User talk:LazyStarryNights/Lists of compositions by Johannes Brahms

Genre (Proposed)

This looks fine to me in principle. --Kleinzach 13:40, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

OK. I removed the original genre columns to keep the working table readable. Can be reintroduced if needed. I have them in a spreadsheet. LazyStarryNights (talk) 21:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Scoring (proposed)

Added Scoring (proposed), by wikifying the original IMSLP data thereby following ideas set out in User:LazyStarryNights/Scoring.

Male choir, Female choir and Piano left hand do not have articles, but I feel they should so instead of linking these to others I kept them unlinked on purpose.

For Male choir I did find Men's chorus with a redirect as well Male voice choir. I could add a redirect from Male choir, but maybe it should be the other way around. I am not sure what the most common name is. I was already struggling with Chorus and Choir but Wikipedia judged based on the redirection flow for Choir (eventhough IMSLP seems to like Chorus :). LazyStarryNights (talk) 21:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

So 'Scoring' is the same as instrumentation? Instrumentation/instruments doesn't cover voices. How about 'Scored for'? There are lots of capitals in this column.

I suggest either using all lower case or sentence style (e.g. Soprano or tenor, and piano). Can we delete the Instrumentation (IMSLP) column with its abbreviations?

Regarding Men's chorus I think we have to go with whatever the WP article calls the thing. If the name of the article changes, then the term we use in the list can be changed as well. (Coming from an opera background, I personally always use chorus for the secular singing, and choir exclusively for church music.) --Kleinzach 04:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Removed ISMLP instruments, renamed Instrumentation column to "Scored For", lowercased instruments.

For the Male choir discussion, see Talk:Men's chorus. LazyStarryNights (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Something made me doubt again, about the column name "Scored For". The reason is that it is inconsistent with the composition articles. There both "vocal" and "regular" instruments are listed under the section "Instrumentation". See A German Requiem (Brahms) and Schicksalslied. Based on this the case for Instrumtation is growing in my mind. Curious to your ideas. LazyStarryNights (talk) 06:50, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Instrumentation really does mean exactly that — instruments. You'll find instruments and voices are normally explained separately e.g. for operas where there are role tables (listing singers) and separate instrumentation sections (for orchestral forces). Of course there are some articles where voices have crept into the instrumentation but I don't think that's very elegant or particularly common. --Kleinzach 15:35, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I recognise the opera pattern indeed. Now I was looking at more examples outside opera. But, maybe I did not take a good sample when making my point, because I now discover that many articles don't even have a section "Instrumentation" at all. Though still the non-opera ones that I found, eg now also found St Matthew Passion do have the vocals in the Instrumentation. Gives me an interesting thought about the definition of instrument. Although Musical instrument is not 100% clear on this. List of musical instruments lists the Human Voice and Tenor etc under Wind instruments (aerophones) with Hornbostel-Sachs number 43, implying that the human voice is an instrument as well (hence potentially covered by a wider defined Instrumentation (music). LazyStarryNights (talk) 15:33, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

An additional insight: IMSLP articles list voices under Instrumentation. See for example Scores:Ave Maria, Op.12 (Brahms, Johannes) and Scores:Matthäuspassion, BWV 244 (Bach, Johann Sebastian). LazyStarryNights (talk) 16:17, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't really have anything to add. We are here to serve the reader and make the information easy to understand. The basic meaning of an instrument is a device. You can have theories about how the human voice can be regarded as a form of musical instrument. That's fine and you can edit the Musical instrument accordingly if you like, but here we are talking about a column heading, which is merely a signpost for the reader. --Kleinzach 16:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, maybe I got a bit too carried away with the Hornbostel-Sachs etc story. And the discussion about the composition articles should probably not be done in a discussion about a column name. Maybe that one should be held in the guideline? I just noticed that that one suggest voices do fall under Instrumentation in the articles. LazyStarryNights (talk) 19:39, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Title IMSLP/first lines

This often gives the first line of a Lied. I think this should either be deleted or be made into a new column. It can be useful information, of course. Kleinzach 04:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

In #First attempt at merge, I deleted them. It could be reintroduced (from my Excel copy) if it adds enough value in the table and a suitable place could be found. LazyStarryNights (talk) 22:26, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Key as part of the title or a separate column

I think the key should be part of the title — if the work is published in that form. Kleinzach 04:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Based on an earlier discussion I had the impression that key is almost never part of the title of how it was published. Also based on the original data in the articles it is difficult to determine this without going into the scores for every work. In #First attempt at merge, I completely separated key from the title. Similar as with the Bruckner list. It could be still in the article names in case it is needed due to prevention of ambiguity. LazyStarryNights (talk) 22:34, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Translations of titles

I'm against providing translations of titles as I think they clutter up the list — maybe they should go in the article about the individual work. Kleinzach 04:18, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

In #First attempt at merge, I deleted them. It could be reintroduced (from my Excel copy) if it adds enough value in the table and a suitable place could be found. LazyStarryNights (talk) 22:36, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Repeat linking

One important point, which I really should have mentioned earlier, is about repeat linking. I think there is an MOS guideline about this somewhere, but in the past we have have only linked the first instance of a name, genre or whatever in a table, see for example List of operas by Gluck. I suppose we can link every piano that occurs in the table but I think it is against the MOS. Sorry about this! --Kleinzach 23:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Disagree. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking#Overlinking and underlinking#What generally should not be linked:

Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, links may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.

In the case of the tables with compositions it is helpful for readers, because otherwise it you are at say the middle of the table (eg Opus 55) and see Baritone and want to click, you have to go all the way up to find yourself a Baritone somewhere. LazyStarryNights (talk) 19:23, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

OK. I am familiar with the counter argument! The guideline never really addressed the problem in big tables. In the past we have been pragmatic about this, sometimes adding extra links. However do you want to link every piano? --Kleinzach 21:52, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

You wrote "The guideline never really addressed the problem in big tables.". > I don't understand. The guideline does address tables, hence also covers big tables. See my quote of the Guideline article.

Yes I would link piano all times. We'd have to separate the discussion of whether things are worth linking at all vs the the frequency of the linking:

• Worth linking: I think instruments are worth linking because it gives user friendliness. If we link instruments I think all instruments should be linked. Not just Baritone yes but Piano not. Why not Piano? Because Piano is a more known "instrument" than Baritone?. This gives me the feeling of lack of consistence and a vague definition of known.
• Frequency: See initial argument: user should not be forced to find nor baritone neither piano somewhere else in the list to click. And in contrast to in a text, in a table there is no problem of cluttering the user view. On the contrary. The view is more smooth/constant if all have links than if only some have links. LazyStarryNights (talk) 18:05, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually there is an ambiguity in the MOS text you quote above: "may be repeated" could mean repeated once (or twice), or repeated infinitely. It's not clear.--Kleinzach 14:34, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Since there is no limit specified, my interpretation is that there is none. But it is something that could be further clarified in the MOS. LazyStarryNights (talk) 15:55, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. Kleinzach 02:22, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

First attempt at merge

I merged the data from the 2 Wikipedia pages and IMSLP into the same table format as Buckner. There are still a lot of buts and ifs in this merge which I will try to address over the coming period. LazyStarryNights (talk) 20:39, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Suggestions

See my rather lengthy posting (and revival of this apparently 6-year old dead(?) subject) on this User's Project Talk Page at User talk:LazyStarryNights/List of compositions project. Saguaro-sun/chuckstreet (talk) 03:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

I've completed the merge: by genre and by opus have been combined back together again and moved back to page List of compositions by Johannes Brahms. The table I created is initially in genre order, and it's sortable by clicking on the # column header which puts it in order of Op/WoO/Anh.

Chuckstreet (talk) 17:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)