Talk:Flute Sonata in E major, BWV 1035

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Untitled[edit]

Changed "unwonted" to "unusual" as unwonted is rather obscure compared to unusual —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.74.201.151 (talk) 02:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks.--Peter cohen (talk) 18:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Possibly" Köthen in BWV (1998)[edit]

P. 421 of the 1998 edition of the BWV catalogue describes it as possible ("vielleicht") that the sonata was composed in Köthen (1717–1723), and that the remark regarding Fredersdorff may as well indicate a new compositions, as a manuscript copy of an earlier composition ("Neukomposition?, Abschr?"). Two points:

  • a clearer distinction between fact and speculation is needed for this article: speculations would best have in-line attributions to their respective authors;
  • BWV (1998) was published less than twenty years ago: if in the mean while new research has disproven the possibility of being composed in the Köthen period it should be indicated more clearly on what grounds; at least it should be mentioned what the BWV has to say on the point (even if in less than 20 years the info contained there would have become outdated).

Both points indicate an unbalance in the WP:NPOV approach displayed by the current thrust of the article. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:06, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The only POV-pushing I found in this article was that the sonata was written for recorder. It was in the categories and there were even sentences in the article about it. It obviously met with Francis Schonken's approval, as he edited the article after it was added. But unfortunately the sonata was not written for the recorder, but the transverse flute. If Francis Schonken had any acquaintance with the literature on this sonata or knowledge of the range and natural performing key signatures of the alto recorder (for the pitch at which the music is written), he would have known that instantly. Here is the article as I found it.[1]
The sources in the article say otherwise about when and for whom this sonata was written. The statements of Christoph Wolff, Richard Jones, Robert Marshall, Hans Eppstein, Mary Oleskiewicz, etc. are incontestable. The content used is substantial—long paragraphs, even pages of careful reasoning on instruments, letters, composing style, etc; and what they write is not negated by one ambiguous entry in a list, a list which at least one them has helped to compile. So the sources are substantial and outweigh frivolous and time-wasting objections like this. The problem with wikipedian editors trying to use raw lists (= primary sources) to create content is that they might overlook who actually wrote them. For example comments on the Bach Archive are mostly annotations of Christoph Wolff and do not supersede published work. The same applies here. Francis Schonken seems to be writing as if Bach scholarship is encoded in a definitive list. That is a frivolous and quite disruptive idea.
I should add that this article has been completely rewritten and resourced. Almost all the content is completely new. All the sources are new. (It is a work that I know very well and have played for about 46 years; regrettably, however, never on a baroque flute which is actually extremely relevant to the article and Oleskiewicz's work on Dresden flutes.) Formerly the article was curated by Francis Schonken amongst others. He raised no objections when the article was sourced only to allmusic.com and progamme notes from the LA PHilharmonic. These are unacceptable sources. Equally well the BWV list is not an acceptable source; nor is the raw Bach Archive. When I looked at the article, the lede stated that the first performance of the work was given by Frederick the Great with his son C.P.E. Bach at the harpsichord.[2] Did Francis Schonken raise any objections to that statement then? None at all. But that statement was incorrect, the idle musings of the person who wrote the sloppy commentary for the LA Philharmonic. In fact that person even mused that Carl Phillip Emanuel's father was in the audience. That's what happens if articles are sourced to CD liners, allmusic web pages and programme notes. Now on the other hand, Francis Schonken takes a different point of view. I do not understand his inconsistency. Now that the article has been properly sourced, he is raising objections to content which emanates from several of the most eminent Bach scholars in the world. So allmusic.com is fine for Francis Schonken, but not eminent Bach scholars. In view of that, none of his comments can be taken seriously. I must express my dismay at his present conduct: following me around wikipedia dreaming up frivolous and time-wasting arguments like this is just blatant disruption. As it has been happening for some time now, I find it quite creepy. It is quite remote from the idea of adding useful and reliable content for the reader, which prompted my complete and meticulous rewrite of the article. Mathsci (talk) 11:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Since Francis Schonken's comments are frivolous I will ignore them. I have no idea why is presenting such inane arguments. It is a waste of time engaging with someone who obviously has not read any of the literature. Mathsci (talk) 11:15, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Straw man argumentation, that has little to do with the BWV (1998) source I proposed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:51, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like we can't find a consensus on this issue. I'll place a {{POV}} tag under the section title to attract more input to this discussion. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:51, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

These arguments are as abstruse and meaningless as Francis Schonken's use of the phrase "baroque lute". Here he is trying to use one ambiguous entry in a list to trump a whole series of articles and books by the major scholars in the area. That is quite disruptive. I don't know if he's deliberately playing some kind of game. But when all the literature from the major Bach experts explains—sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph—why this work was composed in 1741, for what kind of Dresden flute it was composed, why there is a dedication in surviving manuscripts and why certain galant features of Quantz and others were adopted, etc, etc, it is faintly ridiculous to present the reader with an alternative Schonkenesque version of reality not expounded in any scholarly text on Bach. That is just disruptive editing. Attempts to add content of that kind have led to Francis Schonken's editing being restricted and rightly so. E have to go by the sources; and sometimes they are quite hard to find. Mathsci (talk) 12:34, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The previous form of the article did not mention the list.[3] Nothing has changed. If Franics Schnken really thought this was a significant point, he would have raised it then. But he didn't. That suggests that his whole line of reasoning is frivolous now. It was not a very good idea trying to dismiss the assessments of major Bach scholars. The same kind of attempt at over-precision happened with baroque lute; there is an article baroque flute. The baroque flute, however, is not a fixed entity as it was (and perhaps still even is) being constantly developed. Mathsci (talk) 13:30, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Conflicting reference formats[edit]

Since I am now accused of being a "smart aleck" by User:Mathsci, it seems necessary to point out that WP:CITESTYLE says "citations within any given article should follow a consistent style", and WP:CITEVAR, under the heading "Generally considered helpful", encourages editors to make changes "imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles (e.g., some of the citations in footnotes and others as parenthetical references): an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit". The problem here is mixing Harvard-style parenthetical citations with the short-footnote style long established for this article. One or the other should be used, not a mixture of both. Now, if you prefer Harvard referencing to SFNs, I would be happy to support a change to that format, which I greatly prefer. SFNs, in my opinion, simply interpolate one more click between the inline citation and the source in the reference list.

On a related matter, you have been reverting my changes from <ref>{{harvnb}}</ref> to the simpler {{sfn}} template. I presume you are unaware that the SFN template is the exact equivalent of the more cumbersome format, with one major exception: it automatically consolidates multiple duplicate citations to a single footnote. This can also be done manually, using the <ref name="" /> protocol, but this is much more cumbersome. Or is there something I do not understand about your feelings about this? If so, please explain more fully your objections, and kindly observe WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:00, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I referred to one of your edits as a smart-alec edit. Quite a different thing. It concerned the error you made with the technical word Affekt. Although this is an article about baroque music and baroque instruments (Dresden flutes), you guessed that affekt meant Affect (linguistics). When I corrected that, you attempted to put me right. That was an example of a "smart alec" edit. I have used the term affekt in other articles on Bach and the reception of baroque music. My proper use of the editor format prompted you to make a bad-taste joke about Hungarians. I am not Hungarian, but I might have been.
When writing content which depends on somebody's evaluation or opinion, I generally attribute the remarks. That is one of the main purposes of harvtxt (as the template states). It does not need a page number: its purpose is to provide a brief and informative way of providing attribution if the appropriate text has already been added to the references.
I think that when I found this article, it was filled with incorrect information on practically every line.[4] The sources were poor or not used properly. Somebody had tried to improve the article early this year, but had not followed one of the fundamental rules: gather proper sources. The Ph.D. thesis that I added, although it is somewhat eccentric, has a comprehensive set of references. It was helpful for me in checking that I had not missed anything. Mathsci (talk) 19:11, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Except for two things, you are correct, In this edit you did refer to my edit as "smart aleck". However, that edit did not involve the (German) word Affekt at all, and I am perfectly aware of its sense and meaning, and even its English stranslation, "affect", thank you very much. Secondly, when I was reading the code text, I could not see that the (German) word Affekt was a blue-link, redirecting to "Doctrine of the affections". I erroneously supposed this was a bad link and needed correcting. The disambiguation link affect does in fact contain a reference to that article, in the "see also" section at the bottom, where I did not notice it, so I chose the closest approximation I could find. In fact, "affect" in linguistics is closely related to (though not identical with) the concept of affect in the arts (which is neither restricted to music—it originally was developed in the field of the visual arts, as you will find if you read the article in question—nor entirely confined to the Baroque period).
I presume you mean by "editor format" the "editoer" parameter in the citation template. I must refer you to the documentation for that template, since you actually used the "editor-first" and "editor-last" parameters, instead of the "editor" parameter. The documentation is not as clear as it ought to be, but the "first"/"last" pair, which results in inversion of the normal name-order in English, is intended for alphabetical bibliographical entries listed under the editor, where name inversion makes sense. It does not make sense when the author of one chapter in a book edited by someone else is the subject. I know of no style manual (including the Wikipedia manual of style) that advocates inversion of all names in a bibliographical entry. In Huyngarian (and a few other languages) surname-first is the normal order, nd in those languages it is correct to list authors in this way.
Finally, I have nothing but praise to offer for your edits to the substance of this article, and you are perfectly correct about the sorry state it was in before you started work on it. I just wish you would pay a little better attention to matters of etiquette (WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL, as already mentioned) and to Wikipedia referencing guidelines.
Now that we have both "vented" on this matter, may we start again, please? (1) I asked what your objections were to the SFN template (as opposed to the nested "ref" and "harvnb" tags), Do you in fact hve a reason for prferring the more cumbersome mark-up? Three seperate, identical footnotes, each reading " Oleskiewicz 1999, p. 95" is not correct practice on Wikipedia, as the references to which I have pointed make clear. (2) Do you prefer parenthetical referencing to the established shortened-footnote style in this article? If so, I would support a change to that style. It will not do to mix the two, however. As already discussed above, this is contrary to Wikipedia guidelines.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:47, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rampal & Veyron-Lacroix[edit]

This paragraph:

References

  1. ^ Sonate en mi majeur pour flûte et basse chiffrée / J. S. Bach ; Rampal ; R. Veyron-Lacroix et J. Huchot and INTEGRALE DES SONATES POUR FLUTE VOL. 2 / Jean-Sébastien BACH at Bibliothèque nationale de France website
  2. ^ a b Discography at the Robert Veyron-Lacroix: Harpsichord Memories website

was changed to:

Suggestions:

  • Please don't remove references.
  • Erato didn't exist in 1950: the suggestion of a 1950 recording for Erato is erroneous.
  • No Rampal/Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichord) recording has been reported after 1973 afaik. Either provide a reference for such a recording in the 1974–81 period or remove the contentious information.
  • Afaik all Rampal/Veyron-Lacroix (harpsichord) recordings included a cellist (Huchot) or a gambist (Savall): the continuo for these recordings was thus not exclusively realised on the harpsichord, countrary to what is now suggested.
  • I'm not partial to the "(Boehm flute)" indicator after Rampal's name, would use "(flute)" instead, as it can be found in the reference material. Similarly I'd use (traverso) after the name of those performers that used such instrument according to the reliable sources that can be used in support. For me the traverso/(Western concert) flute distinction is as relevant as the type of keyboard instrument that is used.

Generally, for the recordings section:

  • more references are needed for this section, not less, and the content of these references needs to be followed, not overridden to the Wikipedia editor's taste (so the above remarks or some variation thereof apply to other removals of references and subsequent recastings of content that have occurred); I'm not partial to any particular formatting of these references: if someone doesn't like the format used for an otherwise adequate reference they can reformat or provide another equally adequate one in the format they like – removing references for a "I don't like the format" reason borders however on vandalism.
  • I'd remove all further subsection titles of the recordings section: it's all subjective POV, as if a figured bass can be realised on a harpsichord, lute or fortepiano, but not on a piano... I'd make it one (chronological) list of recordings, giving details supported by references to reliable sources for each entry (e.g. whose figured bass realisation is used,...), as far as such details are available and relevant.

--Francis Schonken (talk) 11:46, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is not something that has been done in any other article, so there is no reason to make an exception here. It is unhelpful to the reader. No discography or list of editions is dealt with by "reliable sources". Mathsci (talk) 17:36, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm sure that an exception or two may be found, on the whole I believe that Mathsci is correct: Discographies do not normally include references. However, at the same time, Francis Schonken has got a point: a statement like "various recordings 1950–1973" is unacceptably vague. The usual solution in Discographies is to include not only the record label, but also the catalogue number of at least the initial release. Subsequent reissues may be useful also, especially with changing formats (LP original reissued on CD, for example). Inclusion of this data should render footnotes unnecessary.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Lists (including discographies) are not exempt from WP:VERIFIABILITY
  2. As said, I don't care too much "how" the verifiability/referencing is realised: I didn't imply a "footnoted" reference is mandatory, e.g. "BAM 96" would be a correct replacement for the first BnF reference in the example above.
  3. Don't replace something that is "correct + verifiable/referenced" by something that is "incorrect + vague + POV + unverifiable/unreferenced". Apart from being a disservice to the reader, it shows contempt for your fellow Wikipedian's diligent work. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:09, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Francis Schonken, you are conducting yourself in the same disruptive way that resulted in your current editing restrictions. Before the current version of the page existed, you watched the pages but raised no objections to the very poor and often inaccurate content. As soon as it was improved and essentially rewritten and re-sourced by me, you reappeared and ignoring obvious facts—this is is a standard piece in the flute repertoire, its origins have been much discussed by Bach scholars in the literature, numerous editions of varying quality have been produced, numerous recordings have been made some but not all adhering to modern standards of baroque authenticity, the improvisatory technique of playing the figured bass by trained musicians, etc—decided to raise a series of minor and irrelevant points, almost all unhelpful for the article. Your attempted use of the term baroque lute and baroque bassoon in the discography shows clearly that you are not trying to help the reader in any way at all: the word period instrument is not a red link. As far as music exams go, here is an example of a list for grade 8 flute in the United Kingdom.[5] Many recent editions now come with a CD with an accompaniment, either a baroque-style continuo (at concert pitch) or the piano accompaniment that will be used in the exam. Even the term "period instrument" usually means a modern copy or reconstruction of an old or vanished instrument. Mathsci (talk) 06:40, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Please stop the false accusations. I didn't introduce the term baroque lute nor the term baroque bassoon in the article, and would have filtered them out by diligent references, and checking Wikipedia content against reliable sources (as described above). Here is how: the Hyperion website says "Lisa Beznosiuk (flute), Elizabeth Kenny (lute), Richard Tunnicliffe (cello)" for BWV 1035 [6]. The "baroque lute" was introduced by Jerome here, resulting in:
If given time and opportunity (and not interrupted by reverts and the like) I would have changed that to:

References

  1. ^ Bach: The Complete Flute Sonatas at Hyperion website
Or, if the record label + catalogue number format is preferred:
All of this further illustrates the necessity of applying the WP:VERIFIABILITY policy. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:46, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PS: note that the booklet of the above recording gives some detail about instruments used, so the following would be equally correct:

References

  1. ^ Bach: The Complete Flute Sonatas at Hyperion website
--Francis Schonken (talk) 09:14, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to be more faux-scholarship. This is a waste of everybody's time. Mathsci (talk) 10:50, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nah, scholarship isn't a prerequisite for the application of WP:VERIFIABILITY. I could be wrong, but seems like you're confusing scholarship with original research, like for instance in this edit summary: "... upper continuo instruments like a guitar can't spontanously fill in bass line & chords" – afaik a guitar, with its lowest string at E, is perfectly capable to perform the basso continuo notes of this composition, and is excellent for performing chords such as those realised from the figured bass, no more or less "spontanously" than any keyboard instrument or an archlute. "Faux-scholarship" would be a mild assessment of the POV in that edit summary.
As said, the distinction, currently exhibited in the recordings section of this article, between accompaniments that do and those that do not realise the figured bass is based in original research, inserts an undesirable POV into the article, and should be removed from mainspace (unless, of course, when references to reliable sources can be given for these distinctions applied to these recordings). Again, I think that the way to go here is a chronological organisation of the list of recordings, with details about the performances no further than what reliable sources permit. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:33, 22 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cannot reply in detail for at least 10 days because of coronary problems (see my user talk page). Your attempts to create supposedly scholarly content are more often than not hopelssly wrong. This was the case for the violin sonatas where you made no effort to find the appropriate sources. You could not identify the first published edition; and invented a misleading statement about the reception of these sonatas. Finding good sources can take several days, although this can be shortened with prior knowlege of the music and the subject. Until I am better, you should probably find something else to do. I am not very well and my health is certainly not ipmproved by looking at your responses. They rarely address the errors you have made and are still making. Mathsci (talk) 12:45, 22 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Useless section[edit]

There was already room in the references for published editions. Francis Schonken produced a section in the main body which was inappropriate. As has been said before, this piece is in the standard flute playing repertoire for examinations (in the UK the Associated Board of the Colleges of Music and also for university.undergraduate degrees in music). There is no merit in adding countless editions to the main body of the article. It is list mania gone mad. Mathsci (talk) 16:27, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The musicologist Ardal Powell has compiled a fairly comprehensive list of all editions known to him.[7] It is a very long and detailed list. It is probably interesting for flautists, but not really on wikipedia. Similarly the discussions of which recordings of Jean-Pierre Rampal are available are of marginal interest. It's fine to add more recordings or more editions, but within reason, as Powell's list shows there are a huge number of editions and many, many recordings. We cannot really have any discussion of them in this article beyond choosing a reasonable selection, and grouping them in a sensible way that is useful for readers. Many examination boards recommend particular editions and sometimes prepare their own edition of a movement for students to purchase. If I play these works, I used an Urtext edition. 20th century editions have dynamical markings and phrasing which differs from baroque phrasing, The same applies to organ works: early 20th century French editions like that of Marcel Dupré suggest legato pedalling which is not compatible with baroque technique (no use of heel). Mathsci (talk) 17:00, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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