Talk:Robert Schumann

More info for 21 October 2021 edit, "Adjusted sources for auditory hallucination"

Three of the references cited for the paragraph on auditory hallucinations/hearing a single note did not mention hallucination or tinnitus but only discussed the bipolar theory and emotional disturbance. One mentioned Schumann only in passing. Removed source that did not discuss Schumann and moved the other two sources to cite statement in previous paragraph about Schumann possibly having bipolar disorder. Also added missing archive url and fixed formatting. Livin270 (talk) 19:47, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Recent category edits

Re this series of edits by RandomCanadian in response to my edit there: I'm not an expert on Schumann by any means but I know quite a bit about classical music and can defend/justify many of the categories you removed:

• Classical pianists cats: It is absolutely a defining part of his life that he was an aspiring concert pianist before becoming a composer (as mentioned earlier in the article). This is probably one of the most well-known facts about him among musicians, at least among modern classical pianists (both amateur and professional).
• Conductor cats: Perhaps a little less defining (given the anecdotes about how bad he was at the job), but he *did* have a professional conducting post (see the article).
• Alumni/faculty cats: It's standard to include them when applicable in *every* *other* article I've encountered.
• Retrospective medical diagnoses (e.g. bipolar, dystonia, etc.): I agree these are inappropriate. The "Deaths in mental institutions" cat is more than enough here.
• Angelic visionaries: Yeah, that can go too. This is not a case like, say, Hildegard of Bingen, where this was a notable part of the subject's output for the public.
• Heinrich Heine cat: Indeed inappropriate, but I can understand why it was added (Schumann's Dichterliebe, based on Heine's poems, is a major song cycle)
• Composers for pedal piano: his works for pedal piano are noted in the List of compositions by Robert Schumann and he's one of very few to write for this rather rare instrument.
• German magazine founders: Well he did co-found the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, one of the first and probably longest-running music magazines (originally for classical music, but now encompassing other styles).

I'll change the article accordingly and mention this message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music. Graham87 18:11, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

• I completely support Graham87's comments and edits.--Smerus (talk) 19:21, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
• Ditto. Mathsci (talk) 20:16, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

The number of categories is still excessive. Way too many of these are just different intersections of the same thing. We have:

1. Category:19th-century classical composers
2. Category:19th-century German composers
3. Category:German Romantic composers
4. Category:German opera composers
5. Category:German male classical composers
6. Category:Male opera composers

I don't think this is a helpful way to present this information, and if anything it distracts from the potential usefulness of categories. If we follow the advice of WP:DEFCAT; and copy the Caravaggio example, Schumann was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. So the important things are "German"; "composer"; "pianist" and "music critic". One can add "19th-century" for good measure as a temporal demarkation, but that's about it. I'd argue that

1. The conductor cats should be removed. Whether he had a professional conducting post about it does not make it defining.
2. The only mention of his studying in Leipzig is he left to study law at the University of Leipzig under family pressure. But in Leipzig Schumann instead focused on improvisation, song composition, and writing novels. That hardly seems like a DEFCAT to me.
3. His position as "University of Music and Theatre Leipzig faculty" is not even mentioned in the article.
4. The "opera composer" category should be removed. TIL that he did compose one opera, but it clearly is not a DEFCAT under any meaning of the word "defining"
5. "Composers for pedal piano" - all of his works "for pedal piano" are actually works "for Organ or Pedal Piano". Plus whether he is "one of the very few to write for this instrument" does not mean that it is a defining characteristic of the composer.
6. "German magazine founders" - is he notable as a publisher? is he notable for founding the NZM? He might be notable as a music critic, but I don't think every thing he did merits a category. The purpose of category is helping readers, knowing essential (defining) characteristics of subjects; browse sets of related pages, not grouping articles by random characteristics which might be true but are not DEFCAT.

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:54, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Your issues with the category system and intersection of categories are best taken up at categories for discussion, not here. The guidelines you cite are much more often used to justify deletions/merging there than they are to justify which categories belong in an article. I've never encountered an approach to categories quite like this in my time of editing. Also see Talk:Winston Churchill/Archive 6#Categories for a similar discussion. Re operas: indeed his only opera is barely known these days, but as the article says, it (and his writings on the subject) had a great influence on Richard Wagner, the most notable composer of German operas of the 19th century, if not of all time. Also see the opening text at Category:Opera composers, which describes it and its subcategories as all-inclusive. Composing an opera is a mammoth undertaking, and attempts to do so (or not) can have a huge effect on a composer's life (cf Franz Schubert, who composed several unsuccessful operas, and Johann Sebastian Bach, who is notable for never having written one, though there's no category for that and nor should there be). Ditto with conducting, honestly; he had a professional conducting post well after it became a specialised discipline. I'm also going to make a note of this discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization; the comment in the first section basically sums up my thoughts about how CATDEFINING is used in *practice* today better than I ever could. Graham87 07:51, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Please be more specific about "the comment in the first section"...which section are you referring to? Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 11:05, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm referring to Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Ian Wolfe. Graham87 13:01, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. That discussion is about including a cat based on a trivial mention in an obituary, and the inclusion of the cat in that discussion is not supported by other refs. Thus, IMHO, trivial mentions alone do not make it defining, and should not have a corresponding cat. That point is related to this discussion, and for that reason, I support the points made by RandomCanadian. Inclusion of cats, or intersection of cats, must be based on defining characteristics included in the article. These characteristics must be supported by facts from reliable refs, and not based on trivial mentions. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 16:34, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The guidelines you cite are much more often used to justify deletions/merging there than they are to justify which categories belong in an article. I've never encountered an approach to categories quite like this in my time of editing. This is plainly inconsistent with existing policy. A central concept used in categorizing articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. WP:DEFCAT is specifically what determines which specific categories should be included in an article, as in the given example (which I've closely mirrored here). You might be confusing with WP:OVERCAT.

Composing an opera is a mammoth undertaking, and attempts to do so (or not) can have a huge effect on a composer's life Unless we have reliable sources describing how this was a significant ("defining") undertaking for Schumann in particular, whether it was a significant undertaking for others does not make it defining here. Unlike, say, Mozart or Händel, for whom the status as opera composer is certainly a significant part of both their musical career and their posthumous fame, this is nowhere near the case for Schumann.

Also see the opening text at Category:Opera composers, which describes it and its subcategories as all-inclusive This is plainly at odds with WP:DEFCAT and has been removed per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, since there is no justification for one single page to be at odds with wider policy. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:46, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

No, I'm not confusing WP:DEFCAT with anything ... I still maintain that the way you're interpreting the text there is way out of sync with general practice. I notice that the text you cite was added in this edit by an editor who then had less than two months of experience (assuming that was their first account, which it may or may not have been) and quite an interesting history indeed ... there's this related discussion about political categories. That edit de-emphasised text which is still in the lead section of the categorisation policy: "The central goal of the category system is to provide navigational links to Wikipedia pages in a hierarchy of categories which readers, knowing essential—defining—characteristics of a topic, can browse and quickly find sets of pages on topics that are defined by those characteristics." Re the opera composers cat, people will probably add any pages they see fit there regardless of what text is on the category's page. Graham87 05:33, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

• This needs a broader discussion. The amount of categories is excessive in many biographies, to the extent that it entirely undermines the usefulness of the category system. We cannot solve that problem in a single article though. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:50, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Best known works

I would argue Dichterliebe should be included here. 139.60.27.38 (talk) 03:54, 23 June 2023 (UTC)