Talk:Tristis est anima mea (attributed to Kuhnau)

A fact from Tristis est anima mea (attributed to Kuhnau) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 April 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that in a motet for Maundy Thursday, Tristis est anima mea, Jesus says in Gethsemane (pictured) "Sad is my soul even unto death"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2015/April.

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Common name

The work is commonly known as by Kuhnau even if his authorship is not proven. Tristis est anima mea (SSATB motet) is not a common name, Tristis est anima mea (Kuhnau) would be the better article name. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tristis est anima mea (attributed to Kuhnau) (compare Piano Trio in A major (attributed to Brahms), Violin Sonata in D major (attributed to Mozart), etc.) would be a viable alternative. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Only that in this case reliable sources simply say "(Kuhnau)", --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:37, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Melamed, top of p. 148: "... Johann Kuhnau (attrib.) ..." (bolding added). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:46, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is no question that we don't have proof that he wrote the piece, but it is commonly (!) known as Kuhnau's, see IMSPL and Carus for example, and as far as I understand we have to choose the common name. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:09, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No difference with Sonatina in F major (attributed to Beethoven). WP:NCM is clear: "Avoid ... to disambiguate by composer when the composer is not known with certainty ... " Arguing "exception" to the rule is a viable path imho, but I fail to see on what grounds: Adagio in G minor is " ... commonly (!) known as ... " Albinoni's, yet it was exactly this example that was chosen for the guideline to illustrate the cited rule. So if no stronger arguments can be given I'm not convinced we should divert from the guideline. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:38, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Other proposal: Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem: it is the full name of the motet as given by Spitta (other responsories/motets seem to have the four first words only as title). It avoids the authorship pickle (much like Adagio in G minor does for Albinoni/Giazotto). Seems like an elegant solution here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:51, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's elegant but doesn't help readers who search for Kuhnau. As a redirect fine, but again: not a common name, if we look at recordings and prints. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that placing undue weight on a (single?) citation by Spitta? All settings are of the same text with the number of words dependent o the whim of the editor writer who may not even feel obliged to be consistent: I can think of articles that give "Ave Maria…virgo serena" at the first mention of Josquin's piece and shorten it subsequently. It's very well to dream of elegant solutions where Tristis est anima mea usque ad = Gesualdo and Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem sustinete = M. Haydn, but seriously... Sparafucil (talk) 20:31, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It would be a workaround as much as Adagio in G minor is, as if that would be the only Adagio in that key, and as if anyone even knows its key (as opposed to its purported composer being common knowledge). --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:58, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that that's horrid page name! For that example it would have been much better to follow the example Mozart's Twelfth Mass, K. Anh. 232. But I'm not sure "Kuhnau's Tristis…" is common enough to be preferable to Tristis est anima mea (Kuhnau). Sparafucil (talk) 20:13, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't implying Adagio in G minor would be "horrid" in my opinion.

As for Mozart's Twelfth Mass, K. Anh. 232: conforms to WP:NCM while the disambiguator ("K. Anh. 232" – emphasis added) indicates it sits in the "spurious & doubtful" category to "a person familiar with the subject area". All this is conforming to WP:CONCISE, while Kuhnau's Tristis est anima mea wouldn't: any "person familiar with the subject area" (as that policy has it) would notice something's out of sync there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:12, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I misread your tone: it is at least an Easter egg. I'm being half serious in proposing Albinoni's Adagio (hoax). instead. :-) Sparafucil (talk) 19:14, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever. To me the Adagio in G minor article title appears stable enough to be used as an example in the WP:NCM guideline. If that ever changes (which BTW should be discussed at Talk:Adagio in G minor and not here), the example used to illustrate the principle at WP:NCM might be revisited. We're far from that afaik. --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion

I suggest to move this back to where it started, Tristis est anima mea (Kuhnau) because that is the name which is known in historic and even recent publications and many sources, the common name, also simpler. The article discusses that it is not sure that he wrote it. Readers will search for "Kuhnau", not for "attributed to Kuhnau". Thoughts? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:21, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the dab page, here; seems to me that "Kuhnau" is fine, the dab sentence and the lede of this article both explain the ambiguity. I think WP:COMMONNAME applies: "Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural. " Can we show the sources that use "Kuhnau?" I say keep it simple. Montanabw ^(talk) 23:45, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Recognizability is a fundamental asset of a disambiguator, I agree on that. Avoiding oversimplification on a questionable issue is another. We don't do Ave Maria (Gounod) either (although it exists as a redirect). FYI, of the sources currently used in the article:

Four don't mention the doubt around the attribution (Spitta, IMSLP, Carus, Hyperion), although it is already clear from Spitta that the composition doesn't fit in very well among the choral compositions by Kuhnau. Spitta is 19th century (when there was no debate about the attribution yet), the others are publishers of the music (scores, recordings), at least two of them with a commercial interest in showing an average high quality of Kuhnau's music.
All four recent scholarly sources mention the debate about the attribution (bach-digital, Melamed, Kuhnau-Project, Morton), and also Woolf mentions it. Of these Kuhnau-Project would be the only one with a commercial interest in showing an average high quality of Kuhnau's music (but they chose not to be silent about the attribution issue)

I think the sources mentioning only one composer for Ave Maria (Gounod) have comparatively a much larger share. To me it seems inopportune to override the recent scholarly sources in a disambiguator. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:58, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bach-Kuhnau relationship

Maybe this article is a good place to explain something more about how J. S. Bach thought about his predecessor. In general I think Bach respected his predecessor, but didn't like his music. At least that's the impression authors like Spitta leave:

Bach embarked on a total rewrite of all cantatas his predecessor had left. BWV 142 is maybe an exception.
BWV 243a shows similarites with the work of his predecessor (SSATB chorus, Christmas interpolations) but none of the musical material.
Similarly, naming some sets of his works Clavier Übung just as Kuhnau (and some others...) had done shows respect for the ideas of his predecessor, but equally that from a musical perspective he thought he had something better to offer.
The only place where he seems to have adopted some of his predecessor's music is this motet (... but then the original doesn't fit well in Kuhnau's oeuvre, while above the average quality of that oeuvre)

Just jotted down some ideas from memory, would it be a good idea to explore this in reliable sources and add something about it to this article? --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:08, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add. In the audition cantata, it's mentioned already that Bach possibly composed the closing chorale in the style of his predecessor, possibly intentionally so, with sources. To add this would make more sense in an article called "(Kuhnau)" than "attributed ...". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:48, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, it exactly explains why the attribution to Kuhnau is tenuous. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:25, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Then perhaps better take the Bach - Kuhnau relationship to a piece which is certainly by Kuhnau, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:29, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The explanation of why the attribution to Kuhnau is tenuous is useful for the current article. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:05, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agony?

Agony in the Garden is obviously a term for something happening in this same garden, but is it really the topic of this text and this music? I don't see agony. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:21, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It originally read an episode from the Passion: maybe we're still getting a little bit ahead of things, but if you look at the lede WP defines Agony in the Garden much more broadly than Christ's agony at Gethsemane ;-P Sparafucil (talk) 06:22, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I looked, but the specific piece has no agony, do you have an idea about a pipe link, because agony is misleading? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:12, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]