Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Contemporary music task force/Archive 1

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Experimental art (Proposed rename “Contemporary music”) discussion from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals

Description (summary)

Project Experimental art would work to improve all pages related to experimental art or artists. This could include concert and popular music, theory (music or visual), literature, dance, theater, film, visual arts, architecture, and performance art.

Description (longer version)

This is a Wikiproject focusing on everything relating to experimental (or avant-garde) in the arts. This project would cover a huge number of some of the most overlooked pages on Wikipedia. Articles like 20th century classical music which is littered with “citation needed” tags, Modernist poetry an article composed of only four sentences, List of atonal pieces which is actually a list of several modern composers, 20th century concert dance which is only a stub, and Experimental theatre which is tagged for “tone not be appropriate for Wikipedia.” The range of Project Modernist art would cover pages describing concepts, techniques or theory’s, art movements, people, works of art, and lists (of artists or works).

This project now has its own page. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music.

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. S.dedalus 00:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Freshacconci 00:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
3. Antandrus (talk) 04:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
4. Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 16:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
5. Doktor Who (talk · contribs) 11:40, 04 September 2007 (UTC)

• How will we determine the time-period to consider as modernist? Freshacconci 00:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I’m thinking that perhaps I should have named this Experimental art to be more specific. . . As for time period, modernism or avant-guard as a philosophy hasn’t been around all that long. Perhaps it would be sufficient simply to define it as any art which is currently considered to contain an experimental element. --S.dedalus 01:07, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• Modernist art implies visual art, Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts which does work on. There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary Art, FYI. Tyrenius 01:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
• In my opinion Modernist art continues, there are reactions to it, reactions against it, offshoots from it, new approaches, evolutions and progressions but the mainstream continues to play out. Modernist 01:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
• I'm a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts, which is an important project. Modernist 01:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

That’s true, I think Experimental art is a better name since this is really about all mediums (I was thinking Modernism. Modernist is wrong.). My way of looking at it is that this could be a subproject of Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary Art. Experimental and avant-guard art is a unique form of contemporary art because it is concerned with a philosophy of rejecting old traditions and experimenting with new methods, whereas there are many contemporary artists who focus exclusively on older ideas and styles. I also think there are enough problems with these pages that two projects would not be unnecessary. However, that’s what I’m gauging with this proposal. --S.dedalus 03:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• I'm sorry but I don't think I'm interested in this project. Modernist 05:05, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for looking it over though. :-) --S.dedalus 05:24, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• I think visual art is effectively covered and it would be better for this project to do the equivalent in music. Tyrenius 06:42, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with Tyrenius. I also will probably not be able to contribute much for a while...--Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 16:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

That’s fine by me. Is this consensus then? Wikiproject Contemporary music? --S.dedalus 19:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Template

Being relatively new here I’ not an expert with such complicated templates. I would appreciate it if someone with more experience than I could set up the project template correctly. It can then be saved in template space. (Note the current template is a modification of Template:Genre.) --S.dedalus 05:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Opinion

Its been argued elsewhere that any project should try to have one, or if necessary more than one, specific categories in which all the articles relevant to it could/should be placed. Adding a more formal declaration of the scope of the project along those lines might not be a bad idea. John Carter 14:41, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Related projects

Maybe I've found my new home, but there are some things going on elsewhere you might find interesting. Besides the current composers of the month at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera (well, at least I remember when Krenek was contemporary- Antandrus, do you know his Ockeghem books?), it's looking like there will be a Divas of the avant-guard singers of the month project in December. Sparafucil 02:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

Hey everybody, I’m working on creating a project userbox for those who like them. Here’s my proposal. I’m using an image of part of Schoenberg's Op. 11 No. 1 as the image for all these templates since it seems to me to be one of the single most symbolic work of 20th century music (as the first of Schoenberg truly “atonal” works). I also tried to create a design that would be both eye caching and a bit contemporary looking.

This user is a member of WikiProject Contemporary music

Comments? Suggestions? --S.dedalus (talk)
It's going on my user page! Matt.kaner (talk) 11:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Matt! If no one objects I’ve created the template page for the box and listed it on our mainpage. See {{Template:User WikiProject contemporary music}} --S.dedalus (talk) 22:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

How does one fit this in with one's language boxes (as, for example, on my user page)? I tried putting it in there and it keeps showing up on the left, rather than at the bottom of the column of my language boxes. Thanks in advance for expert coding assistance (I don't have any) ;) Badagnani (talk) 22:06, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I had the same problem a little while back with userboxes. But after much head-scratching I solved it with the help of a neat CSS alignment fix I found on User:Giandrea's user page. --Bruce1ee ^talk 07:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

It's still showing up at the left side of my user page. How can I align it on the right, under my language boxes? Badagnani (talk) 08:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's what I did on my user page (with the help of User:Giandrea):

{{Babel|en|...}}
{{Userboxtop|toptext = <small>[[Wikipedia:Userboxes]]</small>|extra-css=clear:both;}}
{{...user box 1...}}
{{...user box 2...}}
{{Userboxbottom}}

I hope this helps. --Bruce1ee ^talk 08:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

John Adams article

If it's still available in February, I'm planning on making it a class project for my Music 1960-present class, to write it. If anyone wants to edit it, go ahead, but otherwise, it'll be done (extensively) by early March. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 00:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds great. Just remember the Wikipedia mantra: Document, document, document! (Oh, yes: and NOR).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:12, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I certainly envy your students who get to edit Wikipedia as part of their class! To echo Kohl, sounds great. I look forward to having a better article for this important composer. It’s a project I keep planning to do myself but never seem to have the time (and probably would never find the time). --S.dedalus (talk) 08:15, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

New category for music theory articles

I’ve created Category:Post-tonal music theory. By the way, does anybody know anything about Zeuxilogy? I don’t know if this is notable or not, but the article is currently incomprehensible and tagged as requiring an expert. --S.dedalus (talk) 00:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Zeuxilogy doesn't exactly sound like notable to me.. Google returns just 197 hits (excluding the homepage of the theory's author, as well as Wikipedia and its mirrors), and I reckon most are simple links to the theory's "homepage". There are no hits in books.google.com or scholar.google.com, and New Grove doesn't have articles on Zeuxilogy or Andrei Pogorilowski. Jashiin (talk) 16:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I have put it up for deletion. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zeuxilogy. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Pogorilowski (talk) 10:17, 12 January 2008 (UTC) Thank you for deleting the article. This kind of independent music theory thinking should be destroyed right away. It is an utter disgrace!

John Cage

I've been working on Cage-related articles for some time now (see the list on my user page) and I thought I'd mention it here if someone would like to help out. Of these articles, Sonatas and Interludes was promoted to GA status a couple of days ago and is currently undergoing FAC (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sonatas and Interludes). I've also started a major rewriting of the article John Cage – so far, the two first sections of "Life" are completed and I'm working on the third one. Basically, I'd like to bring John Cage and the articles on Cage's major works to GA/FA status in the coming couple of months.

I'd be particularly grateful if someone could check my grammar in all those articles, as English is my second language and with this amount of writing I think its more than likely that I made mistakes. Jashiin (talk) 17:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Great, I’ll try to help. I’m also writing articles for each of the five Imaginary Landscape pieces. I’ve posted Imaginary Landscape No. 1 and I’m working on No. 4, but I’ll probably have to pay a visit to the music library to find sources for the other three. --S.dedalus (talk) 08:02, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, thats just great! I've got a suggestion though, if you look at Talk:John Cage, we've discussed with RobertG that perhaps describing Cage's "series" in single articles (ie. all three "Constructions" in Construction (Cage), not First Construction, Second Construction etc) might be a good idea, at least for the time being. You can look at Construction (Cage) or Music for Piano (Cage) for an example, although of course its just a suggestion. Jashiin (talk) 09:19, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. I answered on Talk:John Cage since it’s hard to hold a coherent conversation on two talk pages at once. Cheers, --S.dedalus (talk) 03:06, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Project template

I think we need a template we can place on article talk pages. This will not only help with recruitment, it will also help us keep track of the articles within our scope. Here’s a draft I’ve done. What do you think?

Compare to similar templates like Template:WikiProject Music, Template:Composers, and Template:WikiProject Opera. --S.dedalus (talk) 03:25, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

This looks great! Can we add it to talk pages now? :) Jashiin (talk) 08:52, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. Any further changes that are made will be automatically updated for all transclusions after all. It might be nice to have that background color of the staves mach the rest of the box. The folks over at WikiProject Composers somehow did this with their template. It might not work with our template because of all the detail, but I’ll ask and see if it’s possible. --S.dedalus (talk) 03:36, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. I went through articles related to John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Olivier Messiaen and added the template to the talk pages. Its a start :) I had a problem inserting it into tables of the "this article is within the scope of multiple projects.. show/hide" variety; it just looked wrong, the width was wrong. I don't know if its my fault (I have no experience of this kind of tables) or something with the template. Jashiin (talk) 16:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I’ve asked the people over at WikiProject Templates to look over the design. They may be able to help work out any problems. The template worked fine in the nested format of Talk:Olivier Messiaen though right? It currently looks fine to me. Apparently there are also some bots that could help us tag large numbers of articles; could be worth looking into. --S.dedalus (talk) 21:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Um...the bot adding the template

While I have no issues with using a bot to add templates to articles, I have to wonder what the criteria was. Adding this project to composers like Cecile Chaminade and James Horner doesn't quite seem right to me, considering what this project is supposed to be about. I'm guessing it went through 20th and 21st century classical composer catagories... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed -- Can the bot revert itself until we figure out the proper criteria for inclusion? I don't think Horner or Chaminade should be included. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 04:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Haha, sorry about that. It's my fault. James Horner was with the Category:21st century classical composers category. We may have to do that one and the Category:20th century classical composers by hand. Can we revert the bot edits then rerun it without those two catigorys? Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 05:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - "Contemporary classical music" would most likely incorporate all but a few styles; I recommend keeping the scope of this project as wide as possible and not restricting to only the most avant-garde, but keeping to the wide definition of "contemporary classical music." Let's tag all composers within this category, and remove tags by hand, as necessary, for composers who are found to be verifiably not representing "contemporary classical music." Badagnani (talk) 08:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

For anyone who doesn’t know where this discussion of the bot work is happening please see WP:BOTREQ#Project Contemporary music pages

Badagnani brings up a good point. It’s essential that we define our goals here properly. Originally when I proposed this project I felt there was enough work needed just on subjects Lou Harrison would have called the “research and development” end of music. It doesn’t seem to me that early 20th century composers are really contemporary anymore (Ravel, Stravinsky, Mahler?). The second Viennese school and onwards would be how I would try to define it I guess. As Badagnani suggests we could leave it much more open to any 21st century composers of all styles, which will inevitably include many film score composers and so forth. Besides the possible interpretations of “contemporary music” I guess it kind of depends on whether it’s easier to remove tags or add tags. Perhaps instead of “experimental” we could define this as “art music” composers? Suggestions? --S.dedalus (talk) 00:58, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, this project is free to look at whatever articles it feels is appropriate! But in the light of the tag already having been removed from Puccini, Mahler, Nielsen and Debussy, I helpfully list these composers here: my own encounters with their music suggests that they may also possibly be too "conservative" or too "early" to be considered "contemporary". Perhaps you could review whether the {{contemporary music}} tag on their talk pages is appropriate? Xaver Scharwenka, Ronald Binge, William Lloyd Webber, Walford Davies, Vincent d'Indy, Sidney Torch, Selim Palmgren, Scott Joplin, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Roger Quilter, Richard Addinsell, Reynaldo Hahn, Oscar Straus (composer), Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Max Reger, Hubert Parry, Hugo Alfvén‎, Haydn Wood, Granville Bantock, Gabriel Fauré‎, Edward Elgar, Edmund Rubbra, Christian Sinding, Arthur Wood, Arthur Wills, Arnold Bax, Alexander Scriabin, Alexander von Zemlinsky? Others, like Donald Francis Tovey, who were influential may not have been "contemporary" themselves? Best wishes. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Of those mentioned, Stravinsky is definitely "contemporary," as his aesthetics of the 'teens (changing meters, clusters, "brutal" modernist aesthetic, even late use of 12-tone) still sound "modern" today. I agree with most of the others mentioned not being "contemporary" as well, as they represent an essentially 19th century aesthetic up to their last works, except Scriabin, whose latest works are also quite modernist. For film composers it would be a judgement call. I would say Michael Nyman, for example, is a contemporary composer (combining minimalism, rock, Baroque, postmodernism), and even someone like Ennio Morricone, whose film scores are somewhat schmaltzy/Romantic, also composes "serious," modernist music, though it is not well known. I'd also perhaps be cautious about removing all the British "traditionalists" like Malcolm Arnold, Rubbra, et al.--though their music might be tonal and accessible, it's hard to say that their music wasn't verifiably part of the 20th century, as many of them lived up to 1950 or further. Badagnani (talk) 08:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Your comments are exactly the problem with the whole thing. Morricone might have written beautiful romantic music for Cinema Paradiso and The Legend of 1900, but his music for Mission to Mars is quite modernist (to give a Hollywood example, there are MANY MANY others) -- so it's not just his concert music (so what I'm saying is, it's often hard to know unless you know more than the popular stuff what a composer has done). And Arnold? Yes he wrote a lot of light and conservative music, but a lot of his music, especially the symphonies, are very much in the 'contemporary' vein. On the flip side, it was added to Leroy Anderson, who is absolutely a 20th century composer...but he wrote pretty much only 'light music'. So yeah, it's all about a judgment call, I guess. Because even Henry Mancini wrote the score to Lifeforce... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:06, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think that we should avoid compositional aesthetic and keep to quantifiable goals and then break off to our own personal niches afterwards. I have been going arounnd tagging some articles for the project. I have noticed the bot is doing a fine job tagging what is relevant. VoxNovus (talk) 13:15, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - It's just a tool to help the improvement of contemporary music articles, so 5% of articles tagged of early-20th century folks who wouldn't really be of interest, I don't think is that big a problem, at least right now. Most others not working with this project would pretty much just ignore the tag anyway. Badagnani (talk) 16:37, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Further comment. As time goes on that X% of composers who are tagged but don’t really fit within the project will inevitably be narrowed down through consensus anyway. A more pressing concern is that we get a good idea of how much work is needed and where our efforts are best placed. (At some point it may be usefully to start assessing articles.)

I’d also like to point out that even composers that strictly speaking aren’t contemporary anymore may still fall within our scope if their music has had a great deal of influence on contemporary music. I believe the late works of Alexander Scriabin would qualify for instance. Concerning the film composers, I don’t see a huge problem with including them in the project. However, film composers and composers of light music tend to be relatively well edited already and I think this project should focus primarily on those topics which are really being neglected, namely avant-guard composers, performers, and music theory subjects. --S.dedalus (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Colored stat box--can we get one?

I think we need a colored stat box like this one. This gives a total number of tagged articles, and shows which are rated with which rating. How do we go about getting one? Badagnani (talk) 22:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that’s the assessment I was talking about above. We’ll need to modify the talk page template slightly to do that. I’m reading through Getting to work#Assessment and also WikiProject Council/Assessment FAQ which describe how to set this up. However I’m not very experienced with templates. Has anybody else done this before? We currently have about 2500 articles tagged. As the Wikiproject Guide points out, if we’re going to start assessing articles it’s essential that a large number of editors commit to a massive assessing job at the beginning. . . --S.dedalus (talk) 23:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I think we should also consider rating articles by importance of topic. --S.dedalus (talk) 23:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Hope we can get this going. Badagnani (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Can we get this going? Badagnani (talk) 02:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I see, it's listed at the "Assessment department" (Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Assessment). I was looking for the multicolored graph, as it exists at the main pages of other WikiProjects. Badagnani (talk) 02:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Stub template

I've created a template for modernistic composition stubs:
{{Modernistic-composition-stub}}

Comments? --S.dedalus (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

"Modernistic composition" is not an English construction I have ever heard, and don't believe it to be a good word choice. "Contemporary classical" (encompassing pretty much every contemporary style) is probably better, as we already have a contemporary classical music article and use this category for music groups (as Category:Contemporary classical music ensembles, etc.) Badagnani (talk) 00:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Modernistic is an adjective so at least grammatically I think it should be correct. It was my attempt to avoid the whole issue of time period. However, your suggestions sounds good to me. It looks like besides some problems with how I designed and proposed the template (aptly pointed out to me [1] @_@) the category used must contain at least sixty ages per Wikipedia:Stub. I’m sure there are several hundred articles that can be place within Category:Modernistic pieces but the category is somewhat neglected at the moment. --S.dedalus (talk) 01:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I suppose "modernism" is, by now, just one among many competing stylistic trends in contemporary composition. Badagnani (talk) 01:29, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Using Category:Contemporary classical music actually seems like it will solve the problem of too few articles being included in the category. It also offers a much broader scope. I’ll try to rework the template using that definition. User:Grutness also points out to me that modernist can actually e used as n adjective as well.

By the way, good call on the Open tasks! --S.dedalus (talk) 02:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi all, it's Grutness here from the stub-sorting project. Stub templates should never feed into permanent categories - there is a parallel system of stub categories, most of which have very similar names to the parent (permanent) categories (template names should also reflect this). The "60 article rule" relates to the number of currently existing stub articles which could take the new template, not how many articles exist in permanent (browsing) categories. So in this particular case, if the stubs are articles from Category:Modernistic pieces, then the stub template and category would most likely be {{Modenisticpiece-stub}} and Category:Modernistic piece stubs. The reason I mentioned the number of articles in the permanent category in my pWP:SFD nomination was simply that if there weren't 60 articles in the parent, there couldn't be 60 in the related stub category. The reason for this rule is basically to ensure that there aren't stub categories which are going to be constantly emptied entirely, speedily deleted, and then needing to be recreated. It also makes it a little easier for editors to search through the categories - not so big and vague as to be daunting to hunt for articles to expand, but also not so narrow that editors need to look in five or six categories for articles.

As to the usefulness of a stub category for your project, there are two possibilities:

1) Decide on something that would be a reasonable scope for a stub type and propose it at WP:WSS/P - there, the people who deal primarily with stub sorting will be able to point out any possible improvements that can be made to it before its creation, such as more appropriate scope or name - perhaps, for instance, a stub for Contemporary classical music in general would make more sense than one just for the musical pieces themselves, so as to allow for stubs on terminology, styles, and other related subjects (e.g., indeterminacy in music). They'll also almost certainly be willing to give any help necessary in actually making and populating the stub type.

2) Rather than have a stub template, it might be more useful to you to have a WikiProject-specific talk page template (like, for example, {{WPBeatles}}), which would allow you to mark all articles related to your project and rate them, rather than simply marking stubs.

Personally, I suspect the second option might be more suitable to your purposes, but if you think a stub type might be more useful, that's fine. Hope that helps :) Grutness...wha? 00:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Grutness! That helps a lot. If we can get assessment going, as Badagnani suggested above, that would indeed probably be a more comprehensive solution. (The down side being there’s no real point in starting unless a relatively large number of project participants agree to asses hundreds of pages.) --S.dedalus (talk) 00:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Archive 1 and new template features

Note that the original project proposal discussion has now been archived as /Archive 1.

Thank you User:Warlordjohncarter! [2] --S.dedalus (talk) 23:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)