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Henry Purcell

Hi! I was just involved with getting Agrippina (opera) to FA, so we'd have something for the 250th anniversary of Handel's death . We succeeded! However, it's been pointed out that the 350th anniversary of Purcell's birth is coming up in September.

Handel was a bit of a rush job, and we really didn't have time to get the composer article up to FA in the month and a bit we had. However, we have more time for Purcell. User:Folantin and I have been discussing it over at the Opera WikiProject, and would like to try to get Henry Purcell up to FA class (and also try and improve the articles on his operas).

Would any of you be interested in joining us? It should be pretty fun, but it will need a major improvement in sources. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

B-class review summary

As a number of readers here know, I've been reviewing the project's B-class articles. This work began in November 2008, and is now complete. What follows is a summary; you can also see the full list of reviews.

316 reviews were done. Of the articles reviewed, 51 were deemed of superior quality, and may be eligible (some with a modest amount of work) for project A-class consideration, or GA nomination. 31 articles for which reviews were written were demoted to Start-class, and a relatively small number of articles were summarily demoted without review. There were 10 articles that remained at the B level, but were noted as being of poor quality, satisfying minimal requirements for a B rating. (This last number is a bit unreliable, and probably higher; I didn't start marking my review summaries this way until about midway through the list.)

Some comments on doing this work:

• most took 15-20 minutes to complete, some took over an hour to complete, while others only took 5 minutes
• I've had mostly positive feedback, when it was given, on my reviews

I will be writing up a "how to write a better composer article" and a "how to review a composer article" at some point, hopefully in the near future.

One interesting piece of research: about 7% of this project's articles are B class or higher. This percentage compares favorably with the military history, in which about 5% of articles (including looking at task forces containing a similar number of articles to this one) are B class or higher. The notable difference is that MILHIST projects have a higher proportion of GA,A, and FA articles, all of which require either WP-wide process or project peer review.

I would recommend the institution of a peer process within the project for doing A-class reviews.

-- Magic♪piano 18:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

New composer by nationality category scheme

I try to create different spheres for grouping classical composers and popular music composers, Alice Despard can not be in the same categorial location of Charles Ives or Walter Piston. I also created a category for classical composers by nationality. --Opus88888 (talk) 04:41, 9 April 2009 (UTC) I can reedit, I have observed that in the English wiki you separate composers from song-writers.

I understand the new structure you have created is:

Category:Composers of classical music by nationality containing:

Category:American composers of classical music

Category:Argentine composers of classical music

Category:Austrian composers of classical music

Category:Brazilian composers of classical music

Category:German composers of classical music

Category:Mexican composers of classical music

Perhaps we can discuss this before you make any more? I'm wondering how this structure relates to Category:Austrian composers etc. Is it helpful and if so how does it work? Thanks. --Kleinzach 05:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I´ve already separated Czech songwriters, misplaced in the Category:Czech composers. We need to check and clean up also other categories of composers by nationality. And what about the word classical? Isn´t it confusing in English? --Vejvančický (talk) 10:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

As ever I'm not enthusiastic about 'classical' but there's another issue. We use Category:Austrian composers etc. for banners/assessments etc. because this project is not specifically 'classical' anyway.--Kleinzach 10:35, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the word 'Classical'. The two meanings are confusing. Obviously your categories mean 'Austrian composers of classical music', but it could also mean 'Composers in the classical period' (as opposed to composers of Baroque and Renaissance music).—MDCollins (talk) 11:13, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

AfD notice/Thomas R. Vozzella

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas R. Vozzella - any input would be appreciated, as the AfD is progressing very slowly. Crossposting to WP Contemporary music. --Jashiin (talk) 09:36, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Some more opinions would be good. Few music editors have been involved so far. --Kleinzach 00:09, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

A couple of requests

I have recently (well, sort of recently) expanded articles on Vincent Lübeck and Johann Paul von Westhoff‎. They were both previously assessed as a start-class article and a stub, respectively, and, if I understand correctly, I cannot assess my own efforts, so if someone would reassess them, that'd be fantastic.

On a related note, I ran into a formatting problem which I can't really fix, at Vincent Lübeck and at André Raison. In his review of the latter, Magicpiano pointed out that the abundance of images and a list make the article look cluttered. I converted the list in question into prose, but it still doesn't look good. And the article on Vincent Lübeck now has a similar problem, because there are, again, two images and a list, and I have no idea at all as to how to make the section look better. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. --Jashiin (talk) 08:44, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've nominally uprated them and put Vincent Lübeck into Magicpiano's reviewing system. --Kleinzach 10:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Jashiin (talk) 13:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I think I've at least partly put my finger on some of the issues exemplified by these two articles. (Feel free to discuss on their talk pages or revert the specific changes I've made to them.)

• centered images vs. left-aligned lists
• score elements of different sizes
• the size of score elements
• Placement relative to other images

I left Raison with a list, followed by text, followed by a centered score, and Lübeck with list, text, left-aligned score. I think that Lübeck, with the sizable left-aligned score, looks better -- the white space is "where it should be", on the right.

I find significant disparities in score size to be somewhat distracting; this is more noticeable in Raison than in Lübeck.

Unfortunately, significant score extracts can take up an awkward amount of screen real estate, messing with the layout of everything around them. Right now, the only way I can think to effectively deal with it is to make sure other visual elements are not close to the affected layout area. (Make sure to check your work with browser windows of differing widths.) If the score images are scalable SVG images, they might be reducable without loss of fidelity and have less of an impact around them.

We might want to find and highlight great examples of how to do this sort of thing. Magic♪piano 20:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

What you did in both articles looks much better than the previous versions! But, um, the problem is that the images were linked to certain parts of the text. I.e. the Hamburg photo you removed was exactly near the part of the text describing Lübeck's life in Hamburg, the Raison passacaglia excerpt followed a text mentioning said passacaglia, etc. If only there were more sources covering these two composers... some extra text would easily rectify the problem :( --Jashiin (talk) 21:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was aware of those side-effects when I made the changes (which is also why I'd understand reverting them). The question is, can some of those effects be undone by other changes (like more text)? Magic♪piano 01:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Jan Juham

Is this guy notable? I don't see any non-wikipedia google hits. He's only 22 and the article is very short, even for a stub. There's also a new article on a symphony of his Symphony No. 1 (Jan Juham). Just a general heads up if anyone tracks these types of things. DavidRF (talk) 18:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I've put 'notability' tags on them. --Kleinzach 00:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

No. Googling the alternate spelling of his name "Yang Yunhan" with 'composer' also turns up nothing. I wouldn't doubt for a minute that there are lots of pages like this we've never even noticed. Antandrus (talk) 14:18, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Frankly it's annoying and time consuming to have to trot these patently trivial pages off to AfD all because some anon IP partisan insists on reverting. Grrr. Anyway, needs must. Eusebeus (talk) 15:55, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I've been going through the Category:Unassessed Composers articles which contains many such anomalous articles. I've done about a hundred but 468 of them remain. I'd appreciate some help. If anyone can do, let's say 30 or 40 of them, I can explain more. Thanks. --Kleinzach 10:46, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

AfD Notice/Jan Juham + Symphony + Elite of Classical Music

This was a contested Prod, so I have taken it to AfD. Interested editors may consult the entry at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Symphony No. 1 (Jan Juham). Eusebeus (talk) 14:13, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Elite of Classical Music, a related article, is also now at Afd, see Here. --Kleinzach 13:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I notice that only the article on Jan Juham's symphony was deleted, even though the AfD covered Jan Juham as well. Who should we ask to delete Jan Juham? (I hope no new AfD is required...) --Jashiin (talk) 13:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Zapped; there are some admins who watch this page, you know... Bencherlite^Talk 13:32, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! And its good to know we have some admins watching the page, this place feels too empty sometimes. --Jashiin (talk) 13:41, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Request For Assessment & Cleanup: John Serry, Sr.

Dear Editors: I have recently completed work on an article entitled John Serry, Sr.

describing the contributions of a musician active in the early/mid 20th century in the realm of both classical and jazz composition and performance for an instrument which was largely ignored in the USA at the turn of the century. The article describes several compositions which were transcribed by the composer for piano as well as a variety of published works. The article has been assessed by several other members of the Wikimusic portal but not has been reviewed by an editor within the Composers category. The article is in the process of a major cleanup by a variety of editors who possess a limited knowledge of this era in music history. Kindly assign the article for review by an editor who is familiar with early/mid 20th century American music at your earliest convenience in order to assess the importance of the composer and his works: American Rhapsody and Concerto For Free Bass Accordion. You might also ammend the Category: Composers by instrument page to include a sub page for composers of accordion. ( I am not certian how this is accomplished.) Thanks for your kind and thoughtful consideration. I am a new contributer to Wikipedia and deeply appreciate your kind editorial assistance. Repectfully: --Pjs012915 (talk) 19:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)User:pjs012915

I've left you some fairly extensive feedback; I'm afraid your work is not really very complete. I've also wikilinked the article name above, something you should have done. Magic♪piano 20:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear User:Magicpiano -Thanks for your extensive feedback and insights on improving the article. I am one of the composer's several children and the principal author of the article. The article was initially submitted and accepted as a purely biographical article and rated as a B class. Over time, I have attempted to provided verifiable information to augment the article and make it more acceptable to posting with a classical music and contemporary music tag. Unfortunately, these attempts have resulted in conflict of issue questions being raised by various editors and the subsequent downgrading of the article to a C level. Alas, it seems that as I provide more information about the composer various editors find additional reasons to question my objectivity and downgrade the article even further. I am therefore somewhat reluctant to provide the additional biographical details which you mentioned. I am unable to document or verify such details with "known sources" since I am unable to provide additional documentation beyond the sources already provided. Dad was an excellent musician who treasured his privacy --hence not much was published about his private life. I fear that by including additional information regarding his youth, family, upbringing ect. I will only undermine the acceptability of the article even further and perhaps set the stage for its deletion from the encyclopedia.

With this in mind, kindly remove my request for an assessment of the article within the Composer's category. I do not believe that I possess enough verifiable information to justify such a listing and would prefer to salvage as much of the article as possible. In so far as other editors in the Contemporary Music and Classical Music areas have assigned a C-level to this article while it is under a final review, I have taken the liberty of undoing your re-grading of the article and restored its C- level (I hope that this action is permitted). If possible, kindly withdraw my request for an assessment of the article within the composer's section. With this in mind, I have removed the requested tag at the top of the article. Thanks again for your input and best wishes for the future. --Pjs012915 (talk) 21:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)pjs012915

David D'Or

Hi. An editor has deleted (see [1]) the inclusion of David D'Or as a subject of this (and a number of other) wikiprojects. I believe that D'Or belongs. Can someone who is involved in this wikiproject please a look? D'Or both composes and sings music, including a Eurovision entry, a great number of his songs, and some significant classical music as indicated at his article. I'm not pre-supposing the level of importance of his music to this wikiproject, but that can of course be reflected in the assessment. If you have a view, pls feel free to express it on the D'Or talk page. Many thanks.--Ethelh (talk) 02:41, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Nothing in the article indicates that he is a composer.--Smerus (talk) 08:29, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the article highlights that he composed his Eurovision entry (his performance there was a highlight of his career) and co-composed a 40-minute cantata that is one of his major CDs, and links in the article to his CDs evidence that he composed a great deal of the material on his CDs.--Ethelh (talk) 23:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Writing pop songs doesn't qualify him for this project.--Smerus (talk) 05:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

@Ethelh: Why is that cantata (Halelu — Songs of David, Cantata for Peace, Op. 40 (2005)) then listed on David Eaton's Wikipedia page? For comparison and illustration of the project's scope, note that people like Andrew Lloyd Webber do not fall under the Composers' Project. As has been pointed out elsewhere: there's a difference between categorisation of articles and their project bannering. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

The cantata was co-composed by David Eaton and David D'Or according to Eaton. [2] But this is not typical of D'Or's compositions, all the rest of which to date are popular music. It's a pretty slim reason to banner for the Composers project. Ethelh, I'm not sure why it seems so important to have a particular project banner on the David D'Or talk page. Project banners don't confirm categorizaton or provide some kind of 'validation' for the article. They're basically utiliatrian tools to help projects keep track of the articles which they maintain and where they would have a significant input to make. Voceditenore (talk) 07:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

An article is best cared for by one main, interested, project. In the case of David D'Or, the Eurovision Project looks ideal. --Kleinzach 07:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD: Robert Davidson (composer)

The discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Davidson (composer), if members wish to comment. Voceditenore (talk) 11:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Gyuszi Mészáros

Another WP:Notability (or possibly hoax) question. Gyuszi Mészáros is stubby, its one source appears to be non-existent, and its creator did nothing else in the way of editing. Furthermore, hu.wp does not have an article by that name. AfD/CSD material? Magic♪piano 13:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hoax? Google Search for "Gyuszi Mészáros" composer, for "Walter P. Kreckmann" (author of the cited book) and for "Minnesanger Press" (publisher of the cited book). Everything refers to Wikipedia article. AfD will be the best solution. --Vejvančický (talk) 10:12, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination here. --Vejvančický (talk) 12:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Composers by nationality AND period

Someone has started this trend by creating the categories: Italian Renaissance composers, English Renaissance composers, Scottish Renaissance composers, and Welsh Renaissance composers, and putting the fitting composers in the proper category. I have expanded Renaissance composers to include other nationalities, and have done things in a similar manner with Baroque composers. Thoughts? Marcus2 (talk) 14:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

What a pity that Wikipedia does not have the MediaWiki extension DynamicPageList (DPL), because then it is very easy to create listings of pages simltaneously in a specified collection of categories. For example, code of the form

{{#dpl: |category=Baroque composers |category=Italian composers |namespace= |order=ascending |supresserrors=true |allowcachedresults=true }}

would create a list of all composers categorized in both Baroque composers and Italian composers ... all without the need to put all the composers into Italian Baroque composers by hand. Moreover, it would simplify maintainenance of these categories. This is the scheme we use at the Choral Public Domain Library's ChoralWiki. Without the facility that DPL provides, I'm not sure of the advisability of creating and maintaining these hybrid categories. -- Chuck (talk) 19:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a really useful tool - I wonder how something like that could be implemented on Wikipedia?Wikidwitch (talk) 14:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, exactly. I couldn't agree more. Surely, sooner or later, we will be able to have the MediaWiki extension DynamicPageList (DPL) or something equivalent. I am against creating these triple attribute (period/nationality/occupation) cats which make bot runs/bannering unnecessarily complicated. --Kleinzach 08:37, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

An added problem is that Marcus2 is replacing two subcategorizations, such as Portuguese composers, Baroque composers with a single subcategorization Portuguese Baroque composers. This definitely fouls up the subcategorization scheme in place for composers, and I would like to ask him please to refrain from deleting the two subcategorizations (it would be best if these were all restored for the work he has already done). -- Chuck (talk) 16:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Marcus2: can you possibly restore the categories to the way they were before? Perhaps it would be best to put soft redirects on Category:Italian Renaissance composers etc.? (See example Category:Welsh Renaissance composers.)--Kleinzach 00:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I dont see the point of such soft redirects; Category:Renaissance composers by country is much too useful to abandon for two overpopulated supercategories. Sparafucil (talk) 01:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Many of these categories only have one or two article, leaving aside the usual problem of determining nationality for historic figures. I wonder if Sparafucil has ever arranged a bot run? Overcategorization can mean hours of extra work. --Kleinzach 01:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite clear about the conclusions of this discussion, but I'd like to throw my own thoughts into the conversation. Mainly my opinion is that without some sensible level of focus, a broad category like Category:Renaissance composers isn't really very useful for someone accessing information about, say, English composers of the Renaissance period - there is no way of distinguishing them without clicking on each individual article to find out where they were born. As there are over 200 listed, this is rather a laborious task. Byrd and Gibbons are lumped together with Monteverdi and Lassus in one big melting-pot of composers. IMO it makes WP a rather inaccessible tool for gaining knowledge. Maybe this concerns a more fundamental weakness in WP functionality, but until there is a solution like the one described by ChuckHG, I feel there is a real need for more focussed classification. Wikidwitch (talk) 14:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with those who think this is an ill-conceived idea. First, why is it Category:Renaissance composers by country etc. (epoch first) and not Category:Italian composers by epoch (country first)? This is a rhetorical question to highlight the questionable logic behind this scheme.

As to DPL: this has been discussed at least since 2006, and no progress has been made at Wikipedia. It's clearly available (Wikinews uses it: n:Wikinews:DynamicPageList), but I can only assume that the size of Wikipedia may be prohibitive for it to used here.

Thirdly, we already have a crude approximation of the desired outcome: category intersect search: type this into the search box: +incategory:"Baroque composers" +incategory:"Italian composers" and you get a search result of Italian Baroque composers. It must be admitted that this method has some technical (it doesn't pick up categories which are inherited from templates) and usage shortcomings.

Fourthly, there is Wikipedia:CatScan, which I have only read about, not tried.

Lastly, folding without edit summary two categories e.g. Category:German composers and Category:Renaissance composers at Hans Leo Hassler into one is really ill-conceived — now one has to inspect eight categories to find all Renaissance composers. Ideas like these should be discussed here thoroughly before implementation. Michael Bednarek (talk) 17:02, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

As there is no support for this, does everyone want these articles to be re-instated to their former classification? Wikidwitch (talk) 19:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes indeed. --Kleinzach 07:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I also favour reinstatement of previous classification.--Smerus (talk) 06:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

It has been done. All English, Dutch, Franco-Flemish, French, German, Italian and Spanish Renaissance composers are now back under one category, as you asked. Didn't take long to sort out.
BTW The link mentioned above by Michael Bednarek is really very interesting - it obviously gets around the problem in a logical way. Here, for example, is list of English Renaissance Composers generated by the category intersect. Sadly it can only be accessed by typing a complex string of code into the search box, so it's inaccessible to the average user. Only an experienced coder could fathom that one out. What a pity this kind of functionality is buried away in the depths of WP when it should be available to all. Nice to know it's there though. Wikidwitch (talk) 14:10, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated. Can you also do it for the Category:Baroque composers by country? --Kleinzach 23:03, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Baroque composers by country now re-sorted, soft redirects in place. Edits all point to this discussion. Wikidwitch (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. --Kleinzach 22:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)