Talk:Music of the Trecento

Comment

Much of the current literature presents the Robertsbridge Codex as English (for instance the article Sources of keyboard music to 1660, §2: Individual sources in the New Grove). I would minimize its appearance in this article in favor of the Faenza codex. (Great start, Antandrus!). (Myke Cuthbert -- from before I remembered to sign) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mscuthbert (talk • contribs) 12:49, 17 February 2006

GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. Agne 03:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Trecento notation and rhythm

It may be just too early in the morning for me, but this article doesn't seem to present or address the fact that Trecento music was notated in a rhythmically precise manner, like Ars Nova notation. Should it? Or should it link to some discussion of it in another article? Thoughts? Dunkelweizen (talk) 11:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

There's a lot to be done with trecento notation in this article, which hasn't really been addressed. I don't know of any freely available discussion of trecento notation on the web that could be linked to (except chapter 3 of my [undergraduate thesis], long obsolete and with several embarrassing errors), so it'll basically need to be rewritten from scratch. Generally, trecento notation is considered to be an ars nova notation, and we use "French ars nova" to distinguish the other notation from the Italian types.

Wow, you are highly qualified to work with this topic!!! (Just saw your page.) Over the next few months I may contribute on notation. I'm in the middle of my dissertation now, though, on a very different topic, so my participation will be minimal. Dunkelweizen (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment! Though, actually in some ways working professionally on the topic makes me less qualified to work on this since I have a hard time separating what's been published (RS) vs. what's common knowledge in the field but no one has actually put down on paper yet; and that doesn't even get into the problems of me thinking my opinions are commonly accepted in the field.

I probably won't be contributing to this page much since I'm (supposed to be right now) co-authoring the article on Music of the Trecento for a print history of medieval music. Since I won't get any money for that, I'd sort of rather write it here, where it'd have a wider readership. But, I gotta do what the tenure board says I gotta do.  :) -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

(P.S. -- most of the notation of trecento music information in Apel is still accurate and can be used. The only major change in recent scholarship shows how syncopation across the barline was not impossible, but rather common and commonly indicated via one-pitch ligatures and other devices. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC))

Removal of motet

The motet Ypocrite / Et Gaudebit is not part of the trecento musical style, so I've removed it from this article. It could be placed in articles on ars antiqua music or Notre Dame. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

You are correct -- thank you. I hadn't noticed its addition. It's Notre Dame. Antandrus (talk) 17:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Music of the Trecento/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

Starting GA reassessment as part of the GA Sweeps process. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:25, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Checking against GA criteria

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose):

   b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references):

   • Large swathes of the article are unreferenced, so it will be delisted. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

   b (citations to reliable sources):

   • Assume Good Faith. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

   c (OR):

   • Possibly, unl;ess all statements are referenced. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its scope.

   a (major aspects):

   b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):

   b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   • Large amount of completely unreferenced statements. Delisted. Informing major contributors and projects. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:37, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I need to ask how someone can know whether an article follows NPOV if the assessor doesn't know any of the points of view on the topic? If he or she hasn't read any of the sources cited and doesn't know the field how do he or she know that the article doesn't present fringe views that no medieval musicologist would ever agree with? Assessments should be done by people who can tell if the article is Original Research or not even if all the sources are removed. It's not at all bad to say that someone might not be qualified to assess a particular article. I know that I'm not qualified for 99.9(99?)% of WP's articles; maybe the GAR squad can focus their energies on contacting people outside WP who might be able to assess and help improve an article. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:46, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

• I personally don't care enough since I think GA is an irrelevancy, but if you want to keep this as GA (again why bother), just go slap on refs to the relevant generica from the Cambridge or Groves series. That is more than sufficient for these GA drive-bys. They are rarely qualified enough to check more in-depth references and should be more than placated. Eusebeus (talk) 22:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
• Hi, please bring this to WP:GAR if you disagree with the assessment which was made against the criteria at WP:GACR which have changed significantly since the article was first promoted. If much of the article was sourced from one book, then that needs to be made clear with in-line citations, specifying page numbers. If statements, paragraphs and whole sections are unreferenced, then it is not possible to determine if WP:OR was involved, which is what I said above. Wikipedia articles are written for the general reader, they should be able to go to the library and check the books or articles to determine if the statements are supported. WP:GACR states: (a) it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;. As large parts of this article failed that criterion, it was de-listed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

General Comment I know you boys have adduced your own criteria, but that's why I say who cares. Where in the how-to review process does it state that reviewers should have some kind of general knowledge of the subject in order to be able to make an assessment in the first place? Nowhere. That's why the GA has no credibility. Before you reviewed this article, did you think "hmm, I should go to Groves or the New Cambridge to bone up on the topic?" Doubt it, right? Look, I can slap a reference for something like

Greater independence of voices was characteristic of the music of this generation, and points of imitation are common; in addition, the uppermost voice is often highly ornamented. Landini's music was particularly admired for its lyricism and expressive intensity: his fame has endured for six hundred years, and numerous contemporary recordings exist of his work.

but how, exactly, are you going to be in any kind of position to determine whether my reference is itself reflective of the mainstream view? Are you familiar with what does and does not constitute the main academic resources in this particular field? Likely no. So what we have are reftag beancounters who hide behind the bogus principle of the "general reader". Textbooks are written for the general reader, but they are not edited or peer-reviewed by them. Before you decided to delist, did you pass by the Classical Music project to ask if any of the participants - including a number of editors who have musicological training - could take a look to see if the content was controversial or inaccurate or incomplete? Again no. You counted up the ref tags and said "hmmm not enough references, imma delist."

Frankly, these GAR's would be more credible if we had reviewers that were capable of providing some kind of content-driven responses (i.e. claim 'x' remains a matter of conjecture) rather than simply counting up the number of ref tags. In that event, your more general plaint regarding lack of cites would be received more sympathetically. Note, btw, I am not attacking you specifically; this is a problem with GA in general. I have actually done GA assessments but stopped after I realised that the whole thing was a waste of time b/c of the lack of even suggesting some kind of knowledge in the review process.

I appreciate your good faith in these efforts, but reviewing a topic about which you have no specific knowledge when a number of editors who do have that knowledge have worked on it comes across as so much rudeness and the GA folks should know better. Eusebeus (talk) 23:14, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

According to the article assessment guidelines: a C = "The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material." Please indicate what important content is missing or what material is irrelevant before assigning this rating. I'd really like to know, was it too much emphasis on the early northern development of the madrigal? Not enough discussion of exactly when tempus equivalence became prolatio equivalence? What was it exactly about the material in the article that jumped out at the assessment team as inadequate? -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 22:08, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Not again! -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:58, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

"Citation needed" tags

I object to riddling this article with "fact" tags. I have listed all the sources from which I wrote this article, and there is nothing whatsoever controversial about the statements so tagged. Remember we need to serve our readers and meta-tags are for editors; "fact" tags are disruptive and completely unnecessary unless they apply to genuinely controversial statements. It's idiotic to repeat the same footnote over and over again. Antandrus (talk) 20:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

When the same question arose at a FAR of an article I had written, I humoured them and did this to it. I gave up on article assessments of this kind when the result was considered an improvement! It is completely false to say that sentences without citations are unreferenced: they are only unreferenced if you can't be bothered to check.

I completely agree with Antandrus. Furthermore, the calibre of the process and the relevance of the criteria show themselves at fault when an evaluation fails to discern that this is a good article. --RobertG ♬ talk 21:30, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed; there's nothing in the article that is disputed by anyone who works in the Trecento or who has worked anytime in the past 40 years. The article is more than adequately sourced, as the Hoppin book's Trecento section covers 95% of the text and those places where the information post-dates, contradicts, or goes into more detail than Hoppin are all cited. It is possibly neither Antandrus nor Wikipedia's best article, but it is certainly a very good short article on the topic, covering all main points from musical, codicological, and historical perspectives. But then again, how would I know what good writing about the Trecento looks like? Sorry, GAR people, but the quality of Antandrus's writing about Medieval and Renaissance music was one of the things that lured me into Wikipedia and convinced me that it could be a really useful scholarly and teaching tool. Use his articles as your new model of what a GA can be. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:39, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Call me overly pragmatic, but if a statement is really uncontroversial, its usually pretty easy to find a published source that has said the same thing (or something similar) and add a citation just to remove the tag. Even if I think that was citation was not actually "needed", its just less effort to add a ref than to put up a fight. In such cases, I'll not waste time with exact page numbers... and cite and entire range of pages or a full chapter and with a good source and named references and can often get rid of a big chunk of them in one pass. Again, perhaps I'm being overly pragmatic.DavidRF (talk) 22:23, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Pragmatism is one thing. The GAR process appears to be suggesting that anyone with curiosity about this subject is led to think that the information was plucked from thin air, and that they are not given enough resources to explore further, neither of which is true here. That is in quite a different league, when in my view a process makes an ass of itself, and pragmatism becomes dumb compliance with useless standards. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indeed! The point is that the whole "History" section could be cited to any number of books and articles including various ones already in the article (Hoppin; Yudkin; my & Nádas's introduction). That would free up individual sections to cite more specialized literature (Strohm for the late period) and leave sentence-level citations to draw attention to actually controversial statements. We can use citations in general and these points in particular to encourage further investigation by the reader rather than to suggest that it's hopeless because there's nothing more worth reading. I believe it's better just to cite once a good study of the music of Landini, to encourage people to get a more in-depth narrative there than cite every sentence with a different page number as if encouraging readers to use the sources only as a fact checks for WP. But I think ultimately it's about a lack of respect for article writers and their expertise. When someone slaps a {{fact}} tag on "Dating these sources has proven difficult" without even doing a quick Google search to see if it's not cited because it's obvious, it has a taste of intellectual laziness of the sort that encyclopedias should seek to remove, not cultivate. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 15:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)