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===Introduction===
===Introduction===
'''Please note that there has been a consensus for this particular WikiProject that the use of biographical infoboxes is counter-productive for composer biographies, and should not be used.'''

The ''introductory paragraph/statement'' should contain the name of the composer in '''bold''' followed by the date of the composers birth and also death if applicable. If the exact date isn't known, use the closest verifiable approximation (e.g., 19th century, 1863, January 1863, or [[January 16]], [[1863]]). Briefly summarize why the person is important, by concisely summarizing the information discussed in the article. Therefore, unless the exact place of birth is essential information, it should be included in the biographical section or paragraph instead. ''Brief'' information on the composer's stylistic location in relation to his or her contemporaries, and in historical terms, would be helpful to many readers. If the person is notable, however, as a Hungarian nationalist or conductor for a particular organization that should be here.
The ''introductory paragraph/statement'' should contain the name of the composer in '''bold''' followed by the date of the composers birth and also death if applicable. If the exact date isn't known, use the closest verifiable approximation (e.g., 19th century, 1863, January 1863, or [[January 16]], [[1863]]). Briefly summarize why the person is important, by concisely summarizing the information discussed in the article. Therefore, unless the exact place of birth is essential information, it should be included in the biographical section or paragraph instead. ''Brief'' information on the composer's stylistic location in relation to his or her contemporaries, and in historical terms, would be helpful to many readers. If the person is notable, however, as a Hungarian nationalist or conductor for a particular organization that should be here.


Revision as of 21:51, 27 April 2007

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Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize information in articles related to composers. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list there.

Rather than try to force information to appear in a uniform way, this WikiProject aims to present what information is available in the best way possible. The project provides a place to discuss various ways to accomplish this. These recommendations on the Composers project are based on various Wikipedia style guides and common practices in articles. Use your own judgement in applying these guidelines and all Wikipedia guidelines to composer articles and be bold.

Note: This is a new Wikiproject in its early stages. Please feel free to make changes and/or discuss changes on the talk pages!!

Title

WikiProject Composers

Scope

This WikiProject aims primarily to document biographical and musical information of composers of any and all eras and styles. Information to each composer's life, style, and influence—both influence of other composers and their influence on others—are included as examples of focuses. This project page features a selection of ideas that can be used to improve these pages.

Anyone included in Category:Composers would fit under the scope of this project.

How to help

How you can help depends on your time, resources and interest. Here are a variety of ideas for contributions ranging from simple to complex:

  • Identify underdeveloped composer pages and place a link on the /Composers project subpage.
  • Ask questions about a composer here as well as on the composers' own talk page to alert everyone involved in the project in that page. Not everyone may have that composer on their watchlist.
  • Ask general questions on the project talk page which may to apply to various composers.
  • Correct links to a composer and find appropriate others articles which should link to them.
  • Make a note on the talk page if a composer appears anywhere as red link. (Someone is mentioned as notable, yet doesn't have an article!)
  • Find appropriate external links and see also categories for composer articles that are missing this information.
  • Identify information included in other articles which also should be on the composers page and incorporate that information on the composers' page
  • Identify information included on the composers' page which should also be included in other articles
  • Suggest possible resources which can be used for the project. (Books, websites, etc.)
  • Reorganize composer pages. See #Structure for ideas.
  • Proofread composer pages for errors or fact discrepancies between other articles.
  • Look for "peacock terms" (such as "most important" or "greatest ever" without supporting evidence) in composer articles and rewrite the sentences to better present the information if possible. (Sometimes these may be unavoidable, but check to make sure that they are NPOV within context.)
  • Contact recording companies and publishers to gain permission to use sound excerpts score images, preferably after consultation with other contributors on the discussion page.
  • Check that composers are in the correct category/ies and change them as needed.
  • Create appropriate interwiki links to articles. You might use "What links here" to make sure that things that you'd expect to link to a compsoer does so.
  • Create a link to this project from talk pages of existing articles listed /Composers and/or other articles within the scope of the project. Ask the articles editors for input on the project see if they would like to implement any of the ideas here on the article themselves.
  • Upload relevant images to composer pages. Possible sources include the Library of Congress.

See also How to edit a page, How to write a great article, and Manual of Style

Current status of articles

To help direct our efforts more efficiently to maximise the quality of these articles, please use this section to alert other participants in the project to the changing status of articles about composers.

Stubs

Please refer to the subpage devoted to a list of composers whose articles are either missing or underdeveloped.

Works in progress

The following articles are currently being actively worked on by participants in the project.

Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Chopin etudes, Franz Liszt

Likely featured article candidates

These articles are likely to be submitted as candidates for featured article status in the next few months.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Articles in peer review

These articles are currently undergoing peer review.

Current FAC candidates

These articles are currently under consideration for promotion to featured-article status.
Bradley Joseph (nom);

These articles have been accepted as featured articles: they may be helpful examples.

Rebecca Clarke, Bob Dylan, Charles Ives, Frank Klepacki, Witold Lutosławski, Olivier Messiaen, Dmitri Shostakovich, Josquin des Prez.

Require more music content

It has been suggested that these articles, which contain extensive biographical information, could be improved by a more detailed discussion of the composer's musical style and its development.

Witold Lutosławski, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Mark Kopytman, Dominick Argento

The parents of this WikiProject are WikiProject Music and WikiProject Biography. No descendant WikiProjects have been defined. WikiProject Opera is a similar WikiProject.


Participants

Everyone is invited to contribute to the project, comment and edit the project pages.

If you are interested in the project but would not like to be listed as an active participant, please sign the /Guestbook.

Occasional participants

Structure

Note that this section is still under major construction. Please feel free to adjust or discuss on the talk page.

Introduction

Please note that there has been a consensus for this particular WikiProject that the use of biographical infoboxes is counter-productive for composer biographies, and should not be used.

The introductory paragraph/statement should contain the name of the composer in bold followed by the date of the composers birth and also death if applicable. If the exact date isn't known, use the closest verifiable approximation (e.g., 19th century, 1863, January 1863, or January 16, 1863). Briefly summarize why the person is important, by concisely summarizing the information discussed in the article. Therefore, unless the exact place of birth is essential information, it should be included in the biographical section or paragraph instead. Brief information on the composer's stylistic location in relation to his or her contemporaries, and in historical terms, would be helpful to many readers. If the person is notable, however, as a Hungarian nationalist or conductor for a particular organization that should be here.

For example: "John Doe (1863–1910) was a romantic composer who wrote much of the common repertoire for the clarinet still performed today."

The last sentence of the first paragraph may be a summary statement of the importance of the composer--i.e. in the same position as the standard thesis statement of an essay.

"Filetovich Sanovich (16xx-17xx) was a Russian composer and kazoo player of the late Baroque era. He was the most famous exponent of the newly developed Orthodox Kazoo concerto, and championed virtuoso kazoo playing in Russia as well as western Europe."

Sections

Here is sample of possible sections which can be used on a composers page. Which categories apply to any one composer is dependent on the information available and what is considered as pertinent to the individual composer. Variations of these headings can be used to better describe what topics are outlined within that section. In most cases a heading is only appropriate if there is more than one paragraph of that type of information. (So don't have a header for everything here when there is only a sentence about each. :) )

==Biography==
==Music== (Not necessary unless you have a lot of subheaders. If included, the word "Musical" is redundant in any subheaders.)
===Legacy=== (Could be included in Influence depending on what is discussed.)
===Musical influence=== and/or ===Musical style===
===Musical works=== (and/or ===Notable compositions=== for a prolific composer)
===Media=== (For audio/video samples available on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons)
===See also=== (Interwiki links that are either not able to fit in the text or that should also be emphasized)
===References=== (and/or ===Notes=== for footnotes: Always cite sources.)
===External links===

The sample is provided to display aspects of the composer to discuss and research. If you are writing from your own knowledge, please provide a source that corroborates your knowledge to assist other editors.

See also: How to structure the content and Wikipedia:The perfect article

Hierarchy definition

Composers can be placed in one or more of the various subcategories of Category:Composers which currently includes:

Avoid placing them in the broad Category:Composers and if possible, place in the most applicable subcategory of any of the above subcategories.

Goals

  1. To well represent notable information on each composer
  2. To give attention to notable composers who are neglected on Wikipedia
  3. To help insure composer pages are accurate, well referenced and documented. See also WikiProject Fact and Reference Check.
  4. To establish standards for, and pool information on, the use of sound recordings and images in composer articles.

Guidelines for using sound excerpts

'Fair use' without permission

Copyright law is a mess. However, it appears that under fair use provisions, we can use short sound excerpts from commercial recordings without gaining permission, but only if the following matters are observed.

  • Duration: a maximum of around 30 seconds or 10% or the duration of the track—whichever is shorter—is probably fair.
  • Ensure that the excerpt is used in an educational context, and does not appear to have any negative impact whatsoever on the company's market (better the opposite); brief mention in the accompanying main text of some feature of style or technique in the excerpt will strengthen a claim of fair use.
  • Detailed attribution on the information page is necessary, including:
**the names of the performers, and if possible, the date and venue of the performance;
**the name of the recording company, and its website address;
**the title and number of the track, and the name and catalogue number of the CD from which it was taken, and the year of release; and
**the file size.
  • Justification of your fair use must be added to the info box. You may consider pasting in the following text and modifying it as necessary:
'This is a sound sample from a commercial recording. Its inclusion here is claimed as fair use because:
**it illustrates an educational article that includes a historical and critical examination of the excerpt;
**it is a sample of about 30 seconds from a much longer recording, and could not be used as a substitute for the original commercial recording; and
**it is not replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted sample of comparable educational value.
I believe that this use of the excerpt is in good faith, and that its inclusion enhances rather than reduces the commercial value of the recording from which it was drawn; however, if the owner of the copyright wishes to challenge my use, I will be happy to remove it promptly, with apology.

When uploading the sound file, use the copyright tag Template:Music sample

This is what will then appear on the info page:


The quality, number and location of excerpts

All excerpts should be of high-quality recordings, in my view; it's better to use no recordings at all if very good ones can't be found.

Short excerpts may be a valuable component of a composer article if they give readers a taste of the composer's style in general, or illustrate certain aspects of that style. It's best if you can find an excerpt that falls naturally into a short duration; otherwise, the next best arrangement is to start at the opening of a track (or musical section) and fade down after about 30 seconds. Try to avoid unpleasant glitches at either end of the excerpt. Fade ups at the start of an excerpt are less effective.

Excerpts can be closely integrated with the flow of the text if they appear at strategic locations. Try to make the visual appearance of the link as unobtrusive as possible: short titles help in that respect. Consider rationing their number: don't try to be comprehensive; leave the reader wanting more.

Large repositories of longer recordings at the bottom of a composer article may add little to the value of an article.

Suggested points to be covered in the 'Style' section of composer articles

I'd like to put forward the following points that contributors may wish to consider covering in composer articles. Of course, the needs of every article are different, so this is only a 'shell', a template that needs to be adapted for each article. Some of this information may be useful at the opening, but in not much detail; most of it should probably be located in a separate section on style.

  • State, in broad, non-technical terms, some attributes of the composer's style; briefly position the composer in terms of the broad history of the genre.
  • State the style and/or school of composition in which the composer might be located.
  • Explain whose music influenced the composer, and in what ways.
  • Decribe the composer's style in more technical terms, both in relation to other composers of the period, and in terms of the evolution of the style during his/her lifetime.
  • State whose music the composer, in turn, influenced.

See also

Wikipedia:Media#Audio

General strategy and discussion forums

Templates

Talk page

{{Composers}}

WikiProject iconComposers NA‑class
WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of the WikiProject Composers, a group of editors writing and developing biographical articles about composers of all eras and styles. The project discussion page is the place to talk about technical and editorial issues and exchange ideas. New members are welcome!ComposersWikipedia:WikiProject ComposersTemplate:WikiProject ComposersComposers
NAThis page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
or:

{{Composers1}}

Template:Composers1

Stub Template

{{Composer-stub}}

Stub icon

This article about a composer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Composers&oldid=126489833"