Category talk:Composers

From ChoralWiki
Revision as of 09:10, 11 January 2013 by RobertOliver (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Antonio Teixeira

Does anyone esle out there know/like this composer? It would be great to have some of his choral works included in CPDL!

--Grenhatton 02:01, 21 September 2008 (PDT)

New subcategory

How can I add a new nationality-subcategory for catalan composers? For example: Mateu Fletxa el Vell, Mateu Fletxa el Jove, Joan Cererols, Joan Baptista Cabanilles...

Thanks--CarlesVA 04:44, 15 September 2005 (PDT)

Catalan composers ...

I will add that as a subcategory. All composers listed as Catalan should also be listed as Spanish.

Rafael Ornes Manager, CPDL

Please add Ukrainian as a subcategory of composers by nationality.

Dmitri Bortniansky (actually Dmytro Bortniansky) was a Ukrainian composer, not a Russian, even though he spent much of his musical life in St. Petersburg. ~Chuck Giffen.

Why Shouldn't John Rutter have a composer page?

I am preparing an number of items by the Irish Romantic composer, Sir Robert Prescott Stewart, and in the process began a composer page. Someone else marked this page for deletion on the basis that there are no scores posted to CPDL by Stewart. The immediate issue of the scores by Stewart will be resolved and is in any event not a major issue, because I created the page off line, and it is trivial to re-load it.

However, to me, this begs a larger question: "should a composer with a significant output of choral music have a composer page if and only if there are scores on CPDL associated with that composer?"

Because it is pertinent to this thread, I excerpt this comment by Bobnotts from the page Talk:Robert_Prescott_Stewart:

"I suggest that the composer information belongs on some other resource such as Wikipedia."

I'm interested in what others think about this matter.

Noel Stoutenburg 1624 GMT 8 February, 2007

In my opinion, there is no point in having a composer page for a composer who isn't represented on CPDL. This resource is for choral works primarily and also for texts and translations of choral works. Again, in my opinion, extended biographical information and lists of choral works belong on a resource like Wikipedia. Bobnotts 16:13, 8 February 2007 (PST)
OK. You see biographical information and opus lists of choral compositions belong on Wikipedia [Big Wiki], instead of this ChoralWiki. So, I spent some time considering the advantages of listing biographical information and lists of choral works on Big Wiki for composers of choral music who do not yet have a score listed here. One advantage I perceived was that putting material on Big Wiki reduces the amount of storage space required for the Choral Wiki. Another advantage I perceived was that the standards for pages on Big Wiki ager generally higher than on Choral WIKI, so more of us posting regularly on Big Wiki, and up to the higher standards there, will improve the general quality of the editing on this Choral Wiki. Still, another advantage I perceived was, .... well, I really can't come up with a third advantage. What other advantages are there to having choral related material on BIG WIKI, instead of on this Choral Wiki?
Then I turned my attention to the disadvantages of putting material on Big Wiki instead of the Choral Wiki. One disadvantage is the lessened control over content that would be had by putting material on Big Wiki. Instead of a few hundred people being able to edit what is posted, the number who could edit pages is orders of magnitude higher. The second disadvantage I see is that the people on Big Wiki may not share the same priorities with respect to music. I note in the list_of_Herbert_Howells'_compositions that choral music comes after Orchestral music, chamber music, and keyboard music.
I argue that the concept of adding a page for a composer (or author, or arranger) who does not yet have scores in the Choral Wiki is a direct parallel to the concept of the stub that is part of the Wiki environment. A composer page for a composer who has no scores yet available on CPDL is a stub, and I think the possibility another CPDL user might find that stub, and subsequently find one or more choral compositions composed by the that composer, because of the existence of the composer page on Choral wiki investigate the composer, and set some of the that composers compositions and upload them to CPDL. The existence of the page thus helps to preserve the material created by that composer.
I do not agree with your assessment that CPDL is a resource for scores and texts / translations only. I understand that the Site is bigger than that, and is intended to be a portal site, where choral musicians--directors and singers--would stop first to find resources to fill musical needs, whether it is scores, or the name of a tour organizer. In support of this, I quote from the [page] which was to the best of my knowledge, authored by the site owner himself: "As well as scores, you can use CPDL to find texts and lyrics, translations, and information about composers -- all in the public domain and free to use." Raf does not say that you will find information only about those composers whose scores are on (or are link to from) CPDL.
Noel Stoutenburg 1018 GMT 9 February, 2007
I have previously been deleting composer pages with no scores listed that have been marked for deletion. For the present, I shall refrain from doing this at least if the page provides a list of choral works (even though CPDL has no editions). I do question just where a composer such as John Rutter belongs, since he is (1) alive and (2) has his works published through commercial music publishing channels (and the works are under copyright, not in the public domain). Also, Noel make cogent argurments for listing historic and other composers whose works are not (yet) represented on CPDL, especially when useful information on the composer is provided. On the other side, at present, we have no mechanism for distinguishing between composers that have at least one work availalbe on CPDL and those who don't - and this skews the number of composers count in the CPDL statistics listed on the Main Page. Since the number of "unrepresented composers" is not too large (yet), I believe there is an acceptable remedy, as follows:
I shall make a new category Category:Composers (unhosted) - specifically for composers who have no scores available through CPDL - and a link to the new category page from the Category:Composers page. It will then be necessary to search out and change such composers' category. At such time when one or more works become available through CPDL, then the category designation would be changed by removing the " (unhosted)" status. I hope this meets with everyones approval
ChuckGiffen 09:17, 12 February 2007 (PST)
A good solution, well done Chuck! Bobnotts 11:47, 12 February 2007 (PST)
Having given this some more thought, I can provide a reason or two in support of the proposition that a even John Rutter deserves a page. First, let us assume that there is a John Rutter page, and that it contains a significant fraction of his works, including a listing for a composition for which he composed lyrics and music, "Donkey Carol". [Included in Carols for Choirs III, published by OUP]. Now consider an individual amongst the legion of choral conductors there who has been drafted to the position, despite the fact that they have only moderate enthusiasm for the post, and even less experience, and even less willingness to tell the clergyperson in charge "no". Now, imagine this conductor receiving a phone call from the clergyperson, just back from some gathering of clergypersons somewhere, in the course of which phone call, the clergy person relates that another clergyperson spoke quite highly of a compostion "Donkey carol", but that the name of the composer, or source for the composition was not part of the conversation, but that the clergyperson is certain the choral conductor can locate the source.
Under the circumstances as I have outlined them here, the choirmaster would take recourse to CPDL, type "Donkey Carol" in the search bar, and immediately find that Rutter wrote such that compositions, and be able to respond to he clergyperson's request, "Yes, Reverend Sir, I found the work, but it is only in a book, so we'll need to increase the choir budget this year by a sizeable amount in order to purchase a sufficient number of copies for the choir."
Or consider a slightly different version of the illustration: the clergy person, instead of relating a conversation about "Donkey Carol", relates that the colleague instead spoke quite highly of am arrangement of his favorite English Carol, "I Saw three ships", by John Rutter; taking recourse to the CPDL site, our conductor will quickly find the information that while he found that the Rutter edition is copyright, the same text is the basis for an arrangement on the CPDL site, form which it can be downloaded and reproduced without restriction.
A third reason I would argue for allowing pages for choral music composers is that the copyright protection afforded their compositions is transitory, and will end at some point. If a page is built for John Rutter now, it seems to me that it is more likely that obscure compositions are less likely to be missed when the time comes that his works can be added to the site. And I know this can happen, because I found a choral composition by Albert Ketelbey for Easter in a volume, and when I sought more information on it, learned that the person most knowledgeable about the body of Ketelbey's music was completely unaware of the existence of the work!
Lastly, I have to say that while I like the idea of a catagory for composers who have no scores yet posted to CPDL, I'm having trouble generating much enthusiasm for a category, "composers unhosted"as the nomenclature seems to me too vague, and ambiguous. I suggest naming the category "biography only", or "no scores", or even "bio only; no scores". Which also suggests the complementary category, "scores only; insufficient bio".
Noel Stoutenburg 0816 GMT 13 February, 2007
After my post at 0816, it occurred to me that a further instance of ambiguity occurs with scores on external pages like those of Fr. di Marco, and Nancho Alvarez, where the scores themselves are external to CPDL. Taking this to account prompts me to suggest that there should be a three categories for composers. The current one (whether under the same, or a revised name) for composers who have scores (whether as notation files or page images), or audio files resident in the ChoralWiki for free download, a new category for composers who have scores or audio files available for free download which are linked to from ChoralWiki but which are not resident directly on the site, and another new category for composers for which there are as yet no scores or audio files available on line at all.
I've not yet come up with a satisfactory designation for the proposed categories.
Should attention be given to commercial sites? How, and how much?
Noel Stoutenburg 1253 GMT 13 February, 2007.
I wish to strongly support Noel's point here: having works listed for any composer really helps, even if no score is (or can be) freely available. His example with the clergyman and the reluctant choirmaster isn't just a case study; actually I experienced something similar myself: I'm the president of a musical ensemble here in Paris, and each year in June, we have to decide which pieces to put on the program for the coming year, so we discuss at length on the different proposals, and the board (which I'm leading, so I guess I would be the clergyman in Noel's analogy ;-) has to decide together with the choirmaster and the conductor of the orchestra (note there is a third character here, which makes thing even more complicated even under the best conditions with everyone's good will, because of course the choirmaster wants what's best for the choir, and the conductor wants what's best for the orchestra, and the board's treasurer wants what's best for the budget, etc.).
So, in discussing the choral works we want to know about score availability, and in this regards CPDL has always been a great resource (thank you, folks!), because, obviously, it provides us with free digital scores in some cases, and, just as importantly, it gives us a strong hint of whether a score is not freely available (of course it's not the only resource on the Web, but by far the most comprehensive); in any case, it helps to see an actual list of works which are not present on CPDL (because they are not present).
Actually, this year we even had a strong misunderstanding that could have been lifted if CPDL had been listing works without any score: at some point someone suggested to perform the Stabat Mater by Schubert in the second term of the academic year (that is, now), and everybody agreed with this and found it a great idea (choirmaster, conductor, everyone); but, when it came to actually order the scores some weeks ago, we realized the mistake... there are two Stabat mater by Schubert! Check on Klassika: one “small” one (D175, duration 5' approx.) and one much longer one (D383, duration 30' - 40'). Of course the choirmaster meant to perform the latter one because it's more fulfilling for the choir, and the conductor thought of the former one because it's less annoying for the orchestra to accompany. Only the “big” one is represented on CPDL, which is great, but had we seen the other one, we would have been warned of the possible problem (indeed, I'm quite sure someone mentioned “And the vocal score is on CPDL, so it's great” when we were researching six months ago). Of course I'm not blaming CPDL! On the very contrary, I think it can be all the more useful to choirs all around the worlds, and I'm suggesting it could be used as a resource to list available editions of choral works. I'm very much aware that's a lot of work, and I'm only saying it as a suggestion and a possible extensions of the goals of ChoralWiki.
In addition, seeing works without scores on a composer's page can encourage people to submit them; the few gaps in the list on Brahms' page was the very reason I decided to go on and upload scores in the first place (I had been typing the Schicksalslied for the other choir of my ensemble, and I decided to put it on CPDL because I felt it was a path to having all of Brahms' choral works as free sheet musics, which we're definitely close to).
I've probably been drifting too much there. So far for the rant...
Arthur 2007-02-17 03:59 CET (02:59 UTC)


This is proving to be a very useful discussion.
I don't believe, Noel, that scores which haven't been properly submitted to CPDL (have a score page, have a CPDL # etc.) belong on this site. In my opinion, the issue should be taken up with the user who posted these links in the first place so that the scores can be successfully submitted to the site. So in short, I don't think that your final suggested category (one for scores which are not "resident directly on the site") should be made. It is clear, however, that creating composer pages for composers which are not yet in the public domain or even for those that are still alive (such as Rutter) would be very useful for many users, as Arthur illustrated above. Is "unhosted" the best term?
Robert 05:19, 19 February 2007 (PST)
Although I wasn't totally satisfied with the term "unhosted", it was the best I could come up with. I didn't like such terms as "no CPDL scores" or "unrepresented" and several others all of which seemed too wordy.
By the way, using === === or selecting the " + " at the top of a Talk page without specifying a NEW TOPIC to comment on something already posted is in bad Wiki form ... just look at the TOC for the previous version of this page to see what happens. For commenting on something already on the Talk page, just use indentation .. ":" for first-level indentation, "::" for second-level, and so forth. Browsing a few Talk pages at Wikipedia provides a good guide as to the generally accepted style. I've taken the liberty of removing the empty headings and adding colons (: or ::) where it seemed appropriate, and apologize if I have misrepresented the intentions of those who have already posted in this interesting discussion.
One final note: many if not most Wikipedians sign their comments almost always at the end of the comment, but not on a new line or paragraph, thus. -- ChuckGiffen 09:26, 19 February 2007 (PST)
First, Robert, before deciding whether scores are properly on CPDL or not, we have to reach a consensus on what this means. For example, I think all of the links to the pages for Leonhard Lechner are actually links to scors in the Werner Icking Music Archive. Are these scores "on CPDL", or not? My own personal opinion is that they are not. But I believe it to be true that Raf believes they are. As I wrote in my comments on the talk page associated with the delete template page, I think the most desireable way to handle any composer page that is in some way incomplete, whether because it lacks biograhical information, or whether because it has no associated scores, is to declare such pages as stubs, and make them available for completeion by others. It is trivially easy for me to imagine some person with little musical literacy who has found some composer about whom they want more information, and who prepares a succinct biography, including a rudimentary works list. It is as easy to imagine that some other person just happens to have a couple of scores prepared for the choir a couple years ago by that same composer, but who happen had not been sufficiently motivated to research the composer, but seeing the stub, remembers the scores and uploads them. It is also easy enough to imagine some other person seeing a couple of works up, with your level of attainment in Sibelius (or mine in Finale) being motivated to find copies of the scores, and prepare editions to upload. In the scenario as I have described it, CPDl benefits from two contributions which might not be there if a requirement is placed that composer pages may not exist unless there are links to scores.
With respect to Chuck's comment about Wiki Style on talk pages, I saw an advantage to using the TOC style to track responses to subthreads, but I'm not married to the idea.
As to those instances where there is a composer page with no score page, (or vice versa), how about adopting the designation "in preparation", perhaps with sub-identifiers such as "composer information to follow", or "scores to follow"? In my mind, this neatly sidesteps the question, "If the composer page is on CPDL, and all of the scores on on the WIMA, are the scores on CPDL or not?"
Finally, I would observe that having the signature on a newline, or even new paragraph makes it easier to find who said what. Compare Noel Stoutenburg

with

Noel Stoutenburg 1808 GMT 19 February, 2007
My opinion of what is "on" CPDL is scores which have been submitted through the normal processes (on "add scores to CPDL" link) and therefore have a score page. This is what I describe as "indexed scores". They may not reside on the CPDL server or they may have originally been posted on another site such as the Werner Icking Music Archive but in my opinion, they have been "indexed" on CPDL with the correct info on a score page and composer page and have been categorised. In these cases, I think the template {{External}} should be used so that users can see at a glance which scores are simply a click away and those which will require them to go to another website. In the past, I have used the {{External}} template on score pages which only list one file (ie. just a PDF or just a Scorch file) but I've directly put in the Network.png file as a replacement for editions which have more than one file just because it looks tidier. See CPDL #6789 on this Warlock score page for an example of what I mean.
Bob, Using the Network.png icon and listing what types of files are available is a simple and elegant solution for externally available sheet, sound, and source files. PS Welcome to Moderator status at the Bulletin Board. -- ChuckGiffen 10:14, 20 February 2007 (PST)
I think your stub idea is a really good one. As you mentioned, hopefully it will encourage contributions to the site. Now we just need to decide what this stub image and/or text should look like and whether there should be different ones for different pages (bio needed or scores needed etc). -- Bobnotts 07:22, 20 February 2007 (PST)
Noel, I, too, think the stub idea is a good one, and I think we should check out the way(s) it is implemented at Wikipedia to get some idea of the best way to go about implementing such a thing here. -- ChuckGiffen 10:14, 20 February 2007 (PST)
Me too! This was exactly what I had in mind when I said it could encourage people to contribute to ChoralWiki.
On a related subject, since this is the place to discuss composers' pages, I have some questions that came to my mind while tidying up Brahms' page (feel free to move them elsewhere if it's more appropriate): First, there are many duplicates for Works pages, which I feel should be merged. So my question is: is it really the way to go? And then, how to do this? I understand only administrators can delete pages, so should we simply put a comment on the corresponding talk page and wait for an administrator to merge both pages? There could be a redirection from one page to the other one, of course, but my main concern is to have one only page for one work (and what I'm doing on the Composer's pages is an attempt to attain it: I simply list all the different pages for the same work with the same indentation level).
Next, I understand scores hosted elsewhere than CPDL should be tagged with the Network.png icon, not Pdf.gif; so for example CPDL #3959 edition of In stiller Nacht should be corrected?
Indeed. So this done now and I have also merged all editions on one page.--Arie 03:11, 17 September 2007 (PDT)
In addition, I've started adding English translations of the German titles, because I felt it was called for and people needed them to identify works; for instance, there is a Work page for the English translation of movement 4 of the German Requiem (»Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen« / “How lovely is Thy dwelling place”) and I feel that not only does it need to be inserted into the Work page for the entire German Requiem, but it should also be made clear why both works belong together. Up to now I've been appending the English translation in square brackets in the work list; it's not very nice but I think it's quite easy to follow.
Also, I've noticed there is a standalone page for Bach's cantatas, and I feel I could the same for the many folk songs by Brahms, because I've been browsing through many Web sites and found it to be available nowhere, even if all of Brahms' works have been classified more than 20 years ago (McCorkle, 1984), including the very many works without opus number which now go by the nice prefix WoO (for Werke ohne Opuszahl, in German). So, would a Johannes Brahms - list of folk songs (and possibly other works) be welcome? I've been conducting extensive researchs to actually find out what I've put at the end of the list and it's still fresh in my mind. And I've many comments to add, that definitely should go there and not on the main pages (differences in the numbering schemes, translation issues -- some songs actually are set to texts in Low German, or I think it's Low German, etc.)
Finally, this is admittedly a very minor issue but I did not know what to do with the template {Broken} which I needed for the complete edition of the Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 65, submitted by John Henry Fowler, because it appears to be missing; so I simply put it whereever I could think of; but there may be a recommended practice.
P-S: Sorry for the bad formatting in my previous contribution to the discussion; I'm very new to all things Wiki (I never contributed much to Wikipedia) -- Arthur 2007-02-20 19:19 CET (18:19 UTC)
I had several paragraphs written about stubs on Big Wiki, but don't have time to finish them, am not posting this message from my own computer, so I can't conveniently leave it to return to it later.
I would propose that we establish on this page, or another talk page, a list of topics to explore on Big WIKI, and find pages which interested parties to study and evaluate and then to reach a consensus on what would work here, and what would not.
From my perspective, there are some things which I think are done well on Big Wiki which would be useful here, there are things that are done well there, that we have no need of, and there are places where there are improvements that I think could be made to Big Wiki, and where I think that, as a model, it is not particularly useful. More later.

Noel Stoutenburg 1903 GMT 20 February, 2007

I have created the page Mission where I think it would be reasonable and proper to ultimately place a statement of the consensus reached by the ChoralWiki community upon what the mission, goals, and methods for this WIKI should be. More immediately, I propose that the page Talk:Mission is a good place to discuss larger issues like stubs, and how to implement them; whether there should be recommended practices, styles, and standards for contributions, and what they should be; and to provide a locus at which, after we have visited one of another music pages on Big Wiki, to hold a discussions of the positive and negative points relative to those pages, so that we might incorporate their best qualities, and avoid thir bad ones. Noel Stoutenburg 2133 GMT 20 February, 2007

Names with de/des/di etc.

The sorting of names connected by these particles is not following any specific rule here. Should we stick to one? The most logical would be to always include the particle in the sort key, so all these names would be sorted under letter D:

Giaches de Wert, Ludovico da Viadana, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Michel Richard Delalande (de la Lande), Josquin Des Prez, Jean Desfontaines (des Fontaines), Abel Di Marco, Juan del Encina, Vincent d'Indy etc.

Similarly, German and Dutch names with von/van would be sorted under letter V.

Another thing that can be uniformized is to always begin these prepositions in lower case: von instead of Von, des instead of Des, etc. In the Wikipedia article for Josquin Des Prez, for instance, his name is properly spelled as "Josquin des Prez"(en)/"Josquin des Prés"(fr). If no one objects, I'd like to begin making such changes which will be necessary for when the new Add Work form is implemented (Composer's names are sorted there by surname, as defined by their sortkeys). Carlos 17:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Please don't do this before this is thoroughly discussed. So "Beethoven" will become "van Beethoven", "Victoria" become "de Victoria", "Palestrina" become "da Palestrina" ... I think not! We don't ever speak of "van Beethoven's Choral Symphony", or the "de Victoria Requiem", or the "da Palestrina Song of songs (Canticum Canticorum)" ... and we should not sort their names with the particles that precede their last names. I agree that Josquin should be spellt Josquin des Prez, and I note that his name should be sorted under Josquin (not des/Des Prez) - it was the wiki phenomenon of displaying the first letter of a title as capitalised, even though it is not capitalised ini practice (eg. "e e cummings") that caused some here to oopt for Des Prez instead of des Prez. I think we'll have to live with the fact that sometimes the particle IS included and sometimes it IS NOT included in a surname. -- Chucktalk Giffen 18:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC) .... by the way, what is wrong with the spacing between your posting and my reply?
Ok Chuck, I see your point, but if we leave it the way it is now, the poor users of the Add Work form will never know for sure where to look for the composer name: under W ("Wert, Giaches de") or under D ("de Wert, Giaches") or still under G ("Giaches de Wert")? Having an established rule would simplify things for them. What you said for des Prez is perfectly valid for the other names too: in fact none of these are properly "surnames", being usually the place they come from, so we could sort them by the first name instead. Another possibility is to forget all this and sort all composers by their first names, but here too we'd have some problems because many people don't know their first names. If you strongly believe there's no change to define one single rule for all, then could you please revise the list to make sure that all composers that commonly keep the particle in the name (in the English speaking contries) are sorted properly? Thanks! Carlos 18:54, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Living composers subcategory

I'd like to propose the creation of a category for living composers on CPDL. Since we don't have a subcategory for "contemporary" or "post-modernist" composers, it would be somewhat equivalent. Such category would also permit us to have a measure of how many of the total composers represented on CPDL are living composers sharing their own compositions. —Carlos Email.gif 05:22, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea but some of those composers who have contributed their own works to CPDL are sadly no longer alive. For example, John Earwaker, Holger Clausen, Alexander Ledkovsky, Luc Goosen and Clifford Boyd. In the future, it's unfortunately a certainty that more living composers represented on CPDL will die. So where should they be categorised? --Bobnotts talk 10:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Humm, good question. Should they be always categorized then as "Modern/Contemporary" in spite of also being (or not) in the category "Living"? —Carlos Email.gif 10:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Rob, instead of creating a new category (which would also require categorizing all living composers in it), it was easier to develop a new category-like dynamic page using DPL: Living composers. :) —Carlos Email.gif 06:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)