Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers

WikiProject Composers

Discussion

Tabulating and ranking lists of composers

I am going through the composer list pages and putting them all into tables (copying the basic template initiated on the Medieval list) and adding a 'rating' column to draw attention to the most important composers.

Needless to say. this is highly subjective. Doubtless the finer points of who should or should not be highlighted in this way will cause much discussion amongst those with greater knowledge than I, but it has at least started a process much requested on various talk pages.

As a simple way to organise the sorting I used the number of recordings available for that composer on [Presto Music]. Star ratings were then assigned on the simple divisions:

less than 100 recordings
between 100 and 1,000 recordings
over 1,000 recordings

My reasoning is as follows: The number of recordings is a good indication of how significantly the composer is favoured by the musical community as a whole. If musicians go to the effort to record and release that piece then they must consider it worthwhile. Collectively they are thus passing judgement. This is therefore along the lines of an opinion poll of the global musical community, which is about as close as we can get to an objective answer to the question 'which composers are best?'. It also has the advantage of being verifiable and easily available.

It is worthwhile to have these ratings because it draws attention to those composers for readers of the list. Not every reader is an experienced musician or will know much about classical music so they may have no idea who the important composers in that era are. These lists have become very long and are overwhelming. Without the rating column they are really only of interest to those who care about articles on very minor composers. With the rating column they become of use to the general reader.

In each case I have started a topic in the Talk page. Agrestis (talk) 05:51, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is not how discussions work. For a major systemic change like this you really should have community approval. Simply making editors aware of the change is not enough—and splitting the conversation into 5 different threads is not helpful.

This is a massive insertion of WP:Original research. Number of recordings does not indicate relevance/popularity/importance even a little bit. Recordings are an invention of the last a hundred years; important medieval musicians will never have as many recordings as Mozart/Beethoven etc, because those styles are simply not as popular as they were. Other composers who were hugely popular in their time may have lessened in popularity now, Jommelli and Franck for instance. This is simply not encyclopedic, you are essentially ranking composers!! – Aza24 (talk) 21:35, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there is a built in way to communicate who the important composers are... it's called WP:reliable sources... A lead can be written for each article (I already wrote one for List of medieval composers), pulling from the list's sources to communicate such information... – Aza24 (talk) 21:42, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with Aza24 here: if you'd like to create such tables for your own personal interest have at it, but this isn't something to replace mainspace lists. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:17, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Number of recordings may be defensible in principle. But Presto Music is not the best source for this, and there may not be a reliable one.

Why is the star rating necessary? This broad line of reasoning does strike me as constituting OR. What is worse, the argument does not strike me as sound (for a variety of reasons). Musicians' role in recordings does not necessarily constitute an act of judgment as to some music's importance (they may even very well not like what they are recording). Record labels generally have some commercial interest, though not always.

Wikipedia is not a classroom survey. It requires encyclopedic breadth and sufficient depth. There has been some discussion about how to select composers on the talk page for List of classical music composers by era. There is likely no way about it beyond some survey of surveys. That may or may not constitute OR, but it would involve an operation perhaps tantamount to synthesis to the extent that it selects only the composers common among them. Moreover, most surveys will acknowledge and apologize somewhere that their selection is inherently arbitrary. (A broader problem is that "the composer" as such is simply not a historical given, problematizing breadth. A more fundamental problem is that a selected list of composers organized by style periods and birthdates is not that informative or useful: it lacks depth.) MONTENSEM (talk) 05:55, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not. Thoughts: (1) Aza24 and Nikkimaria are absolutely right; it's a no-no to do this without community support in advance. (2) Should it be done? I'm ambivalent -- the charts feed my curiosity, but it seems a little wrong-headed -- it's part of the ethos of classical music that mere popularity is not the ultimate credential (compare, for instance, Für Elise and the Grosse Fugue). (3) If (as seems unlikely) there is community approval for this, I would suggest raw Presto numbers rather than a star system. The latter is too coarse, and puts (say) Offenbach and Donizetti on the same level as Chopin and Schumann.Opus33 (talk)

The number of recordings is highly problematic, even if using a source like Presto Classical. First, it doesn't include many labels (Finlandia, for example ... in this sense, I have found Discogs more complete); second, a CD does not necessarily mean new recording, of course ... how does Presto's database handle releases, repackagings, etc.? Third, musicians recording a piece is not the same as a poll/survey, as these individuals are hired hands who don't make the decisions; moreover, those who do are driven often by economic rather than artistic considerations (e.g., Finlandia sells, The Oceanides doesn't, despite being superior artistically.) Just my thoughts, ~ Silence of Järvenpää 15:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, and (I don't think) Discogs is accepted as a reliable source by Wikipedia, either. MONTENSEM (talk) 23:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Assessing the prominence of a work of classical music

Here is an afterthought I had, inspired by Agrestis's proposal.

I've contributed to articles about very famous works (Haydn's Creation) and rather obscure ones (Beim Auszug in das Feld). It often feels appropriate to clue the reader into how much the work is central to the body of Western classical music; something like "X is frequently performed and recorded." It's interesting to ponder how such claims can be given legitimate reference sources. Opera articles sometime use Operabase. What else might help? Presto? Page count in books of recommended recordings? Has this been discussed before (hints welcome)? Opus33 (talk) 18:18, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course there's a bunch of pieces that get recorded frequently but not performed live, and (especially for more modern works) also happens somewhat the opposite. So just looking at recording numbers isn't great. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 05:35, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is not very reliable historically (this cannot be overemphasized) and is extremely culturally, politically, and socially relative. This is a bigger problem than it may seem.

There may be reliable sources for making such a claim in the literature, and then it would likely be somewhat defensible. But claims are just claims; they should be contextualized and preferably (where possible) much substantiated.

General regard is probably already evident enough to the reader in the sheer bulk and tone of literature that has accumulated around some music. The small problem is that general regard is probably not so measurable or reliably quantifiable. MONTENSEM (talk) 06:10, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the "medium problem", which is not a problem at all, is the sheer diversity of means by which importance may be inferred and its variance assessed. MONTENSEM (talk) 06:13, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Film Music Reporter

I have started a discussion about the reliability of this website, which is widely used in articles that fall within the scope of this WikiProject, at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Film Music Reporter. All thoughts are welcome. My hope is to come to a definitive consensus on the matter which can be recorded at WP:RS/PS. - adamstom97 (talk) 09:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]