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Schubert's last sonatas: Interested in your opinion

I am considering embarking on a GA review of Schubert's last sonatas. Before I do so, I wanted to hear your opinion about a misgiving I have about this article. It is an excellent article, comprehensive, well-written, well-documented. But is it suitable for Wikipedia? There is much in it that could not be understood by a general reader without musical training. Much of the material is, for a reader without an in-depth knowledge of the pieces or a earphones on his head with the music playing in the background, mere verbiage - you have to have the musical examples to appreciate it. It has more the character of a master's thesis (I wouldn't be surprised if that's what it was originally) than of an article in a general encyclopedia.

What do you think? Is this an issue in your mind, is it something that I should raise in the review, and should it influence the outcome? Is it something worthy of wider discussion? Or should we all wish that every article had this depth and thoroughness? --Ravpapa (talk) 14:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Excellent article - I hadn't come across it before. Largely Gidip's work? Why not go for FA rather than GA? I think it's suitable for Wikipedia. Given its subject, I don't think it's too technical, rather the reverse, it provides indepth information for the typical reader who will, as a matter of course, be listening to the music.

My only reservation is over the structuring of the information. My normal preference is for one work/one article rather than for articles that deal with clusters of works, however I'm not familiar with the Schubert articles, so I don't know how the others are organized. Maybe this is no problem here, especially given the quality of the material?

I'm going to refer this to MagicPiano. He's been working both on Schubert and on Composers' assessments so I think he will be best placed to advise on this. Best. --Kleinzach 00:08, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I've been just occasionally watching what Gidip has done; the article is definitely interesting (at least to a pianist like me :). It's certainly at a point where a GA is unlikely to quick-fail (unless something is wrong with the images, which seems unlikely). FA, I suspect, is another kettle of fish -- FA reviewers expect the article to sparkle, and be accessible to someone otherwise unfamiliar with the technical language of the subject. (This is a judgment based on reviews and commentary I have read, not personal experience with the FA process; I have not sheperded any articles through FA.) Ravpapa is correct to point out that this is a potential problem.

I don't know what experience Gidip has with the review processes; his user page lists no GA/FA accomplishments. I don't think I would recommend anyone who's not done at least one GA or A-class review (for those projects that do them), as well as a peer review, to attempt FA. (They should also read the FA archives for reviews of articles similar to those they want to nominate, to see the sorts of criticisms and work that review process entails.)

As far as having 3 works in one article: the case is made in the lead (and I think justified in the body) that they are worthy of treatment together. GA (IMHO) ought not argue with the length of the article, unless it is really burdensome; FA might, in which case the article would need to be split in 4: 3 sonatas, plus one for the discussion of the cylic aspects that unite them. Necessary? beats me. There are many short, stubby articles about single works that might actually benefit from having a more detailed treatment in conjunction with related works -- many musicologists write essays this way.

Ravpapa mentions concern about "having to have musical examples". This is probably a valid concern -- the music notation and words only convey part of the story. A truly rich exposition of this sort of material arguably must contain comparative samples. Having been to any number of pre-concert lectures, I know that the better ones use clips to make their points in a way that the speaker cannot. This would also make the material accessible to people who can't read music.

I've rambled enough; hopefully I've helped. Magic♪piano 05:17, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, I'll go ahead with the GA review. --Ravpapa (talk) 12:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Later: you can read the review here. Thanks again. --Ravpapa (talk) 14:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

List of operas by Rossini and other lists

Yes, I'm interested. Looking at the lists for 3 random composers (Mozart - FL, Rameau and Pacini), I notice that there doesn't seem to be anything resembling a standard format. My tidy (well, sometimes) mind feels that there ought to be. Is there anything I should look at before leaping in?

Some other things, while I'm here:

• I'm intending to sign up for assessing (some) composers, but I still have a lot of non-WP things going on.
• My talk page: I'm archiving them once a year, around the end of December.
• Do you know about ArticleAlertbot? If not, have a look at WPO Talk.
• Season's greetings!

--GuillaumeTell 19:05, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy Christmas - very white here, but it's an ordinary day not a holiday.

I've been using existing material (in the English, Dutch, German, French and Italian wikis) - I'm not a great typist - hence the inconsistency. (I've been using a word processor to do global search and replace etc.) Michael Bednarek has been helping with sorting tags (which you will see if you look at the text in edit mode, e.g. {{Hs|Bertati}}) but so far I haven't found a way of reversing columns (for a consistent order across the set of articles) except 'by hand'. (Another factor is the subject matter, a list of Vivaldi operas is different in many respects from one of a 20th century composer.)

I'd be delighted if you like to look at the whole set and make suggestions for standardizing (to a great or lesser extent) the format. --Kleinzach 23:40, 24 December 2008 (UTC) P.S. I know about ArticleAlertbot - I've recommended it to the Composers Project. --Kleinzach 23:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I have developed a tool in Visual Basic (VBA) which (almost) fully automates the insertion of {{Hs|yyyy-mm-dd}} from the existing text; I further constructed a macro in my text editor of choice (TextPad) which takes a highlighted section and puts it in a {{Hs}} template; this allows for the quick generation of sort terms for titles, e.g. {{Hs|turco}} for Il turco in Italia. This way, my last edit to List of operas by Rossini took about 10 minutes.

That's terrific. . . .--Kleinzach 00:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

After reading the above comment about the potential need for re-ordering table columns, I developed a further tool in VBA to do that; the only effort required is a copy/paste of the Wiki table code into Microsoft Excel, entering the new column order, and a copy/paste back into the Wikipedia editing window. So: if and when you agree on a new column order for a table, let me know and I am happy to do it. (I would publish the code on my talk page, but it's not ready for that; for a start, I would have to translate it into a Windows Script File using VBScript — I have looked at that and it would take much, much more time to port it than it took me to write the current code. On the other hand, if anybody should ask me for what I have, I'm happy to show my code.) Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:29, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

That's very helpful. GT is now reviewing the lists as a whole, so we should be able to establish a basic column order. --Kleinzach 00:56, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Driven by festive boredom and ambition, I ported my column-reordering tool to VBS: User:Michael Bednarek/WTROC. Still, I suspect not every Wikipedia editor specialising in opera subjects is necessarily interested in running command-line utilities, so my offer to perform any required re-ordering still stands. Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

One thing I meant to ask you: can we remove the English translations from the table? These were originally on the biography page, but they don't always correspond with the ones used on the opera pages and in any case the other tables don't have them. --Kleinzach 00:46, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

English titles of Rossini operas - yes, I agree that they should go. As for the global picture, I'll look through all of the existing lists and see what I can come up with. And thanks in advance to Michael for his help. --GuillaumeTell 18:42, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. (This is becoming very productive!) I'll start adding librettists to this list. --Kleinzach 00:51, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Amidst other festive season distractions, I've been making an Excel table of the various "List of operas by ..." lists, and am about 3/4 of the way through. I have no problem with your adding librettists to the Rossini table, flagged up above, but I've discovered an alteration to Cherubini and the sudden appearance of Hindemith (Delibes next?). Any chance that you can hold off for, say, 24hr, so that I am not continually having to hit a moving target? Thanks. --GuillaumeTell 01:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Great. Yes, I will hold off until you've finished - nothing else in the pipeline. (I probably don't have information to make a table for Delibes.) --Kleinzach 02:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at User:GuillaumeTell/Lists of operas by composer spreadsheet and chew over my comments underneath the table. Feel free to comment there. BTW, the Opera Project ought to be consulted at some point. --GuillaumeTell 18:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Very thorough! I've agreed with most of your points. Unfortunately I'm not going to have much time to pursue this during the next week. . . Perhaps Michael would also like to comment? --Kleinzach 03:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I got the better conversion software that Michael recommended to work and have replaced the table with a better-formatted one. I've also added a few more comments and will produce a revised version of one of the tables (Rossini, possibly!) for inspection in a day or two. --GuillaumeTell 18:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm back now. I'm happy to work on Rossini with you - or another one if you prefer. --Kleinzach 06:38, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I've split the premiere date/venue column for Krenek into two, unilaterally reduced the "completed" dates (if more than one) to the later year and fiddled with some of the headings. I'll ask Michael B if he can rearrange the columns per his offer above. --GuillaumeTell 17:58, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Good. I've had a look at List of operas by Krenek. Splitting premiere date and venue is good, but I'm not so keen on changing the completion dates which were from Purkis (Grove). She probably had good reasons for giving 1967-9 for Sardokai and I don't think we should change them, unless we have another (better and more detailed) source to work from.

Purkis's dates are clearly dates of composition, not of completion. Completion self-evidently happened in the year of the later date, which is why I made the alterations. Interestingly, the Introduction in Vol 1 of Opera Grove (p.xvii) says that in lists of composers' works a) the date [sic] of composition follows the title but also b) "this is included only if the première is considerably later"(!) I can, of course, put back the multiple dates, but in that case we need to change the heading to "Date(s) of Composition". I'd be happy with "Composed", actually - less space occupied. Sidenote: are ANY of the "Completion" columns in the other tables actual completion dates, or are they all dates of composition? --GuillaumeTell 18:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at this. I'd favour 'Composed' here, sourced to Purkis. I think this would be more prudent and obviate any 'peculiar' challenges to the facts.

The Dutch tables generally have a far left column entitled 'Voltooid in' or 'Completed in' (e.g. [1] copied to List of operas by Pacini). These need to be checked on a case by case basis when we introduce sortability. In the case of Pacini (an unreformed, unsortable table) the completion dates appear to be identical to those of the premiere, so they should obviously be removed. --Kleinzach 22:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I also have a problem with the capitalization of '# of Acts/scenes'. This looks clumsy to me. 'Number of acts/scenes' would be OK but having these long column headings clutters up the top of the table IMO. 'Length' still seems a better option to me. Can we think of something else that we are both comfortable with? How about 'Structure'?

I really, really don't like "Length". Length would be "2hr 30 minutes" or whatever. "Structure" would be OK, or how about "Subdivisions" (though that widens the column). --GuillaumeTell 18:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

'Subdivisions' would be fine. Shall we go with that? --Kleinzach 22:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

P.S. There's also an aesthetic problem with the alignment of the sort switches but perhaps we can leave that until later? --Kleinzach 23:34, 5 January 2009 (UTC) P.S. I also think 'Completion' is better than 'Year completed' - because of spacing and also redundancy. --Kleinzach 23:51, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, but see above. --GuillaumeTell 18:49, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Otherwise, it all looks quite good to me. One thing I noticed when playing with the sort buttons was that none of the theatres are wikilinked - was that deliberate? --GuillaumeTell 18:55, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

No, I've been trying to wikilink librettists and theatres but I've probably missed quite a few. --Kleinzach 22:56, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

List of operas by Richard Strauss

I see you have now moved on to List of operas by Richard Strauss. Should we change 'Completed' to 'Composition'? --Kleinzach 00:07, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, if that's what the dates represent (I'm off to bed and haven't checked Grove yet). What I was trying to do was to create an Opus column, which seemed to work OK - except that MB has corrected the syntax (which I don't really understand - anywhere I should look for enlightenment?) but, more important, the first and last entries, which don't have Op #s, are there if you click Edit but don't appear in the actual table - obviously I've messed up somehow. --GuillaumeTell 01:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

OK. I've corrected this with a space instead of a hyphen. --Kleinzach 01:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Grove has specific composition dates so I've used these and added a genre column. Maybe it's complete except for moving the Composition column? --Kleinzach 02:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

List of operas by Adam (and other lists)

That's exactly what I've been doing. The first opera listed in Grove wasn't on the list, so I added it, the second one had the wrong theatre and a string of librettists not in the Grove list (I've left them in pro tem, but the Scribe article doesn't mention this work), the third had an incorrect title, and there are three or four operas preceding it in Grove that need to be added. Oh, and the genre link to vaudeville wasn't quite as bad as the Lucidor link in the Strauss list, but ... well, you take a look. So it looks like a long job.

If in doubt, I'd trust Grove. --Kleinzach 06:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I was wondering whether to include the Critical Edition numbers (I/viii, etc.) shown in Grove in a "CE" column for Rossini, and also what to do about Ciro in Babilonia which was written first but premiered fourth or fifth - a "Completed" column would duplicate all the premiere years except for this one, but it would locate it accurately. --GuillaumeTell 02:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm certainly in favour of including the CE numbers.

Re the 'Ciro' question, this is a question that comes up repeatedly in one form or another. IMO we are basically using premiere order in most, if not all the tables, so we should follow this. If there are a lot of anomalies in a table we can put in a Notes column for them, but if there are only one or two we can just stick in a note in parentheses in another column (title or premiere?). You'll see I've done this sometimes. (BTW I've removed the Completion column completely from List of operas by Spontini and List of operettas by Ziehrer.)

OK - premiere, probably. --GuillaumeTell 18:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you think we should have a 'To do' style cleanup list for the articles? --Kleinzach 07:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean a standard list, such as "Check all lists against Grove", "Split premiere date and venue into two columns", "Rearrange columns into standard order"? Or table-specific things? I didn't discover the Adam problems until I started working on the list. --GuillaumeTell 18:38, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe article by article? Listing things that have to be done and then signing off (strike through?) when the table has been checked? So we might have an entry like: List of operas by Splendini: divide premiere dates and places, add librettists, add sort tags to titles. Would that work? --Kleinzach 01:23, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds OK. I can certainly do one for Adam! Would such lists be located somewhere central or on the Talk page of each list?

I'd prefer somewhere central (see below). --Kleinzach 00:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

And talking of Adam, I'm quite busy with Real life at present, so I have this feeling that it's going to take ages to get anywhere near finishing his operas, let alone getting on to composers that I'm actually interested in or creating new lists. I can either

• just go straight to Gluck, Rossini et al and then get back to the alpha list, or
• do a quick List vs Grove survey for each list and note the To Do things, or
• start building new lists of prolific but important composers (i.e. not people like Gassmann!) such as Britten, Verdi, Donizetti, Puccini, Janacek, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Smetana, Bellini .... or, of course,

I've done Bellini, see Vincenzo_Bellini#Operas. There are other lists, though usually in a poorer state, in other biographies.--Kleinzach 00:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

• mix 'n match among the above

--GuillaumeTell 17:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

(Thank you for the informative link to 'Real life'!) Maybe it's more important to be organized than fast with this? These tables are a big step forward from what existed before, but it will take time to get them all up to a unified standard. I think we might do an article by article 'To do' list first. That will also be useful for Michael if he wants to work on this. So is that OK, and should we put the 'To do' list at User:GuillaumeTell/Lists of operas by composer spreadsheet or make a new page? --Kleinzach 00:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Another thing. I'm wondering whether we should use 'Place' rather than 'Venue' since we are always listing the city? What do you think? --Kleinzach 01:59, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

'Place/Theatre'? In case people creating other lists just put the city even when the theatre is known? I'm certainly not wedded to 'Venue', which sounds like a pop concert, but Place just seems rather bald, and, after the Dark Ages of opera, most of the theatres will be known. 'City' isn't a runner, as places like Aldeburgh aren't cities. --GuillaumeTell 17:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

'Place/Theatre' then? At least it's clear and unambiguous.--Kleinzach 00:41, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

List of operas by Pacini

I'm getting close to working on the List of operas by Pacini; do you want me to combine the four tables into one? Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem with this one is that I've only done the genre column for the first table. Were you intending to do the genres for the following tables or do you want me to do them? It's a big one of course . . . --Kleinzach 13:04, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't intending on adding the genres, but I can add an empty column for the time being, if you want. Join all four? Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, but I may not get the genres done for a while (with the ongoing Brecht distractions etc.). I also need to do the 'To do list' for all of these. Are you going to split the premiere dates and places for Pacini? --Kleinzach 13:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I always split premiere dates & places when I encounter them. I'm currently working on Piccinni and I expect to finish that early tonight. After that I'll reorder Hasse which I unexplicably forgot, and then attack Pacini which might take 2 or 3 days (I need to look at something else occasionally to keep me amused). Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

To do list

I've started a 'To do' list at User:Kleinzach/Lists of operas. Please annotate, strikeout etc. --Kleinzach 14:10, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of List of compositions by Simon Mayr

I have nominated List of compositions by Simon Mayr, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of compositions by Simon Mayr. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. THF (talk) 14:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Chocolate-Soldier German synopsis

I would suggest putting, under "Synopsis", a subheader (triple "===") titled as "German variation" for that plot. Under that subheader, either summarize the total plot, or just note the differences. Because wiki-spoiler tags were outlawed, many people have learned to expect plot-details to be revealed under "Synopsis", so I would keep all plot details within that overall section, in case someone was planning to attend the opera for the first time, without spoiling the ending. Because the German Wikipedia is the 2nd largest, there is a growing interest in the German variations of many topics. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)