Talk:Franz Schubert/GA1

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GA Review[edit]

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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 16:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]


Starting first read-through. Initial comments to follow. Tim riley talk 16:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Initial comments[edit]

From a first perusal, for spelling etc, commendably few points stand out:

  • Spelling
    • Except within quotations, you need to standardise on either English or American spelling: at present we have both ("neighbouring", "instalments", "travellers" but "favorite" and "watercolor"). Strictly, you should find out which was used first when the article was new, and stick with that, but in this article there are so few words in question that I think you can reasonably take a de minimis view and go for whichever of BrE or AmE you prefer.
    • We need a single version of the plural of Schubertiade: at the moment we have both Schubertiaden and Schubertiades. I suggest the latter, but it's your call as long as you're consistent.
      • It should be Schubertiad/Schubertiads: most sources and texts have it spelled this way.  Fixed
    • Mozartean – a perfectly reasonable coinage, and it can be seen in eleven articles in Grove – as opposed to 95 incidences of "Mozartian" – but is not recognised by the OED or Chambers Dictionary. I recommend "Mozartian" here.
      • I also believe Mozartian is preferable.  Fixed
  • Punctuation
    • "the Great C major Symphony" or "the 'Great' C Major Symphony"? – we have both at present.
      • It should be the Great C major Symphony.  Fixed

Comments on the content of the text will follow in the next day or so. – Tim riley talk 16:50, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some first thoughts on the referencing

  • Notes
    • Authors' names in the Notes: Firstname Secondname or Secondname, Firstname? We have a mixture. Erich Benedikt and Arthur Hutchings, but Horton, Julian and Plantinga, Leon – and so on.
      • It should be Secondname, Firstname. Will fix.  Fixed
    • Why do some books have the year shown – e.g. Gammond (1982) – but others don't, such as Schonberg, Emmons etc? And McKay is sometimes McKay (1996) and at others just McKay.
      • All of the inline citations should have the year shown. Will fix.  Fixed, please let me know if I missed any of them.
        • Three have slipped through:
Smith & Carlson, p. 78
Schonberg, p. 130
Plantinga, pp. 107–117
          •  Fixed
  • References
    • You are inconsistent about adding authorlinks. See the 19th- and early 20th-century scholarship section: you give Fuller Maitland a link, but not Henry Chisholm (or Dvořák for that matter). In Modern scholarship you don't link Peter Gammond, Brian Newbould or Liszt. Elizabeth Norman McKay is not linked in the Modern scholarship section but is linked from Additional sources, three sections later. These examples are not an exhaustive list: if you're going include authorlinks for some writers you should check all the authors' names to see if there is a WP article to link to.
    • Publishers' locations: you sometimes add the location ("Vancouver: Read Books", "London: Methuen") and sometimes don't ("W. W. Norton", "Vintage Books")
      • All published works should include the location (if it is known), which is the case for both W. W. Norton and Vintage Books. Will fix.  Fixed
  • Further reading
    • It is not clear what, if anything, is the difference between "Further reading" and "Additional sources".
      • Will merge the two.  Merged
  • Additional sources
    • The second link to Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen is dead.
      • Will attempt to fix.  Removed, unable to rescue
  • External links
    • To borrow the stock question from FAC: what makes Bart Berman a reliable source?
      • I will look into this.
      • As his website appears to be self-published, it would not suitable as a reliable source for information in the text of the article; however I think it may be OK as an external link.

More anon. Tim riley talk 17:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on text[edit]

First batch, down to the end of Musical maturity

  • Lead
    • "The Piano Quintet … and Winterreise are some of his most important works". I don't dispute it, but the lead should reflect the text, and I don't see anything that would justify singling out these seven works from all the rest. I'd tone this down, and just make this "Among his works are…." which speaks for itself.
      • That is true, but other GA/FA articles of composers, such as Felix Mendelssohn, list most important/best-known works in the lead.
      • I  Changed to "His works include", but also included examples of his operas and incidental music.
    • The second paragraph starts with a dangling modifier: it was Schubert, not his gifts, that was born to immigrant parents.
      •  Fixed
  • Early life and education
    • "According to Holzer, Schubert would already know anything that he tried to teach him, and did not give him any real instruction" – this says the opposite of what I think it is meant to say. It says that Schubert did not give Holzer any real instruction, rather than the other way round.
      •  Fixed Is now "According to Holzer, he did not give him any real instruction as Schubert would already know anything that he tried to teach him"
    • "with a friendly joiner's apprentice" – was it the joiner or the apprentice who was friendly? If the latter, "a friendly apprentice joiner" would avoid ambiguity.
      • The latter indeed.  Fixed
    • "Schubert could practice" – just flagging up that if you are going for BrE the verb is "practise". If you go for AmE "practice" is fine, I believe.
      •  Fixed
    • "an important Lieder composer" – I'm a bit unsure about this. We wouldn't say "an important songs composer", and so should this be "an important Lied composer"? (or perhaps safer "an important composer of Lieder"?)
      •  Changed to "an important composer of Lieder"
    • "In the meantime, his genius" – the last person named as a subject was Spaun. Better to switch the pronoun here and the "Schubert" in the next sentence.
      •  Done
  • Teacher at his father's school
    • "resounding indifference" – what a strange phrase! Can indifference resound?
      • I'll think of a better way to phrase this. That was not how it was worded in the source given.
      •  Removed the phrase
    • "(despite being agnostic[22][23])" – citations after the closing bracket, please (MoS).
      •  Fixed
    • "enough money to his basic needs" – unexpected preposition. Do you mean "for"?
      • Of course  Fixed
    • "This was likely Schubert's first visit" – if you are going for BrE I'd make "likely" "probably". For some reason the construction as here is rarely seen in BrE.
      •  Done
  • Support from friends
    • "although he also continued to write Lieder (songs)" – it's a bit late to be telling us what "Lieder" means, after using the word three times already.
      •  Fixed
    • "He also met Joseph Hüttenbrenner" – who is "he" – Schubert or Vogl?
      • Schubert  Fixed
  • Musical maturity
    • "Of most notable interest …" – says who?
      •  Removed
    • "penurious royalties" – he may have been penurious, but his royalties weren't. I think perhaps you mean parsimonious.
      •  Fixed
    • "in the fall of 1823" – the Manual of Style bids us avoid dating things by season, as Europe's spring is Australia's summer and so on. Better to use the month or just "towards the end of …".
      • I just  Replaced with "In 1823" and expanded it on circumstances of the opera's failure
    • "Die Verschworenen is a bright attractive comedy, and Rosamunde contains some of the most charming music that Schubert ever composed." Says who?
    • "he made the acquaintance with both Weber and Beethoven" – presumably "with" should be "of".
      •  Fixed
    • "some of this is likely legend" – ambiguous: does it mean "probably legend" or "plausible legend"?
      • It is borderline wp:OR to me. I  removed this part of the text
    • "but what would have come of it, if he had recovered, we can never know."– uncited editorialising. This should be removed.
      •  Removed

More tomorrow. Tim riley talk 22:29, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Concluding:

  • Last years and masterworks
    • The whole of the first paragraph lacks citations.
      •  Added citations
    • "It has been said that he held a hopeless passion for his pupil, the Countess Karoline Esterházy" – could do with a citation: as you cite Newbould 1999 for the latter part of the sentence, that book (p. 260) would do for this purpose.
      •  Done
    • "The Lady of the Lake" – you could, and perhaps should, link the title
      •  Done
    • "are now frequently substituted by the full text" – I struggled with this and concluded it was intended to mean that the words of the Ave Maria are frequently substituted for the original words. Changing "substituted" to "replaced" would make the meaning clear.
      •  Done
    • "as it is widely, though mistakenly, thought" – the words "though mistakenly" are unneeded. The statement needs a citation, too – more for the mistake aspect than for the substitution per se.
      •  Rephrased
    • The second sentence of the fifth para of this section is a fairly flagrant expression of someone's personal opinion, and unless there is reliable authority for "comparatively uninteresting" it will have to go.
      • I agree, and so do most scholarly texts:  Done
    • "The compositions themselves are a sufficient biography." – Rather flowery writing and, worse, uncited.
      •  Removed
    • "To these should be added" – WP:EDITORIAL
      •  Rewritten
    • "a colossal peak in art song ("remarkable" was the way it was described at the Schubertiads)" – citations needed for the statements before and after the opening bracket.
      • wp:OR to me - all of his Lieder truly set a peak in art song, not just Winterreise -  Removed
    • "This collection, while not a true song cycle" – I think you should either explain in the text or in an explanatory footnote why this isn't a true cycle, or else omit the comment.
      •  Done
    • "which had rarely been plumbed by any composer in the century preceding it." – says who?
      •  Removed - and I also removed the "touching depths of tragedy and of the morbidly supernatural", reads like wp:SYNTHESIS to me.
    • "Six of these" – of these what? Songs in Schwanengesang presumably. And surely they are not set to words: they are settings of the words.
      • Of the songs - and I also  Clarified and expanded to include Seidl and Rellstab as well
    • "The Symphony in C major (D. 944)" – another different way of referring to the work.
      •  Fixed
    • Does Gibbs 1997 p. 202 say everything here from "The Symphony in C major (D. 944) is dated 1828 … to declared "unplayable" by a Viennese orchestra"?
      • Not the last sentence -  Fixed to include what the text actually says
    • The last paragraph of this section is crammed with WP:OR. It needs drastic pruning, and citations for any conclusions.
      • I  Removed it and expanded upon the music of his last two years in paragarphs above.
    • "his very last two months" – as opposed to his slightly last two months? I'd lose the adverb.
      •  Done
    • Note 70 –reference to the Hyperion recording of what?
      •  Linked
  • Final illness and death
    • "the composer saw court physician Ernst Rinna" – I had been nodding in approval until this point at the absence of clunky false titles from the article. This isolated lapse can be cured with the aid of a definite article and a pair of commas.
      • I just  changed it to "physician"
    • "including the tertiary stage of syphilis" – why link syphilis again here?
      •  Fixed
  • Music
    • "a relatively large set of works" – relative to what?
      •  Removed "relative"
  • Style
    • "urging of friend" – missing a "his" before "friend"?
      •  Fixed
    • "molds" – moulds if in BrE
      •  Fixed
  • Instrumental music, stage works and church music
    • I haven't gone on about stylistic points in this review. For GAN the prose does not have to be stellar (it will be another matter at FAC if you eventually go there), but I really did boggle at "manifests itself" twice in two sentences here.
    • Last sentence of first para: citation, please.
    • "While he was clearly influenced" – careful with "while". If as here you mean "although" it’s prudent to avoid "while", which can lead one into all sorts of temporal confusion on the lines of "Miss A sang Bach while Mr B played Beethoven".
      •  Changed to "although"
    • Second para – is there a source for calling the Fifth more Mozartian than the other early symphonies? (Irrelevant personal aside: the slow movement always reminds me of Haydn – Symphony 88 – rather than Mozart.)
      • I couldn't find one, and the earlier symphonies, such as the Third, also remind me of Haydn more than Mozart.  Removed
    • Last sentence of second para needs a citation.
      • I just  Removed it; I'm not hooked on the notion that it was an "innovation" of Schubert's.
    • "It was in the genre of the Lied, however, that Schubert made his most indelible mark". – Why "however"? If you can't recast a sentence with "but" in place of "however" there is no reason to include the latter.
      •  Removed
    • "a myriad of poets" – the OED defines myriad as "a countless number". I think Herr Deutsch and others have counted the poets. A less flowery "numerous" or, better, "more than 20/50/100 poets" would be preferable, I think.
      •  Changed to numerous
    • "being the top three most frequent" – or in short "the three most frequent"?
    • "among many others" – "among the others"?
    • "Also of particular note" – according to whom?
    • "His last song cycle" – but you say earlier it isn't a song cycle
    • The Dvořák quote at the end of the section is rather odd. What do you suppose "which the romantic school has preferably cultivated" means?
  • Publication – catalogue
    • George Grove wasn't yet Sir at the time.
    • "Autumn of 1876" – as above, we avoid seasons where possible. You can just say "October" here. (Grove and Sullivan left London on 26 Sept and arrived in Vienna on 5 Oct. Sullivan left for Prague on 12 Oct and Grove followed five days later. Citation available for dates if wanted.)
Later addition: On re-reading, I pause to query the statement that Grove and Sullivan "rescued from oblivion seven symphonies, the Rosamunde incidental music, some of the masses and operas, several chamber works, and a vast quantity of miscellaneous pieces and songs." There are two objections to this:
  • By Grove's account in the cited source, they got to see the manuscripts or fair copies of symphonies 1-4 and 6 chez Schubert's nephew, Dr Schneider; they also got to see the score of the Fifth, held by the Musikverein, which had been publicly performed as early as 1841. But they were only allowed to copy the Fourth and Sixth. Grove was later sent (by Mendelssohn's brother) the manuscript of the incomplete Seventh in E, but that is not regarded as canonical.
  • The second objection is about what else the two men rescued. The missing bits of the Rosamunde score, certainly, plus the overture to Die Freunde von Salamanka, but although they were allowed to inspect the original MSS. of the Teufels Lustschloss, Fernando, Der vierjahrige Posten, the Mass in F, and "several other works", the only non-symphonic work apart from Rosamunde that they got to copy was the Overture to Die Freunde von Salamanka.
So, I think, the most we can say of the symphonies is that Grove and Sullivan rescued two symphonies during their trip to Vienna, and brought the existence of four other completed symphonies to the attention of the musical world. Likewise with the other music. They rescued very little, but nevertheless made the public aware of the existence of many more scores. Tim riley talk 10:51, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tributes by other musicians
    • "composers such as Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss, George Crumb and Hans Zender" – I'm wondering why the composers are listed in this order, which is neither alphabetical or chronological.
    • Just my opinion, but I think the one-sentence second para of the section comes under the heading of trivial, as does the table in "Filmography". In my view – which you are wholly free to ignore – the article would be better for their removal.
  • Duplicate links
    • The MoS bids us ration blue links to one per topic in the lead and a maximum of one per topic in the main text. There has grown up, quite unofficially, a convention that for Life and Works article it is useful to have a link in both sections. But that apart, there are duplicate links to Beethoven (twice), Franz von Schober, Symphony No 9 and Schubertiad in the Life section, and later Robert Schumann (twice).

I think that's all at this stage. I'll look in again to see how matters progress. As you are so quick off the mark I shan't put the review on formal hold (unless you wish me to). It's all shaping up very well so far. Onwards and upwards! – Tim riley talk 08:47, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Tim riley: Thank you so much for giving this article such a detailed review - I greatly appreciate it! Of course, I would like to continue working on this article to get it to a FA. Before I started doing work on it, it was full of problems - some weird claims which weren’t remotely backed up by any reputable scholarly text, no lead at all, some incorrect facts, etc. Currently, it is much better. I should be able to finish addressing the remainder of the points you brought up in the next two days, and look forward to this article’s promotion to a GA! —Zingarese (talk) 05:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Tim riley: I think I addressed almost all of your concerns, and also did additional cleanup and slight expansion. (I was in the process of confirming "Done" on each point but I don't feel that's really time efficient or necessary at this stage.) Please let me know what you think! Thanks again, Zingarese (talk) 20:08, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Good. We're almost there. Just one last point. I'm sorry to go one about this, but I think your revised text still doesn't accurately reflect what Grove wrote about his and Sullivan's discoveries in Vienna. There is nothing in his account to justify "seven symphonies" or "several chamber works, and a vast quantity of miscellaneous pieces and songs". They unearthed six symphonies (copying two of them), the Rosamunde score, the original MSS of the Teufels Lustschloss, Fernando, Die vierjährige Posten, Die Freunde von Salamanka and "several other works". Once that point is addressed, I think we can proceed to the ribbon-cutting ceremony. – Tim riley talk 08:02, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Tim riley: Sorry about that- I revised it to make it more accurate. Let me know what you think! —Zingarese (talk) 19:16, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good! Well, I think I can get out the silver-plated scissors and cut the ribbon. It gives me extravagant pleasure to be able to promote the article to GA. There are a few minor ragged edges in the references still, but nothing to detain us at GAN level (FAC will be another matter). The article seems to me a potential FA, and I hope you will take it to WP:PR and then to FAC in due course. But meanwhile:

Overall summary[edit]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose quality:
    B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. References to sources:
    Well referenced.
    B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
    Well referenced.
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
    Well illustrated.
    B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
    Well illustrated.
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:

It has been a pleasure to be part of this review, and I send warmest congratulations to the nominator. Now, on to PR and FAC, please. Tim riley talk 20:17, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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