusters, "brutal" modernist aesthetic, even late use of 12-tone) still sound "modern" today. I agree with most of the others mentioned not being "contemporary" as well, as they represent an essentially 19th century aesthetic up to their last works, except Scriabin, whose latest works are also quite modernist. For film composers it would be a judgement call. I would say Michael Nyman, for example, is a contemporary composer (combining minimalism, rock, Baroque, postmodernism), and even someone like Ennio Morricone, whose film scores are somewhat schmaltzy/Romantic, also composes "serious," modernist music, though it is not well known. I'd also perhaps be cautious about removing all the British "traditionalists" like Malcolm Arnold, Rubbra, et al.--though their music might be tonal and accessible, it's hard to say that their music wasn't verifiably part of the 20th century, as many of them lived up to 1950 or further. Badagnani (talk) 08:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your comments are exactly the problem with the whole thing. Morricone might have written beautiful romantic music for Cinema Paradiso and The Legend of 1900, but his music for Mission to Mars is quite modernist (to give a Hollywood example, there are MANY MANY others) -- so it's not just his concert music (so what I'm saying is, it's often hard to know unless you know more than the popular stuff what a composer has done). And Arnold? Yes he wrote a lot of light and conservative music, but a lot of his music, especially the symphonies, are very much in the 'contemporary' vein. On the flip side, it was added to Leroy Anderson, who is absolutely a 20th century composer...but he wrote pretty much only 'light music'. So yeah, it's all about a judgment call, I guess. Because even Henry Mancini wrote the score to Lifeforce... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:06, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think that we should avoid compositional aesthetic and keep to quantifiable goals and then break off to our own personal niches afterwards. I have been going arounnd tagging some articles for the project. I have noticed the bot is doing a fine job tagging what is relevant. VoxNovus (talk) 13:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - It's just a tool to help the improvement of contemporary music articles, so 5% of articles tagged of early-20th century folks who wouldn't really be of interest, I don't think is that big a problem, at least right now. Most others not working with this project would pretty much just ignore the tag anyway. Badagnani (talk) 16:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment. As time goes on that X% of composers who are tagged but don’t really fit within the project will inevitably be narrowed down through consensus anyway. A more pressing concern is that we get a good idea of how much work is needed and where our efforts are best placed. (At some point it may be usefully to start assessing articles.)
I’d also like to point out that even composers that strictly speaking aren’t contemporary anymore may still fall within our scope if their music has had a great deal of influence on contemporary music. I believe the late works of Alexander Scriabin would qualify for instance. Concerning the film composers, I don’t see a huge problem with including them in the project. However, film composers and composers of light music tend to be relatively well edited already and I think this project should focus primarily on those topics which are really being neglected, namely avant-guard composers, performers, and music theory subjects. --S.dedalus (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Colored stat box--can we get one?

I think we need a colored stat box like this one. This gives a total number of tagged articles, and shows which are rated with which rating. How do we go about getting one? Badagnani (talk) 22:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that’s the assessment I was talking about above. We’ll need to modify the talk page template slightly to do that. I’m reading through Getting to work#Assessment and also WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ which describe how to set this up. However I’m not very experienced with templates. Has anybody else done this before? We currently have about 2500 articles tagged. As the Wikiproject Guide points out, if we’re going to start assessing articles it’s essential that a large number of editors commit to a massive assessing job at the beginning. . . --S.dedalus (talk) 23:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should also consider rating articles by importance of topic. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hope we can get this going. Badagnani (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can we get this going? Badagnani (talk) 02:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see, it's listed at the "Assessment department" (Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Assessment). I was looking for the multicolored graph, as it exists at the main pages of other WikiProjects. Badagnani (talk) 02:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stub template

I've created a template for modernistic composition stubs:
{{Modernistic-composition-stub}}

Comments? --S.dedalus (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Modernistic composition" is not an English construction I have ever heard, and don't believe it to be a good word choice. "Contemporary classical" (encompassing pretty much every contemporary style) is probably better, as we already have a contemporary classical music article and use this category for music groups (as Category:Contemporary classical music ensembles, etc.) Badagnani (talk) 00:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Modernistic is an adjective so at least grammatically I think it should be correct. It was my attempt to avoid the whole issue of time period. However, your suggestions sounds good to me. It looks like besides some problems with how I designed and proposed the template (aptly pointed out to me [1] @_@) the category used must contain at least sixty ages per Wikipedia:Stub. I’m sure there are several hundred articles that can be place within Category:Modernistic pieces but the category is somewhat neglected at the moment. --S.dedalus (talk) 01:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. I suppose "modernism" is, by now, just one among many competing stylistic trends in contemporary composition. Badagnani (talk) 01:29, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Using Category:Contemporary classical music actually seems like it will solve the problem of too few articles being included in the category. It also offers a much broader scope. I’ll try to rework the template using that definition. User:Grutness also points out to me that modernist can actually e used as n adjective as well.
By the way, good call on the Open tasks! --S.dedalus (talk) 02:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, it's Grutness here from the stub-sorting project. Stub templates should never feed into permanent categories - there is a parallel system of stub categories, most of which have very similar names to the parent (permanent) categories (template names should also reflect this). The "60 article rule" relates to the number of currently existing stub articles which could take the new template, not how many articles exist in permanent (browsing) categories. So in this particular case, if the stubs are articles from Category:Modernistic pieces, then the stub template and category would most likely be {{Modenisticpiece-stub}} and Category:Modernistic piece stubs. The reason I mentioned the number of articles in the permanent category in my pWP:SFD nomination was simply that if there weren't 60 articles in the parent, there couldn't be 60 in the related stub category. The reason for this rule is basically to ensure that there aren't stub categories which are going to be constantly emptied entirely, speedily deleted, and then needing to be recreated. It also makes it a little easier for editors to search through the categories - not so big and vague as to be daunting to hunt for articles to expand, but also not so narrow that editors need to look in five or six categories for articles.

As to the usefulness of a stub category for your project, there are two possibilities:

1) Decide on something that would be a reasonable scope for a stub type and propose it at WP:WSS/P - there, the people who deal primarily with stub sorting will be able to point out any possible improvements that can be made to it before its creation, such as more appropriate scope or name - perhaps, for instance, a stub for Contemporary classical music in general would make more sense than one just for the musical pieces themselves, so as to allow for stubs on terminology, styles, and other related subjects (e.g., indeterminacy in music). They'll also almost certainly be willing to give any help necessary in actually making and populating the stub type.
2) Rather than have a stub template, it might be more useful to you to have a WikiProject-specific talk page template (like, for example, {{WPBeatles}}), which would allow you to mark all articles related to your project and rate them, rather than simply marking stubs.

Personally, I suspect the second option might be more suitable to your purposes, but if you think a stub type might be more useful, that's fine. Hope that helps :) Grutness...wha? 00:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Grutness! That helps a lot. If we can get assessment going, as Badagnani suggested above, that would indeed probably be a more comprehensive solution. (The down side being there’s no real point in starting unless a relatively large number of project participants agree to asses hundreds of pages.) --S.dedalus (talk) 00:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Archive 1 and new template features

Note that the original project proposal discussion has now been archived as /Archive 1.

Thank you User:Warlordjohncarter! [2] --S.dedalus (talk) 23:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New featured article suggestions

I’m thinking maybe this project should collaborate on a Featured Article. It seems we already have five FAs within our scope. Not bad! We can always use more. If you’re interested we need to choose an article. I think ideally it should be something of High or Top importance in the project, an important composer, performer, theory concept, or even composition if it’s very groundbreaking. If you would like to suggest an article please list it bellow. We can then take a straw poll. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Elliott Carter Probably one of the most important living composers. The article is unfortunately quit neglected. (He’s also 100 this year. Err. . .next year.) --S.dedalus (talk) 23:33, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Composer pages in dire need of work

Hi fellow project members, and thanks for all your great work. I have begun making a list of composer articles in need of improvement, as some of them are extremely incomplete. I'll begin work on these pages as soon as possible, and I strongly encourage anyone interested to take part.

Here are a few to start with:

Please feel free to add to this list. --Wolf m corcoran (talk) 20:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea. I hope you don’t mind, I’ve duplicated this list on the main page Open tasks under “Articles needing attention.” From this and the continuing assessment effort it looks like we’ve got a big job to do. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let’s add Salvatore Sciarrino to that list. Wow, it’s not even really an article. --S.dedalus (talk) 05:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's still not an article, but I have added bibliographical materials from which a proper article can be constructed.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Great, thank you! I’m working on a works list for him. --S.dedalus (talk) 22:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sound art?

Just a thought, but should we also take a look at the Sound Art page and those related to it? It seems to me that this is within our scope, and some of those articles are pretty awful. --Wolf m corcoran (talk) 14:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, man! "Pretty awful" is putting it mildly! I had no idea these Augean Stables even existed, but, now that you have called attention to it, I for one certainly agree this lies within the purview of this project. I have made a modest start with some calls for sources, but a few thousand more wouldn't go amiss.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Too much overlap, too wide scope

I feel this project is too wide in scope given it's small membership, and it also has too much overlap with other projects. WP Musicians already covers all musicians. We have albums and songs projects. We have a growing number of specialist and active WikiProjects such as WP Beatles. What's left for you? Not a lot. Overlap has the particular disadvantage of causing talk page clutter to the extent that many editors just ignore WikiProject tags now or throw into banner shells and it causes articles to be listed multiple times on the WP1 worklists.

Although you're not specifically a biographical project, I think it would still be open to you to be a child project of WP Musicians and share the {{WPBiography}} template. (We even have a non-bio=yes parameter for workgroups/child projects to use on articles within their remit which are not biographical, this is used by e.g. WP British Royalty which is a child group but which has some articles in its scope which are not biographies).

Most of the musician articles are already tagged by WP Musicians. It would be trivial to add a contemporary music parameter to the template to shift some of their articles into your project, as we do with the film biographies which are shifted to that worklist from arts and ents.

Please think about it. I can't see this project getting very far on it's own tbh. --kingboyk (talk) 20:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was not aware that this project covered popular music ("albums and songs projects", "WP Beatles"). I am also unclear whether "all musicians" includes "composers" but, from what I read on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Composers, I think not. For example, I do not find WP Musicians tags on the composer articles on John Luther Adams, George Antheil, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, John Chowning, Mario Davidovsky, Brian Ferneyhough, Karel Goeyvaerts, Harry Partch, Krzysztof Penderecki, Luigi Russolo, Igor Stravinsky, Kaija Saariaho, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, Ivan Vïshnegradsky, or Iannis Xenakis (though oddly Henri Pousseur, La Monte Young, and Morton Feldman are). Nor are the articles Atonality, Darmstadt School, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Electronic music, Electronic art music, Experimental music, Graphic notation, In C, Kontakte (Stockhausen), Minimalist music, Modernism (music), Neoromanticism (music), New Complexity, New Simplicity, Piano Phase, Postmodern music, Process music, Serialism, Spectral music, Tone cluster, Twelve-tone technique, 20th century classical music or a host of others under this project tagged by WP Musicians, for obvious reasons. I also do not see WP Musicians in the list of "related projects" here, though it probably should be. It does not seem to me that it would be appropriate at all to subsume these varied topics under a banner devoted solely to persons, and the persons here covered appear to have minimal overlap with WP Musicians. As to numbers of editors, this is a new project, and only time will tell how many editors it will attract, and what level of participation these editors will provide.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Kingboyk, thanks for voicing your concerns here.
Firstly, this project does not cover the Beatles or any kind of remotely mainstream popular music. It does not work on albums or songs. We focus primarily on academic music. Due to some unfortunate problems with tagging articles some of our templates can be found where they don’t belong. Please feel free to remove them where they seem to be inappropriate.
Our scope is large but there is actually very little overlap with other projects when you look at what we’re actually focusing on. Our specialty here is late twentieth and twenty first century music concepts, works, and people. Many of these articles do not fall under any specific project. (Interval vector for instance.) Most of the articles we work on are not being improved by projects like Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers because they require a specialist in the field. The Salvatore Sciarrino article (an important living Italian composer) for instance has been around since January 2006 with only a handful of edits since then. WP:Composers has their hands full with the thousands of composers that lived before 1945 anyway.
Adding a parameter to the WP Musicians template would not be an improvement from the current state of affairs since a person would still be required to asses which articles fall within our scope. Also this project is curently primarily focusing on music theory, composers, and works. Musicians are only included within our scope when they have a significant effect on the course of new music. (The Kronos Quartet for instance.)
Finally this project’s membership is growing. We have been around for only four months and already are membership is larger than that of WikiProject Contemporary Art, a project with a similar structure and scope. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with keeping this WikiProject open. There is a lot open for this project to handle and it needs more interested members. Currently, I think Wikipedia is scaring away would be Wikipedians who would be interested in writing about new music. I have found the community aggressive and unknowledgeable about the new music field. I am not sure how much I would contribute without the safe haven of this harbor and a group that understands the field. VoxNovus (talk) 02:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Transclusion bot?

I’ve asked on the bot page whether a bot could place transclusions of AfD discussions for contemporary music articles on a subpage of this project. That way we wouldn’t have to sift through the logs to find AfD discussions that fall within our scope. --S.dedalus (talk) 00:15, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deletion sorting. --S.dedalus (talk) 02:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Attention

I believe Eckhard Unruh to be a fictional entry. Can anyone check the "Grove" 1980 edition cited in the article to make sure? If it is fictional, the article's creator should be censured in no uncertain terms, as the article has been up for over a year. Badagnani (talk) 07:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First edit here. Badagnani (talk) 07:48, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll check next time I'm near one--they at least got the volume number right: Unruh would be in volume 19 of the old New Grove. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think I can spare you the trouble. You will not find Unruh in the old New Grove or any other respectable source, because they do not include entries for fictional characters in novels (in this case, a novella): How Is This Going to Continue? by James Chapman 70 pp. ISBN 978-1-879193-17-8—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should we keep this article, noting that it's a fictional character? It would seem that an article about the novella (or author) would be more appropriate. Badagnani (talk) 21:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The original book is a bizarre conceptual novel by James Chapman. Here is a quote from the description on Amazon.com:
This unusual novel comes in the form of a musical libretto, written by a fictional composer before his death in the 1990's. After an introduction that gives us the bare outlines of his personal history, most of our knowledge of his inner life--his emotion at the death of his wife, and the way he is dealing with his own illness--comes to us from his libretto itself.
The libretto consists of dozens of scored quotations from outside sources (many of them invented) around the subject of death. Particular obsessions of the composer--the life and death of contralto Kathleen Ferrier, the illnesses of Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould, and composers Gustav Mahler and Alfred Schnittke, as well as Hindu poetry, German history and many other matters, provide the reader with a ghostly outline of the soul of a dying artist.
It could be notable, but I think it would be better if the article was moved to How Is This Going to Continue? and a section added about the book (as opposed to its protagonist). --S.dedalus (talk) 00:44, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Right. The character doesn't have a life outside the novella (and fake bio someone tried to pass off as real, even going so far as to fabricate a fake Grove article)--unlike Harry Potter or Captain James T. Kirk. Badagnani (talk) 00:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, WP:HOAX. Technically it probably qualifies for deletion or even speedy deletion, but in this case it may be more constructive to move the page and let people write about the book. I’ve warned the original creator of the page by the way. [3] --S.dedalus (talk) 00:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone verify how much of this article is a verbatim transcript of the book? There could be copyright infringement issues here.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That may be difficult. If it is a copyright infringement (and the article sounds like one) then it’s not from anyplace online that I could find. I also can’t find the book at any library near me. . . --S.dedalus (talk) 01:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With a "limited edition of only 50 copies" finding one in a library could be tricky. It also is only 70 pages long. OCLC does not have a single record for this ISBN. It seems to me that this affects WP:Notability.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Howard Skempton

I just finished working on some articles on him; Skempton is a pretty important Cardew pupil and it seems that his reputation has been growing steadily in the past years. Besides, someone here has already started working on Cornelius Cardew, so we'll need articles on English experimental composers at some point anyway. So I expanded Howard Skempton and created articles for two of his larger/more important works: Lento (Skempton) and Images (Skempton). If someone could help with the grammar, add categories (it'd be nice to have a category for his works, but I could never figure out how to create categories within categories, as is required with "Compositions by.."), assess, etc., I'd be most grateful. Jashiin (talk) 17:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Compositions by Howard Skempton --S.dedalus (talk) 00:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Basically you create subcategories by categorizing a category. Just pretend the new category is an article and add any parent categories as needed. Those articles are looking good! Looks like Howard Skempton could use a list of compositions though. Anybody with Grove want to look him up? --S.dedalus (talk) 00:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wait here's a catalog of his works. --S.dedalus (talk) 00:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your help! Unfortunately, the OUP catalogue is not complete (they only list what they have published, I guess), and neither are any of the other catalogues I know. I'm not sure if List of compositions by Howard Skempton would look OK with a "possibly incomplete" notice or something like it.. Or would it?
And thanks for the category tip, I'll try to follow your advice the next time I need a category :) Jashiin (talk) 09:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If the worklist is substantially complete, and you are including it as a section of the article, just title it "Compositions" or "Works" and let it go at that. The assumption will be that it is complete by intention, and other editors who happen to know of further titles can add them. After all, as with any living composer, there is always the danger that Skempton might write another piece, the day after you have finalized an "absolutely complete" list. If you know the worklist to be very partial, then it should be titled something like "Compositions (selective list)", which can always be supplemented later (by yourself or others), until it reaches a substantially complete state, at which point the section heading can be changed. On the other hand, it sounds like you intend making a separate article (along the lines of the worklists for List of compositions by Pierre Boulez, List of compositions by Heitor Villa-Lobos, or List of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen. In this case, title the article as you propose and, if you have not finished filling it out, or you are not satisfied that it is substantially complete, put a cautionary note to that effect at the head of the list.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I guess I kind of forgot that he is still alive and the work list can't be complete anyway :) Skempton is a prolific composer, so I think a separate article is in order; I'm going to create one today and follow your advice. Thanks! Jashiin (talk) 11:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've cleaned up the bibliographical stuff (some minor queries in there for you), and unsnarled one tiny punctuation problem, but couldn't find anything wrong with the grammar. I think you've done a fine job, Jashiin.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:03, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much! I couldn't find the Müller article anywhere; it was in the Grove Online article's bibliography, directly after an article published in MT, and the source was given simply as "Ibid.", so I assumed MT was where Müller published. Thanks for clearing it up.
As for page numbers, I'm afraid I can't give those for the two Parsons articles - because I used the online versions from JEMS (see External links), I couldn't find the originals. I'll gladly provide page numbers for Hill and Pace, just tell me if I should use the magazines' page numbers or the actual articles' page numbers? I.e., Pace's article is published on pages 9-11. To reference the first page of this article, do I use "Pace, 1." or "Pace, 9."? Jashiin (talk) 09:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Use "Pace 1997, 9" (that is so-called Harvard format: author date, page). It is standard bibliographical practice to list the journal's page numbers. It would be very confusing, indeed, for example, if the bibliography were to list an article as printed on pages 3–7 of a journal, and an author were then to arbitrarily renumber these pages as 1–5, and direct a reader to page 4. I'll see what I can do to track down the Parsons page numbers for you—I have personal copies of most of the later numbers of Contact, and the library here has what I think is a complete run. Inserting these page references may wreack havoc with the template you have used, which is designed for the "reference number" practice used in the sciences, rather than the footnote or intext references favoured in the humanities. Because science articles tend to be quite short (often no more than three to five pages), and the data referred to is spread through most of the article, page citations are usually foregone. It is also true that full-book citations (as opposed to short contributions to an anthology, which are treated in the same way as articles) are comparatively rare in the sciences. In the humanities, on the contrary, articles are typically twenty pages or longer, full-book citations are frequent, and citations tend to refer to a particular sentence, phrase, or diagram. As a consequence, trying to verify an assertion (for example) by vaguely waving at Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (or even just one of its six component volumes) simply will not do. I know your references are nothing like as long, but the principle is general in humanities publications for this reason. And, who knows, someone may next month publish a 600-page book on Skempton that will need to be added to the references, and the annotations need to be as uniform as possible.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for explaining these things to me! I've added page numbers for Pace and Hill. Jashiin (talk) 11:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Modern music

The Modern music article seems to be pretty much redundant since we already have musical modernism, 20th century music, and contemporary music. The article also seems to just be a dictionary definition. Shall I put it up for deletion? --S.dedalus (talk) 00:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Concur. It isn't an article at all, but defines itself by citing those other articles. By all means give other editors the opportunity to fix this, and a nomination for deletion is the best way to call their attention to the need. (My personal POV is that "Modern Music" has nothing at all to do with those things, being defined in a larger socio-cultural context, but I haven't the time nor the energy to research this sufficiently to create a proper article with verifiable sources.)—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Modern music. We’ll see if anyone wants to try to save this page. --S.dedalus (talk) 00:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly. It’s been suggested in the deletion discussion as well. Maybe there is a subtle difference between modern music and contemporary music, however if this deference is not independently notable perhaps a disambiguation is appropriate. --S.dedalus (talk) 06:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And there was I, thinking that "contemporary music" refers to the so-called postmodernism of the period after 1975, reacting against aspects of modernism of the earlier twentieth century (see the discussion page at the article Contemporary Music.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 08:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Newsletter?

Many Wikiprojects have specific outreach departments. WikiProject Aquarium Fishes/Outreach for instance. One of the major advantages of this is the project newsletter. WikiProject Council currently lists 18 projects that have newsletters. What do you think? Should we start one? The advantage of a, say, bimonthly newsletter is it not only reminds us of how much we’ve accomplished, but also helps our publicity and reminds members of the project. I’ll be happy to organize it if you think this is something we should try, but you folks would have to help me by giving me news and accomplishments to add. --S.dedalus (talk)

  • Support - Sounds like a great idea. If we decide to do it, I suggest we post a notice on the main page asking for content for the newsletter. If volunteers are needed, we could post something about that as well.-Wolf m corcoran (talk) 19:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - We should probably first become more active in breaking up the project by what we're working on -- like an article of the week/month to work together to improve -- contacting publishers to get free photos, score excerpts, or other images; adding complete works lists for all composers -- that kind of thing. Such articles can be advertised in the newsletter, attracting editors to start working on the articles/tasks chosen. Badagnani (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Composer article

Although this article is one of our overlap areas, it's an extremely critical article to this and every other music-related projects. For some reason, it has been completely overlooked by other editors, even though it is linked to by well over a thousand articles! Someone needs to drastically improve it, and it might as well be us. -Wolf m corcoran (talk) 01:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article assessment drive

You all know I hope that we are now assessing the articles within our scope. It is extremely important that we get a large percentage of our articles tagged so that we can see where our efforts would be best spent. There are still 1858 out of 2272 tagged articles that have not been assessed at all. In other words only approximately 19% of our articles have some sort of assessment. If you have a spare moment please help asses articles! It’s fast and easy. We also have a bit of a problem because the bot that tagged most of our articles was not able to tag “works” articles. (There is currently no single category into which all modern compositions can go.) This means that almost all composition articles (like Pierrot Lunaire etc.) are not tagged with {{Contemporary music}}. From an assessment standpoint we don’t even know they exist! If you’re going over a composers list of compositions sometime it would help a lot if you could add those tags. Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 01:42, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for mentioning this, S.dedalus, I think this should be our priority for the next couple of months. In particular, many of the 'contemporary' contemporary musician/composer/multimedia artists (to name just a few, Steve Roden, Bill Fontana, and Laurie Anderson) have been basically ignored by the project. I'll make assessment my main priority, hope others will do the same.--Wolf m corcoran (talk) 15:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have systematically tagged all of the articles on works by Pierre Boulez, which had somehow remained innocent of this project, and the remaining untagged articles for works by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Karel Goeyvaerts.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC) Same for works by Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Council discussion on the inter-relationship of classical music projects

Congratulations to S.dedalus and Antandrus for setting up a much-needed project.

There's been a discussion about merging the mainstream (classical music) projects, including this one, on the WikiProject Council.

Some editors would like to reorganize the projects into task forces under Classical music. What do you think of this idea? I can see potential problems - I basically don't like task forces - but rather than give my own view it's probably best to just let you know about the discussion. -- Kleinzach (talk) 00:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would not be optimal, especially considering that many of the more contemporary artists who fall into our scope, such as Robert Ashley, Merzbow, Anthony Braxton, etc. are by no means "musicians of the European tradition." Turning this project into an arm of the Classical project would leave most of these (already neglected) contemporary artists' articles without any project focused on their improvement. Although we certainly have a great deal of overlap with, among others, the Classical, Electronic, and Jazz projects, ours is the only group specifically geared toward contemporary music/musicians. I strongly believe that we should continue as an autonomous project. --Wolf m corcoran (talk) 13:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This idea - of forming task forces - has now been unanimously rejected. --Kleinzach (talk) 13:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Contemporary or post-romantic?

The Project page explains its scope is: " . . . articles which relate to contemporary music and especially contemporary music that demonstrates a modern aesthetic . . ." however I see that composers who died in the 1920s and 1930s like Gabriel Fauré‎ and Edward Elgar are being bannered by the project. This means that this project will overlap significantly with other projects such as Classical music, Composers, Opera etc.

Overlapping is normal enough, but usually it's clear which project is more relevant, more expert in a given field, and that project is left to work on it. Unfortunately if the overlap is too great, it's not apparent which group of editors is more involved, and the projects seem to be competing. (Late 19th and early 20th century music is well-covered on WP compared to the late 20th, so that poses the question whether we need another project covering this subject anyway.)

Would there be any support for defining 'contemporary' as post-1945 so the efforts of the project can be more focused? Thanks for reading this. Best. -- Kleinzach (talk) 04:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kleinzach, unfortunately when we began assessing articles several months ago were forced to provide the bots with fairly general categories to tag. This resulted in many articles which do not fall within our scope being tagged. It’s a mess we’re still cleaning up. Everybody please correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that current consensus here is to define our scope, particularly where the early 20th century is concerned, by the influence and modernity of the music, not by a specific date. In practice this focuses mostly on the post 1945-present period. For instance The Rite of Spring falls within our scope but Richard Strauss probably doesn’t despite the huge overlap. I’ve been bold and removed the tags from Gabriel Fauré and Edward Elgar.To clarify which project is more relevant to an artical we’re tagging very early 20th century composers as Low or Mid level importance to the project regardless of their importance as composers individually. In practice most of our efforts are expended on the very modern and very under developed articles (composers likeSalvatore Sciarrino and Helmut Lachenmann) or on very technical articles for which few other Wikipedian have the expertise to improve (articles like combinatoriality or Rothenberg propriety). Cheers, --S.dedalus (talk) 05:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"The Rite of Spring but not Strauss" implies a selection procedure with many, many borderline cases. Who will decide between the Stravinsky-type-sheep and the Strauss-type-goats? Will there be an official list of who is in and who is out, I wonder? --Kleinzach (talk) 01:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Admittedly selection guidelines good be made more detailed. Perhaps we should add a section to the WikiProject Contemporary music/Assessment page. Generally in borderline cases the decision is made through consensus. We haven’t really had any problem with our current system so far though. The problem with setting a hard date is you get ridiculous situations where hugely important composers die right on or before the cutoff date. (Anton Webern was shot September 1945 for instance.) Then there are events that have profound effect on modern music like the premier of Le Sacre in 1913 or Schoenberg’s Op. 23 written in 1920 (which we ignominiously don’t have an article on). --S.dedalus (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IMO the project is perfectly entitled to define its own scope. Nevertheless two points need to be made, (1) the scope should be clear and unambiguous, and (2) should correspond to the name of the project.

Let's take for example Alexander von Zemlinsky - just bannered by this project. He died in 1942. This was before I was born, probably before any editor here was born - so he is not a person of our time, ergo his music is not contemporary.

One solution would be to re-name the project using a title with a broader meaning, however the broader the scope and the greater the overlap with other projects, the more difficult it will be to decide which project has primary care of which article. Regards. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:45, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve removed the tag from Alexander von Zemlinsky. It is a bit borderline case though since he had a significant influence on Schoenberg (in fact he was Schoenberg’s only composition teacher). If someone else thinks the tag should go back on I won’t object. Contemporary is a relative word so I think the title of the project is okay. I’ll try to right a paragraph on our tagging system however to try to make things a bit more clear and unambiguous. Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 06:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would put it back. At least one of his works "was written in a style comparable to its fellow contemporary symphonic works by Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, and Dmitri Shostakovich." Badagnani (talk) 07:07, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I put back the tag, but change the importance to “Low.” Perhaps that’s a good compromise? --S.dedalus (talk) 02:08, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If Zemlinsky goes back in that implies that lots of other composers of the early 20th century will follow. Is this a good idea? Leaving aside the question of the project name, there is a real need for a project to cover late 20th century music, whereas early 20th century is already well-served. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 10:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding here. As I understand it we are interested in composers like Alexander von Zemlinsky because of their influence on late twentieth and twenty-first century music. We keep them in the project because it is impossible to address modern trends without adding content about this future influence to earlier composer’s articles. No, I don’t think it implies anything about what other composers might be included in the project. I believe you’re still thinking in terms of dates Kleinzach. You think "Alexander von Zemlinsky was born in the 19th century; therefore it sets a precedent for including other similar composer", correct? I don’t think it has to work that way. Zemlinsky was uniquely influential to the Second Viennese School. We can include him and write about that connection while still remaining true to our objective of improving Wikipedia’s coverage of avant-guard music. Cheers, --S.dedalus (talk) 02:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let's try to be clear about this - and the implications of the discussion. 'Avant-garde' and 'contemporary' are quite different concepts. If the focus is to be on 'Avant garde' then this should be written up on the project page and (IMO) the name of the project should be changed. However 'Avant garde' is more difficult to define than 'contemporary', note for example the WP article that states:
"Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries . . . The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Postmodernism posits that the age of the constant pushing of boundaries is no longer with us and that avant-garde has little to no applicability in the age of Postmodern art."
However what I am concerned about is not so much the name of the project so much as the overlap with the other projects. Classical Music, Composers and Opera have successfully avoided bannering the same pages helping the projects work in harmony and follow similar guidelines. (For example, the opera project does not banner articles on people who have influenced opera only those directly involved.) --Kleinzach (talk) 09:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I had always previously associated him with 19th-century style, until I read the passage about some of his works showing stylistic affinity with Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Badagnani (talk) 02:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

John Adams restart

The article "John Adams" was mostly gutted almost a year ago after it was noticed that most of it was lifted as a copyright violation from the Pulitzer-Prize bio. While the article has grown a bit since the cut, it has basically had a big gap where the biography, works description, and musical style sections should be.

My students have produced a new version of the article at User:Mscuthbert/John Adams, which, though not perfect by any means, is I believe a great improvement over most of the current article. I want to be bold and make the replacement, but I will also give others a bit of time to look it over and raise objections. The musical examples should be moved over quickly, since they are Fair Use images that are currently only in user space, and need to be used. Thanks -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 19:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is indeed a huge improvement over the current version! Congratulations to you and your students for creating such a fantastic article! I completely support the substitution. It should make at least Good Article without too much trouble.
I will offer the following critique for anybody who would like to improve the article further. In fact I’ll work on it myself if the substitution is made.
  1. Perhaps it should be made more clear that Adams didn’t self label himself as a minimalist? (He was labeled by music critic Michael Walsh.) Maybe this quote from The John Adams Reader would not be out of place:

    “It’s a depressing fact about the arts that many art consumers, listeners, or potential fans need a frame of reference. They need to know how, as an emerging figure, you fit in. Even if your work is essentially maverick and unallied with any movement, they’ll need to place as a ‘maverick.’ Only after you’ve become familiar and the public knows your name and work can they really begin to detect what it is that makes you different.”

  1. In the Musical Style section the fourth paragraph states that “Minimalism offered the final solution to Adams's creative dilemma.” This seems to contradict the paragraph later on when it says “Although some of his pieces sound similar to those written by minimalist composers, Adams actually rejects the idea of mechanistic procedure-based or process music.” In fact I don’t think Adams embraced minimalism as a final answer at all. He changed it to allow the music to take rapid changes in direction. That first sentence needs to be rewritten I think.
  2. More biographical information is needed. I’m ambivalent towards the necessity of describing each one of his pieces. Especially since many of them have their own articles. On the other hand his works are defiantly very tied into his life from 1977 onwards. One option would be to move these works descriptions to their own section. Regardless I defiantly think there needs to be more information about his actual life in recent years. This could include describing his collaborations. --S.dedalus (talk) 22:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi S.Dedalus -- I somehow missed your reply until right now. Thanks for the comments. I agree whole-heartedly that more biographical information is needed and that eventually, the best version of this article would not have nearly so much information on individual works mixed in with the biography (though I think a section "Compositions of John Adams" liked to a Main Article with the same title would not be a bad thing--a summary and concise description of each piece rather than needing to read every work article). It looks like a few students started adding information about a few pieces and others figured that was a good thing to do. Agreed also about the fourth paragraph -- in fact his current use of Slonimsky's Thesaurus could easily be called process-based music. (I also hate the term "final solution").
Getting to the first point, I'll see if I can find a way to bring in that Adams rejected the term minimalism, though I don't think that his rejection of the term is particularly important. During the late 70s and early 80s, he was certainly affiliated by the media and musical world with that group of composers, and that's the term that has stuck. So just as we don't put paragraphs on every Baroque composer's article talking about how they did not approve of the term "Baroque," it would seem undue weight to give too much stress to that on the minimalist composers (of whom only Tom Johnson embraces the term whole-heartedly).
I'm a little reluctant to do much editing immediately to the new version, because I don't want to savage any of my students' work so soon after the assignment. But I think that some edits still need to be done, including perhaps a reorganization of the article, keeping what prose is great and cutting other parts. Best, -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 15:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Contemporary music

Should we set up our own Portal? That might be one way to ease into the more active outreach program we were talking about in relation to the potential newsletter above. We’d have to commit to updating and maintaining the portal regularly. On a side note I’m going to be bold and add a “New articles” section to our front page. We can list articles we’re just created and get help and feedback. --S.dedalus (talk) 22:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Contemporary operas needing articles

The following is a short list of contemporary operas needing articles. I wonder if anyone would be interested in having a go at one or two of them?

BTW, the following are good models for structure and style: The Silver Tassie, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Der Zar lässt sich photographieren. Best.--Kleinzach (talk) 12:00, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great list Kleinzach! I’ve just created a stub for Lohengrin (Sciarrino opera). If I can find more sources I’ll expand it. --S.dedalus (talk) 21:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Looks good! --Kleinzach (talk) 23:38, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for junkfreedom

I've looked at a number of articles on moderately recent composers in the last few minutes, and none of them has some goofy "infobox". While some of its "importance" ratings seem bizarre -- if Zemlinsky is "low", why is the equally dead Bartók "top"? how can the lounge pianist Nyman be rated as more important than Birtwistle? -- I'd like to thank this project for avoiding this tiresome gimmickry. Hoary (talk) 06:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Biographical infoboxes have been discouraged by the Composers project. Many editors feel like you that they are counter-productive. Best. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This project works with other projects such as WP:Composers to insure consistency where our project goals overlap. You’re right about Bartók. I’ve downgraded to article to “Mid” because he’s not very modern. Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 05:30, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree with Bartók (one of the top 3 or 5 composers of the 20th century) at "mid." Badagnani (talk) 05:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, perhaps “High” is better. His influence isn’t quite as high as say Schoenberg I don’t think, but it’s true that he very much influence Ligeti and others. --S.dedalus (talk) 05:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
His greatest influence on later composers probably lies in his motoric rhythmic impetus and use of chromaticism and clusters, as well as his embrace of folk materials, actually collecting them himself then working them into original compositions. All of these things were later adopted by many other composers, though the influence may not be immediately apparent. Even the "night music" style can be heard in Crumb, and Carter did his own Concerto for Orchestra. Badagnani (talk) 06:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I’m confused by your objection to the rating of Michael Nyman (Mid) and Harrison Birtwistle (High, though better as Mid perhaps). Those ratings seem appropriate to me; Nyman is a minimalist composer. --S.dedalus (talk) 05:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And, I'm tempted to add, minimally interesting. The last time I heard (when boredom impelled me to walk out of a concert), it was Terry Riley meets Penguin Cafe Orchestra. But I'll admit that this was more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, I've no wish to knock the status of Bartók in the 20th century, but the old chap died over sixty years ago; how important is he for/within what could reasonably be called contemporary music? But I suppose all these attempts at rating relative "importance" are probably doomed; my own would no doubt be much worse than yours. -- Hoary (talk) 05:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Birtwistle was "low" until I changed him to "high" yesterday after reading that comment. Badagnani (talk) 06:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well done! -- Hoary (talk) 09:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Placeholder images

There is currently a campaign to put a 'No Free Image' graphic on all biographical pages. This is the 'female version':

I've been trying to find out why this is not going on Talk pages rather than articles.--Kleinzach (talk) 02:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

because it is aimed at readers and readers don't look at talk pages.Genisock2 (talk) 18:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because putting it in articles is more obnoxious? Because putting it there satisfies its proponents' bossiness? (I'm tired of attempting to be polite about junk such as this.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - The placeholder is extremely obnoxious and I believe we should eschew such (though removing them all is going to take just as much bandwidth as it was to bot-spam them across WP). It's also unnecessary, as we formerly used official promotion/publicity photos from the composers, released by their managers for this purpose, until such photos were deleted. The placeholder isn't going to improve matters by spurring Wiki-papparazzi to show up at composers' doorsteps and photograph them, so why not simply use the promotional photos released for such purposes? Badagnani (talk) 05:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because they are not under a free license.Genisock2 (talk) 18:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you feel strongly about this you might like to join the discussion here. As you will see, I've been trying to get some information about the campaign. It's possible that only two or three editors are involved. --Kleinzach (talk) 05:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've followed this up with a proposal, see here. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is now a centralized discussion about the placeholders at: Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion will close at midday GMT/UTC on 23 April. --Kleinzach (talk) 01:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion has now ended - more or less in a state of chaos - see Conclusion. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crumb photo

File:Crumb.jpg
George Crumb

Could someone with knowledge of photo editing software crop this photo please? It’s driving me crazy, and all the empty space makes it look like it was taken by a voyeur. :) --S.dedalus (talk) 06:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I could do it, but the photo doesn't seem to have a valid license at all. I think this is a publicity photo and should definitely be used under fair use, but it's almost certainly not a free photo. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 06:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whoever put the chair there most certainly did it for a reason, presumably an artistic one. Badagnani (talk) 06:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Its legality aside, that's a good photo as is. Incidentally, anyone wanting to crop and using the World's Favorite Operating System (WFOS) can simply download and install IrfanView. Free! Easy! (It even makes me miss WFOS.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:56, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, you’re right; the source is defiantly odd. Sadly it looks to me like this is a copyright violation. Should I tag it as such? --S.dedalus (talk) 23:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I dunno -- it is clearly a released publicity photo that has been sent out to numerous places. Many people on WP don't believe that justifies these photos' use on WP, but I am not one of them. So I figure, while I won't upload them myself, I won't go out of my way to delete these useful images that are highly unlikely to be challenged by their copyright holders. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 02:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's in C. F. Peters's interest to get all the publicity for Crumb that they can. He is, in fact, one of the few composers who makes significant income for that publisher. Badagnani (talk) 02:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But it's for Peters (if they're the copyright holder) to make that decision. Incidentally, further consideration of the photo tells me that cropping would be a bad idea: not only is the photo good as it is, but the lighting and pose would be wrong, wrong, wrong if the photo were cropped in an attempt at something conventional. (Not to mention any disrespect to the photographer, etc.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then is the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 incorrect? By the way it seems the C. F. Peters site is already using a cropped version of this picture. --S.dedalus (talk) 02:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion brings up the point of fact -- how DO we know people aren't lying in their licences? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Melodeclamation

Does this even exist? It looks like OR to me. The only “Reference” is a mirror of Wikipedia. --S.dedalus (talk) 04:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well obviously the 'recitation atop musical accompaniment' thing IS a real genre. Probably best the page is called something else and/or merged with what that is. I've usually heard it described as melodrama. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is covered by Melodrama#Melodrama_in_opera_and_song. Merge? --Kleinzach (talk) 12:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Melodeclamation seems to be a neologisms. Only about 300 Google hits [4], most of which are explained by Wikimirrors. It doesn’t look like there is any useful content to merge. I’ll just put it up for deletion. Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 23:03, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merging Ondine (Sir Frederick Ashton ballet) into Ondine (Henze) or vice versa?

These two articles exist. Merging is proposed. --Kleinzach (talk) 02:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Infobox classical composer

I have put this up for its 4th consecutive deletion Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Infobox_classical_composer and ideally blocking from further recreation. Thank you. --Kleinzach (talk) 03:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Use of bass guitar in contemporary classical music

I just added a new section here. Can anyone think of any other early uses of the electric bass guitar in contemporary classical music? Badagnani (talk) 02:48, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How early? You have a 1989 piece listed - Paul Schoenfield's Four Parables definitely uses it; that was 1983. Bernstein also used it in Slava, from 1977 (I think, it may have been a guitar and not bass, now that I think of it) ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Electric_guitar#Contemporary_classical_music to see if any other notable examples have been left out. So was Stockhausen's Gruppen the first contemporary classical piece to use the electric guitar? Badagnani (talk) 02:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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