Talk:Jacqueline du Pré

Biography assessment rating comment

WikiProject Biography Summer 2007 Assessment Drive

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 23:32, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Original work?

English cellist, regarded as one of the most talented cello performers in the world. She started her cello studies at an early age and conducted a brilliant carrier, playing in famous concert halls and winning several prestigious awards. In 1967, her marriage to pianist Daniel Barenboim brought one of the most fruitful relationships in the world of music, shown by the many performances with her husband as pianist or orchestra conductor. In 1973, the passionate sound of her cello would decline when she started to loose sensibility in her fingers. It was the start of multiple sclerosis, disease that increasingly deteriorated her health until her death, at 42 years old.

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Is this article original work? -- Zoe

I can't help wondering if the article comes at least partly from liner notes from one of du Pré's records. Phr 02:54, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The significance of du Pré's position among cellists

This section seems to have gone a bit over the top. I certainly agree that there should be discussion of her significance and how good a cellist she is regarded as having been, but the language here seems to be veering towards a hagiography. I wonder if it could be adjusted somewhat? I am not by the way suggesting that some NPoV-crusading extermist should stop by and kill the paragraph stone dead, as they so often do: merely that it needs toning down a bit and perhaps rendering a little more encyclopaedic in its approach. 138.37.188.109 07:33, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Discography?

Yoyo Ma's article gives a discography. Shouldn't this one?

Passing on legendary instruments?

Hey can one of you music wizzes explain musicians passing on their instruments to other musicians? (i.e. du Pre's davidov to Ma) Do they sell it? or do they just give away their prized instruments as a part of some noble tradition or implicit code of musicians? Taco325i 19:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know the answer in this specific case, but I would imagine that as the instrument was a gift, it was passed on as a bequest. The financial value placed on the finest old Italian instruments nowadays makes it difficult or impossible for a talented young player to purchase one. Players will often have instruments loaned to them by wealthy collectors (who would far rather the instrument was used than have it sitting in a vault), or sometimes, indeed, given to them, as in this case. Some, including myself, would argue that an instrument of this type never actually belongs to the player anyway, being merely held in trust during his or her lifetime. --Stephen Burnett 13:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

unlikely

"The younger daughter of a well-to-do, cultured, competitive family, du Pré was 4 years old when she heard the cello for the first time, on the radio"

Perhaps what is meant is that this is her first memory of cello. If they're so damn cultured, she would have heard cello many times before age four, or, like my kids, at far less than a year. The sentence is laughable.

What right have you to criticize her? She's a brilliant cellist, whether or not her parents took their time to introduce her to cello before age 4. You have to take into consideration the time period in which she was born--there were no "Baby Beethoven" CDs in 1945. --67.20.105.37 01:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with User 67.20.105.37 - seriously, you have no right to say that age of four is too old. --Gautam3 05:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

This is the way the incident is recounted in Genius in the Family. Four years is not a long time, and it seems to me quite possible du pre might have managed to miss encountering the cello in this particular set of four years--especially considering that infants (she would have been an infant for a significant part of these four years) are discouraged from attending concerts. On the other hand, it may be that she just never noticed the cello before. TheScotch (talk) 09:19, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Another possibility is that du Pre was four years old the first time she heard a cello playing a solo part (as in a cello concerto), which would not be so unlikely. I clearly remember that when I listened to orchestral recordings at that age I couldn't distinguish different instruments except during the solos, even though I had been exposed to classical music since infancy and had begun violin lessons at the age of three. Du Pre may have heard cellos before as part of an orchestra, but quite possibly had never heard one as the featured instrument until that day. 184.229.0.134 (talk) 04:49, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean "another possibility"? It would be of course understood that the bit that caught the young Jackie's attention almost surely had to have been some kind of cello solo, not necessarily in a cello concerto. TheScotch (talk) 11:50, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to have been understood as a matter of course by the person who originally began this thread: "If they're so damn cultured, she would have heard cello many times before age four, or, like my kids, at far less than a year." That person is judging solely on whether she would have heard a cello at all. --198.209.9.195 (talk) 00:06, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

"Well-to-Do"

I am not sure that "well-to-do" classifies Ms. du Pre's early life. Her parents were humble people -- her mother taught (and played) piano. As for competitive and cultured, these are so subjective I wonder where the sources came from. Whether or not those are true, it doesn't detract from Ms. du Pre's genius, and furthermore, the addition of it makes it sound like she was forced into it.

--Gautam3 05:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

cfd for image

the image Image:Jacquelinedupredavidoff.jpg is under review for deletion, and it would be a pity to loose it. if anyone can provide a source, it would be great. --emerson7 | Talk 21:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

1973-1987

The chronology of her life is spread across several sections. It misses out the period from 1973-1987. Presumably she received treatment for her condition at home, or in a hospital, but it does not say. The article states that she was given an OBE in 1976, and that at the 1977 BRIT Awards she won an award; did she appear at either event? Was the 1977 BRIT award for an archive recording, or had she continued to perform and record? Was she aware of these events? The article implies that she became unresponsive in 1973 and spent the next fourteen years incommunicado. -Ashley Pomeroy 12:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Phrasing change

"However, during the early onset of MS, Daniel Barenboim abandoned the emotionally needy Jacqueline du Pré for a young Russian pianist Elena Bashkirova..." The phrasing of this sentence (e.g. "abandoned") paints a rather unsightly portrait of Barenboim. The sentence does not need to be deleted, just rephrased a bit. --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 03:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Defaultsort

Can we have a discussion about this?

Yesterday, I made it "Dupre, Jacqueline". Reason: Her surname was "du Pré", and she should always appear in the Ds in a list, not in the Ps. Prior to my change, she was appearing in categories under P, which is what prompted me to fix it. I didn't make it "Dupré, Jacqueline", because for the purposes of sorting in English, diacritics are ignored; and there's a possibililty that someone has the surname "Dupre" and the given name William, which means that Jacqueline du Pré would appear after William Dupre in a list, which would be absurd.

Impy4ever has reverted this, with the following note:

• The name has an obvious French origin. "Du" in French is the equivalent for "of the" in aristocratic names, testifying the fact that some ancestor owned land in a region called Le (=The) Pre or something like that. Compare with name of Josquin des Prez, it is even possible that they have a common ancestor. Since English names containing "of" between the name & surname (X of Y) are sorted following the model "Y, X of" and not "of Y, X", there's no reason for using another version but "Pre, J. du". Even if we call her "du Pre" when not saying the whole name, she is the Jacqueline OF Pre. Joan of Arc corresponds to letter "A", despite the fact that her English name is Joan OF Arc, and the original French is Joan d'Arc (=DE Arc).

My response: The origin of her name, and whatever it might mean in its original language, is utterly irrelevant. Under what circumstances did we ever think of her as "Jacqueline OF Pré"? Answer: None. For all intents and purposes, her surname may as well have been spelled "Dupré", and if it had actually been spelled that way, 100% of people would classify her under D, including the French. The fact that it wasn't spelled exactly that way is irrelevant. Regardless of its origins, it is now effectively a double-barrelled unhyphenated English surname, like Vaughan Williams. He's not "Williams", but "Vaughan Williams". She's not "Pré", but "du Pré". -- JackofOz (talk) 01:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Late thought. Back in the days when public figures were referred to as Mr A, Mrs B, and Miss C (there weren't many Ms Ds around then), was she ever referred to as "Miss Pré"? I very much doubt it. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I notice that someone (I didn't check who) has changed the Defaultsort to "du Pré, Jacqueline", and appended the above note (The name has an obvious French origin ...). This has no consensus. I noticed it when I was searching for something else, and found Jacqueline du Pré sorted at the very end of the names in the category - after the Zs!! I think that is an absurd way to show her. Hilary du Pré appears in the Ds, and so should Jacqueline.

Please do not change this without discussing it here first. -- JackofOz (talk) 05:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Brit Awards

Hi. I've added a "fact" tag to the bit about the Brit Awards, which says "At the 1977 BRIT Awards, she won the award for the best classical soloist album of the past 25 years for Elgar's Cello Concerto.". It was added some time ago so it's withstood the test of time, certainly, but it you have a look at our own article The BRIT Awards you see that they don't seem to have been called that in 1977, which is somewhat troubling. If it were just changed to say "BPI Awards" (or whatever exactly they were called - we don't seem to know!) would it then be true? I don't know, which is why I've asked for a reference which would help to nail it. Best wishes, DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered (talk) 17:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Controversial book and film

is copied from another article - Someone with subject knowledge should revise it or it should be deleted — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.128.26 (talk) 21:18, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The whole section "Book and Film" is inappropriate and should be deleted. There's a place for book reviews and there's a place for film reviews. If this material belongs in Wikipedia at all, its place would be in the article(s) about the author(s) of the book and the film. "The memoir's content in general remains factually unsupported and disputed" - stated in the "Book and Film" section. So why is it here? Does anyone have any good reason why this section should not be deleted? Sayitclearly (talk) 20:57, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

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"... of all time"

These sort of epithets are silly for instrumental virtuoso's in Classical music. All we have are recordings going from dubious quality pre-1940 to contemporary digital performances from the past - trying to judge musicians before this time is an exercise in futility, since the written records on them are often sparse and/or biased. Du Pré was a rare talent and definitely one of the greatest of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Let's just leave it at that. 50.111.1.232 (talk) 17:36, 8 December 2020 (UTC)