Talk:Flow, my tears

Literary references

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_My_Tears_The_Policeman_Said

If someone would like to add this Philip K Dick novel reference link to the page, if deemed suitable, please do so as i've not wiki'd before and am not familiar with wiki conventions. I've always wondered about the structure of the grammer of the title of that book and am glad i seem to have finally found out what if may be from. Like wise a link back to this from the book page would not go amiss. Colour me slack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Q84

Haraku Murakami's "1Q84" also references the piece, as "Lachrmae," on p. 213 of the English translation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimstoic (talk • contribs) 23:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Original lyrics?

I've always know this piece as "Flow, my teares", in Old English, but the lyrics in this article seem to be modernized. I think the original should be in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.158.134.49 (talk) 17:29, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Notation

It would be great to see music examples and have a little analysis. This is, after all, an article about a piece of music. Gingermint (talk) 20:23, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Punctuation

Is it:

• Flow My Tears (title), or
• Flow my Tears (lede), or
• Flow, my tears (incipit)? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 10:18, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought that articles named after incipits use that incipit verbatim, thus: Flow, my tears. I can't find a guideline to that effect, but plenty of examples in Category:Arias, Category:Opera excerpts, Category:Cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Unsurprisingly, there are counter-examples at Category:Compositions by John Dowland, but I suggest that those based on incipits should all be changed to sentence case. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:54, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 20 September 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Even though there isn't necessarily a guideline that specifically covers this, the prevailing opinion here (with some opposition) is that we generally don't capitalise musical titles based on the opening line. For WP:CONSISTENCY therefore, we can make this move, but there may be a wider question over the what the guideline should or shouldn't say.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:47, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

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Flow My Tears → Flow, my tears – Articles for works like songs, cantatas, arias, which are named after their incipits use that incipit verbatim for their title. Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:15, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

• I generally would support this, at least decapitalization. From what I've seen, music sources are generally not good at respecting capitalization or punctuation. Looking into the lyrics, the comma does not seem consistent. Does there exist an original manuscript (image?) to refer to? — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 15:37, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
  • comment: There exist a number of contemporary sources, though I suppose the 1600 print of the Second Book of Songs might also serve. When examining sources from this period, one thing that can usually be counted on is that each one will have its own way of spelling words and punctuating text. In the present case, there is also the fact that the print gives the song its (Latin) title "Lacrime" [sic]. The text incipit in this source is "Flow my teares fall from your ſprings" (except that in the score itself the initial letter F is floridly decorated and so the following L in "flow" is capitalised, and in the bass-voice part the words "my" and "fall from" are omitted). Never mind the rest of the text (e.g., "Exilde" vs "Exild", "morne" vs. "mourne", etc.). Trying to get an authoritative spelling from Elizabethan/Jacobean sources is like trying to get an honest opinion from a politician.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:42, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
• Comment: I support decapitalisation, if only because I can never make sense of the rules for which words are not supposed to be lowercase. As you say, this is an incipit, so verbatim should be OK, but I am not entirely convinced about the comma. I'm currently singing Bennett's derivative work, "Weep, O mine eyes", and there I think the comma is necessary in principle, because the "O..." is a vocative phrase, and outside the basic sentence, but in "Flow my tears", this is simply a bit of subject-verb inversion, or a third-person imperative, or something. Well, plainly there is no such thing as the exact punctuation of the original, so neither can be said to be wrong, but it looks to me as though "Flow my tears" is rather more common. Consider then how many people, remembering the title of the song, will type "Flow, my tears", and how many "Flow my tears". I vote for the latter, of course with a redirect from the comma version. Imaginatorium (talk) 19:59, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Response: As far as punctuation is concerned, it should be kept in mind that the use of commas was much less common in the 16th and 17th centuries than is the case today. However, this is probably not relevant for our purposes, any more than whether the third word should be spelled "tears" or "teares". It seems to me that we ought at least to be considering WP:COMMONNAME here. Is this song really best known by its incipit (and, if so, in which variant form)? I personally find its title, Lachrimae, more familiar, but testing this is a little tricky, because of the various alternative versions (for example, the instrumental pavan).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:34, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't think any attempt to discern original spelling and using that for the title is helpful, and WP:COMMONNAME should be considered. As for the comma: the first line reads overleaf: "Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!" so it's clearly an imperative which in my understanding (Sprachgefühl) needs a comma, but I wouldn't go on the barricades for it. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:23, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree with most of the comments, basically, but I think it would be a good idea to consider the title more generally. Is Lachrymae more general (not meaning "Popularity on Youtube")? The basic problem is that n00 years ago there was no concept of "Opus", distinct works, set in stone. People wrote tunes, then used them as seemed appropriate. Perhaps the song "#Flow\,? [Mm]y [Tt]ears#" (that's a regexp, roughly) is the best-known form, but the article should discuss the whole work ("workset"? amorphous mass of related bits of music), and perhaps the "Tears" title would be the best to do it under. To make a non-constructive criticism, I do not think the article starts well: "Flow My Tears is a lute song (specifically, an "ayre")...", where the affected spelling "ayre" is referenced to a page I can't access, but whose title appears to be "Air (2)" (whatever that means). Not for the first time, a reader wishing to get up to speed on this (and genuinely knowing next to nothing about Dowland, or 1600 lute music), would find the talk page more helpful than the article. Sidetrack: don't want to argue about commas, really, but, modern English, dear thing, worries about this more than, I think, necessary. Probably a comma is required now, because people think that a subject cannot follow its verb except in questions or German; I don't think a comma is really necessary once you know it is olde Englishe, yet, after 'tears', it is, because a new verb follows. HTH Imaginatorium (talk) 06:55, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

• Support, style for classical music project. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:47, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
• Question: Far be it from me to doubt anything said on an article Talk page ;-), but I'm having some difficulty finding the relevant guideline that says English text incipits used as song titles should not be capitalized in the same way that other song titles are. On WP:Manual of Style/Music#Classical music titles, I find no discussion or examples of English-language titles. Under the heading Popular music, the only example I can see is "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", but technically that is not a text incipit except for the song's refrain, and so may be regarded as a title, independent of its inclusion in the song text. Surely this issue must be covered somewhere, but I am getting the feeling that this may be a statistical average of the practice of diverse editors, rather than a considered policy.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:45, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

As I wrote above under #Punctuation, I couldn't find such a guideline either, but there are many examples that do so. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:10, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

And, if I recall correctly, you also cited some examples that do not conform to this practice. I am not trying to take a position on this question. I merely wish to understand what the reasoning is for this suggested change.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:13, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, some don't, but it seems to me that sentence case is the overwhelming majority, so I don't consider this request a change but to bring it in line with that practice. Once sorted, we can attend to others, like "I Saw My Lady Weepe" where the same issue was raised in 2010 after it was moved away from sentence case. BTW, this article was moved in December 2008 by User:Thumperward from Flow my tears to Flow my Tears with the edit summary: "per MoS naming conventions, musical works should be presented in titlecase; no indication that this one should be different"; it was then moved by User:Brambleclawx in February 2010 to its current title with the terse edit summary: "more common capitalisation".

I finally found the relevant section in Wikipedia's guides: in MOS:CAPS#Composition titles (MOS:CT for short) there's the sentence, "If a work is known by its first line of text and lacks a separate title, then the first line, rendered in sentence case, should be used as its title.", giving Purcell's Remember not, Lord, our offences as an example. Apparently, that sentence was the result of a lengthy discussion in 2013 at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 11#The curious case of Remember not, Lord, our offences. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:00, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Michael. That was all I needed to know. Given that it is so difficult to find this guideline, perhaps something should be inserted into the section on music titles—if nothing else, then a cross-reference to MOS:CT. I can now

• Support, per the guideline, at least so far as sentence case is concerned. I really don't care one way or the other about the comma.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:17, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
• Comment – see current discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Capitalisation of songs, arias, etc: until further notice, and hopefully a consensus one way or another, I suppose the incipit-based capitalisation guidance is going nowhere (i.e., as far as the WP:NCM guidance is concerned). --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:37, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose – technically the "first line" guidance of MOS:CT can not be applied here because "a separate title" (Lachrimae pavane) exists, see my emphasis in this quote of the actual guidance: "If a work is known by its first line of text and lacks a separate title, then the first line, rendered in sentence case, should be used as its title". --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:35, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I was under the impression that Lachrimae pavane is a different work, the instrumental predecessor to "Flow, my tears". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 22:11, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Lachrymae (the title of the song in the Second Book of Songs—see the link, above) and the Lachrymae Pavan are both the same, and different, depending on the definition of "sameness". Different, in that the words of the ayre are omitted in the instrumental versions, but the same in that it is otherwise essentially (but not exactly in every detail) the same piece of music. The Pavan is also different from itself, in that it exists in several different versions for solo lute, and at least one for instrumental ensemble (including an accompanying lute part). It is not certain (though probable) that the lute version preceded the song, but the ensemble version, which is printed as part of the collection Lachrimæ, or Seaven Teares, Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans ..., is almost certainly later than the song, since it was published four years later than the Second Book.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:52, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Ah, yes, thank you: the chicken analogy was what I was grasping for in my comment above. The problem is that the factory farming methods which are WP editing mean that we have no way of knowing whether a styrofoam pack of five (left) chicken legs come from a decapodal mutant or what. Somehow, though, Francis Schonken's suggestion reminds me of the recipe I was once given for an omelette, involving the yolk of one egg and the white of another. Anyway, I again suggest that the scope of the article should be reconsidered, and that probably a single article covering the lute version and the madrigal version would be better. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:31, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

A madrigal version exists, as well?!! Things are getting even more complicated! Do reveal the details! As far as I am aware, there are only (1) an assortment of versions for solo lute, (2) the song version (actually in two versions, one for cantus and lute, the other for cantus, bass and lute), and (3) the instrumental ensemble version (though, admittedly, there are seven variants in the 1604 print).–Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:07, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, my brain slipped. I am singing the Bennett madrigal, which is how I got here, and muddled everything up. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:14, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Perfectly understandable. Bennett is one of my favourite composers, though I was not aware that he had composed madrigals.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:33, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Verrie funnye. A manne of the rite periode bothers not one whitte wheather theyre be one tee or two, norre eny nombre of enns. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:18, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia guidance technicalities aside, afaics "Flow My Tears" is by far the most often used format in reliable sources, so the song has a "title", independent of its "incipit" (which is spelled differently). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:19, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

How can you tell the difference between an incipit used as a title, and an actual title consisting of the identical wording? Does this depend on the capitalization, or something else?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:33, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Based on the current guidance I couldn't tell (while that guidance doesn't explain the difference). I'd look for reliable sources and see whether these use the title case version of the title. E.g. this one does, and so does this one These books establish that the song has a "title" in title case. So the "incipit rule" guidance for sentence case capitalisation can no longer be applied. For a further discussion of the confusing nature of the current guideline wording, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#Capitalisation of songs, arias, etc. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:13, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, without seeing the style guidelines used by Indiana University Press and Rough Guides Limited, I cannot tell whether "My Lady Weeps" and "Flow My Tears" are being treated as text incipits or as titles—it depends entirely on their house styles whether text incipits are capitalized in the same way as titles, or given in sentence case. Indeed, some publishers choose to use sentence case for all titles: books, articles, musical compositions, films, paintings, etc. I agree that the current guideline wording is confusing, not only on Wikipedia, but in most other style guidelines as well. This is why I asked for some help here.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:28, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

I think it's a mistake to look for spelling in sources and other style guides. Wikipedia makes its own, not wilfully and outlandish, but usually applied with great internal consistency. There's one for this case, MOS:CT, and it should be applied, or removed. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:58, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Red herring: the "incipit rule" of MOS:CT requires to check whether the song has a title. It has: "Flow My Tears", in which case sentence case can't be applied to the title according to the current wording of the MOS guidance.

Also red herring: "...mistake to look for spelling in sources..." – the "incipit rule" of MOS:CT was developed from "spelling in sources" (see discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 11#The curious case of Remember not, Lord, our offences), which afaics is the foundation of the "... separate title" caveat in the guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:22, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Question

Shouldn't "That in despair their last fortunes deplore" read "That in despair their lost fortunes deplore"? Bo Jacoby (talk) 23:35, 27 October 2016 (UTC).

Yes, according to page 5 of http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Second_Book_of_Songes_%28Dowland,_John%29 (http://ks.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/8/83/IMSLP278945-PMLP277931-the_second_booke_of_songs_or_ayres.pdf), but "last" is also used in many places, e.g. at http://www.sting.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/529 and others. OTOH, IMSLP shows in a non-authoritative transcription at http://imslp.org/wiki/Flow_My_Tears_%28Dowland,_John%29, "that in despair their dark fortunes deplore". Overall, I agree that it should be "lost". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:20, 28 October 2016 (UTC)