Wikipedia:Peer review/Felix Mendelssohn/archive1

Felix Mendelssohn

I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to help get it to FA status. All comments gratefully received.

Thanks, Smerus (talk) 11:59, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Comments from Double sharp

I really like what I see there already, but I feel I must say something about what I don't see there yet ^_^; can we please have something more substantial about Mendelssohn's style, like the way we cover Chopin (an FA) in Frédéric Chopin#Form and harmony? At the moment we hear much of his personal life, and much of what he composed (among other details of his musical activity), but not much of what makes Mendelssohn Mendelssohn. We hear "These four works [Opp. 12, 13, 20, 21] show an intuitive grasp of form, harmony, counterpoint, colour, and compositional technique, which justify claims frequently made that Mendelssohn's precocity exceeded even that of Mozart in its intellectual grasp.", and I absolutely agree, but we do not hear anything about what this grasp entailed. What is his harmony like, and his form, and his counterpoint, and so on? I would have liked to see some mention of some Mendelssohnian "trademarks", at least, like the exhaustion at the end of his development sections (the quartet Op. 12, the Midsummer Night's Dream overture Op. 21, the Violin Concerto, and that's only the ones I remember immediately – I think Rosen mentions it in Sonata Forms) or perhaps his innovative use of cyclic form beginning even in his youth. And we hear "His fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and use of counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, by whose music he was deeply influenced." – in the wrong section, I think – can we hear something about what the nature of this influence was? He obviously did not adopt Bach's technique wholesale, or else he would sound like Bach and not Mendelssohn, in about the same way Mozart sounds like a Baroque composer in much of the C minor mass (at least until he surrenders to his urge to write a beautiful but irrelevant operatic aria in the Credo). So how did he use what he learned from Bach and make it his own? Finally we come to the point of Mendelssohn's legacy – can we have something about how Mendelssohn influenced other composers? The oratorios must have had some influence in England, surely, and Rosen mentions a few things about his influence on Liszt and Wagner (particularly in Parsifal) – the last would surely be interesting, given what we hear of Wagner on Mendelssohn!

All in all, this has been an excellent read and I find that I cannot find anything major to criticise at all about what is there. Thus I have focused on what is not, in the hope that it shall soon be inserted and covered with as much skill as the installments we have read so far. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

• Many thanks for this - I will await other comments before considering these issues in detail.--Smerus (talk) 09:38, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
• Hi, I am still working on a section about style, which I hope will cover some of the points above. I relocated your quote from Rosen about the SWW and took out the ancillary stuff about the oratorios so as to keep a balance of views - Rosen's opinions can be fun, but I am not sure that they always make sense (What precisely, e.g., is implied by "it is not true that they are insipid, but they might as well be", which I enjoy but can't quite analyze?). --Smerus (talk) 15:48, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Yeah, his language is too colourful for me to resist. ^_^ I think he means that they are superbly crafted, with grace and lyricism in abundance, but that there is nothing beyond that: as he says, Mozart's and Schubert's drama and passion are missing. So while they are not insipid (they have interest), they might as well be (because they lack the sort of interest that satisfies the modern concert audience). Still, despite it being phrased in a way that is "too simple to be simple", I find it indicative of the rather ambiguous opinions that we often encounter on Mendelssohn! Double sharp (talk) 01:42, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
• Well, I've now expanded some comments on Mendelssohn's style at the head of the music section. I haven't developed any thoughts about the 'trademarks' you refer to because I feel such considerations are perhaps too specific for an encyclopaedia article. I have added something about his influence on Britsih composers.--Smerus (talk) 22:29, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Perhaps they are specific, but you managed to be specific without being too specific for Chopin, after all. ^_^ Please don't take my comments as meaning that everything I mention has to be there – we are not writing a musicological review. But we can surely give some indication of what musical techniques are distinctive in his work: I don't think it'd be too problematic to just say, for example, that his early works start from late classicism, adding to and reinterpreting it to support his lyricism and experiments with cyclic forms. That seems to get the gist across without being overly technical, and indeed you have almost all of that already spread out to avoid scaring the reader. ^_^ Though I'm not sure that there is no change in style – Rosen singles out the early works as having "daring" which the composer later renounced, and whether or not you agree with that, such a comment of course implies a diagnosis of some stylistic change. It would be interesting to have a brief sentence on what is different about the early works, since Rosen's support of the early works over the late ones is covered under reception (and it would be interesting to know how common that particular view is, too). Double sharp (talk) 01:42, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Thanks for these comments - I will review again in this light. --Smerus (talk) 09:14, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
      • I've added, in the section 'Style', a summary of Vitercik's analysis which I think covers the area you highlight. I don't wish to hand the article over to Rosen's opinions, much as I enjoy them, and I think that Vitercik's spotlight on how Mendelssohn dealt with the issues of musical romanticism formally, rather than emotionally, is an important key to M's style.--Smerus (talk) 11:29, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
        • Thank you for that; that is indeed pretty much what I wanted to see! I agree about Rosen; he's definitely not the be-all and end-all of everything, and he often relies on others' research as a starting point. Might I suggest, tongue in cheek, some presentiments of Wikipedia's reliance on sources? ^_^ After all, he is often an excellent starting point for research and finding out the main points as well as some aspects of what others have written – what you reference to Vitercik is not very far at all from what Rosen implies throughout The Romantic Generation and Sonata Forms, after all. Double sharp (talk) 15:25, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
          • • Many thanks for your thoughts on this. If I get no further comments from editors in the near future, I will shortly put the article up for FA. Best, --Smerus (talk) 16:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley

I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy this. Initial comments on typos etc from first quick read-through are below. I'll read the text properly and offer any further words of wisdom during the week.

• AmE -v- BrE: the text is almost wholly in British English, but a couple of American spellings have crept in:
  • "Over the next few years Mendelssohn traveled widely"
  • "a comedy of mistaken identity written in honor of his parents"
  • and in the Nietzsche block quote we have "honored" – as this is, I assume, a translation of the original German you are at liberty to anglicise it.
  • I don't know if Jenny Lind wrote in English or not, but she is quoted as calling M "the only person who brought fulfillment [sic] to my spirit". If that's a translation of her Swedish, you can anglicise that too, if you want to; if she wrote it in English I suppose we must keep the spelling. (I think this quote could do with a citation, by the way.)

I've corrected a few typos, which please check to make sure I haven't done something daft.

More anon. – Tim riley talk 09:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I will go through these Americanizations. They weren't mine (except possibly 'fulfillment') when I (re)wrote the present article, so must have crept in over the years! Awaiting your further comments of course -- Smerus (talk) 09:41, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

More from TR

I have nothing earth-shaking to contribute. If I try really hard to be pernickety (doin' what comes natur'lly), up to the end of the biographical section:

• Early maturity
  • The convention seems to be that numbers below ten are in words not digits, and if so "9" should be "nine".
• Meeting Goethe and conducting Bach
  • "the assistance of actor Eduard Devrient" – clunky false title, that could be turned into less tabloidese English by the addition of a definite article. "dramatist Karl Immermann", below, is another one.
  • I think we all blue-link far too much, but given the rules, custom and practice on WP I'm not sure why Milan escapes a blue link.
• Düsseldorf
  • "…by the less distinguished Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen". Who deniges of it, Betsey? But it's still WP:POV in theory unless backed up with a citation. Alternatively, as nobody has ever heard of Rungenhagen, the "less distinguished" may be thought unnecessary.
• Leipzig and Berlin
  • "Mendelssohn did however” – this is the ninth time we have been "howevered", and there are more to come. It's usually an unnecessary word, adding nothing to the sense, and the reader begins to quail a bit at its regular reappearance. A cull would be a kindness.
• Mendelssohn in Britain
  • "Sterndale Bennett (whom he had first heard in London...)" – he had of course heard Bennett, but I think "whose music he had first heard" would be more exact.
  • A digression, and not part of this review – I'm just interested: "Mendelssohn was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 and conducted his own Scottish Symphony" – did he conduct the concerto from the piano or was someone else wheeled out for that part of the concert?

More to come on the Music and Legacy sections. As I expected, I am enjoying this article very much, and I look forward to my next instalment. – Tim riley talk 20:31, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

• Many thanks, I will go through these. I've also started adding/upgrading citations after your initial comments.Smerus (talk) 20:48, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
• Now done, I think. It appears btw that M did conduct Beet 4 from the piano, as according to Rockstro he had to rework his 1st movt. cadenza 3 or 4 times to enable them to enter cleanly......Smerus (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Last lot of comments from Tim

• Mendelssohn as musician
  • I quite see that the heading is chosen because you discuss M as a performer etc as well as a composer in this section, but I wonder if just "Music" might more succinctly cover all his musical activities.
• Composer
  • In the block quote there are both single and double quotes. I think they should all be double. I'm not sure that "development" in the sentence below it needs quotes at all, but if it does they should be double, if I correctly read the MoS.
• Early Works
  • Inconsistency of spacing between intials of the two Bachs.
• Opera
  • It seems to me that "Singspiels" falls between two stools. If it needs the capital then it's German and the plural is Singspiele; if the word has been sufficiently assimilated into English to have a plural ending in "s", it doesn't need a capital letter. (I see we don't capitalise "Lied" in the WP article, but retain the German plural form; it would indeed sound odd to talk of lieds.)
• Chamber music
  • "many of which display an emotional intensity lacking in some of his larger work" – I don't dispute it, but such a broad statement needs a citation.
• Choral works
  • "This remarkable score" – a touch of the peacock here?
• Performer
  • "Mendelssohn performed both his own works" – I'd omit "both" here: the meaning is clear by the time one reaches the end of the sentence, but fleetingly one thinks it says he only wrote two works.
• Conductor
  • "of his own works and of other composers..." – I think this needs a possessive apostrophe after the last word.
  • "(including of course his own music)" – we could perhaps do without the editorialising "of course"
• Teacher
  • "undertook only a very few private pupils; these he took only if he believed they had notable qualities" – does one undertake pupils? Perhaps something like "took only a very few private pupils who he believed had notable qualities"?
• Reputation and legacy
  • Some readers, however – this is the eighth "however" so far, and there are more later. After so many "howevers" one does begin to notice them, and more often than not (as here) they can be removed without damage to the meaning.
  • Including Bernard Shaw – warmest thanks for piping him to remove the "George" that he hated and insisted should never be used!
  • criticizes the composer – an exception to the general use of –ise endings in the article, as is "recognized" two paras later.
• References
  • Ref 63 is a bare url and nothing else.
  • Ref 161 has got tangled up by the look of it.

That's all from me. A most satisfying article. Please ping me when you take it to FAC. – Tim riley talk 10:08, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• Once again, very many thanks Tim. I have I think now remedied all these in one way or another, and carried out a purge of howevers. I'm now considering a rewrite of the opening of the music section which would address some of the concerns of Double sharp.--Smerus (talk) 14:04, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Comments from RL0919

Focusing on images and sources for my initial comments:

• Many of the images seem to be unnecessarily small -- I found some scaled down with 'upright=0.6' and 'upright=0.5'. Just plain 'upright' is fine for most of these. For a couple of the images (File:Mendelssohn Wedding March Theme.jpg and File:Mendelssohn VnConcert op64 2mvt.png), I would actually suggest scaling them up to something like 'upright=1.5'; there is little point in showing images of musical stanzas so small that the notes are illegible.
• Refs 3, 34, 46, 53 and 56 (numbering as of my reading, of course) have Harvard links, but no matching sources.
• Some of the Harvard refs do not link to the Sources list, although most of them do. It's not required to use these links, but it should be consistent.
• There are also "sources" in the list that have no citations, such as Devrient 1964. Interesting works about the subject that are not used as sources may belong in a Further Reading section instead.
• Some of the Harvard refs are formatted 'Name YYYY' while others are 'Name (YYYY)'.
• Ref 95 has extra parenthesis surrounding the entire citation.
• Most citations have 'p.' or 'pp.' before the page numbers, but a few don't.
• Access dates for external links are formatted very inconsistently: sometimes it says 'accessed', some 'retrieved'. Sometimes these words are capitalized, sometimes not. Sometimes the access date info is in parentheses, sometimes not. A few links don't have any access date (for example, refs 157 and 164).
• Ref 168 looks more like an explanatory note, but is listed with the References.

I haven't actually read the body of the article yet, so I may add more notes once I've had a chance to do that. --RL0919 (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

• Many thanks for these comments, I will review accordingly.Smerus (talk) 11:11, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
• I think I've dealt with these points now, except for the images.....Smerus (talk) 17:59, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Comments from Gerda

First impression: fine article! Details to follow.

Lead

• Here as for others surprises me when the first thing is not his common name, but "Jakob Ludwig".
• I wonder if we could have IPA - if at all - in a footnote. It's no unusual pronunciation, - and for those who don't know that he is a composer, that info comes late.
• I'd not squeeze Bach between the travels, thinking he deserves an extra sentence, perhaps mentioning precisely the St Matthew Passion.
• "Concerti" would sound natural for an Italian composer, but I think we use "concertos" more generally.
• Link to piano music?
• I think the detail that the conservatory is "(now the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig)" is fine in the body but takes too long here. It could be replaced by a piped link to it.
• What I noticed immediately is that we get the life data of the portraitist where I'd expect places of birth and death of the composer, and a link to his works, as for Beethoven and temporarily even Chopin. More to come when time permits. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:38, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks Gerda! I've dealt I think with most of these. I don't think 'piano music' needs a link, everyone will know what that means. I removed Childe's dates from the pic - which is now as in Giacomo Meyerbeer, Charles-Valentin Alkan, etc. Jakob Ludwig? - well that's his name, as the sentence explains. IPA - I'd welcome opinion on this - seems that this is the standard position for IPA, but I myself would have no problems moving. Awaiting your further. Best, Smerus (talk) 12:43, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! Nothing new today, was busy and am behind with other things. I know that it's the standard position, for birth name and IPA, but question how useful that is, and if IAR could be applied ;) - When a woman is known a certain name, but was born a different name, the common name comes first, and the birth name sometimes not in the lead at all. Why not the same for men known a certain name. - I'd go to Classical music but have already a question open there, about composers' navboxes, in case you want to comment. One after the other. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:26, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

General

• For this man, we have several good portraits, - how about including a few more?
• At a glance, I see several ref error messages. Some refs don't point to a citation (3, 34, 45, 52, 57), several others are not used.

Specific comments later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:35, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

• Sorted these, and have added 1847 portrait. With the statues we now have a representative selection I think.--Smerus (talk) 10:37, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
• I have sent the IPA to a note. However, I have left the names as before. This is in part because there is the issue of "Mendelssohn" vs. "Mendelssohn[-]Bartholdy", which is elaborated in what is now note 2.--Smerus (talk) 18:20, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Some more, starting with Childhood

• How about first the parents, then the coincidence of the later dedication?
• How about all siblings' names when four children are first mentioned?
• Do you expect us to know Sarah?

• I've elucidated Sarah. The other points are the style I write but I don't think they transgress any WP rules or standards.--Smerus (talk) 21:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Musical education

• Can we have just "Mozart"? There was no "Amadeus" when he was a child.
• Paris comes as a surprise.
• " (and his sister Fanny)" - why in brackets?
• Any chance to avoid "of which she and the"?
• Please decide Sing-Akademie vs. Singakademie.

I think I have now sorted these. Further comments now in orange

Early maturity

• at age nine? That's the point!
• The "also" in the second sentence could refer to many things in the first, - I'd drop it. done
• Do we need piano quartet twice? done
• Why Octet but Overture? - both look generic to me. done
• I could do without the Wedding March at this point. You can do without it because you know it came later. Most readers probably don't. More later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:48, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

• Many thanks for the above, awaiting the next batch. --Smerus (talk) 21:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Invigorated by the pumpkin colour, and after easy reading at the other PR that was waiting, some more: Goethe

• "a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion", - can we afford a little hint at that there had been no such thing in 100 years outside Leipzig. Yes it comes in the next sentence, but for those who don't know that the wedding March came later ...Even they can read to the next sentence
• We have some rule not to link capitals of current countries such as Vienna and Rome, - I'd think about no link also for the other well-known Italian cities. Why deviate at this point in an article about the early 19th century to a modern city?done

Leipzig

• Do we assume that readers know the Leipzig-Bach-connection?done
• I bet they performed Paulus at the Festival, not St. Paul.done (Missing that Mendelssohn conducted its first Leipzig performance in the Paulinerkirche - which Ulbricht had dynamited. Missing a bit more about Elijah, his opera which I saw staged in Dortmund, convincingly so [1]). Yeh, but....trying not to divert too far from main topic

One more general: usually, when a piece has an article, such as Beethoven's Forth Piano Concerto, the composer doesn't need a link, to avoid a sea of blue.will review

Personality

• I wonder if the watercolours and correspondence could go to the historical part, where his interest inlliterature is mentioned, - not really personalty.I prefer them here

Contemporaries

• I think they deserve a link, even when linked before.but others object to this, so I'll leave as is
• outlook ... outlook?done

Children

• I'd expect the children in the order they were born, and then read that the last one mentioned was the second-last?Felix jr died young, the others had careers which are briefly outlined
• Do we have any information on him as a husband and father?nothing interesting that I know of

Lind

• "He is said to have tailored the aria "Hear Ye Israel" in his oratorio Elijah to Lind's voice, although she did not sing this part until after his death, at a concert in December 1848.", - the "although" sounds strange to me, but may be my English. I'd understand that she didn't sing it although he composed it for her.he wrote it for her, although he did not hear her sing it

- That's it for now, to be continued. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Now to the music. Quite generally: I am not sure if the separation of the works and reception works well. The works read a bit dry, not much different from a subset of the works' list. At times it would add to know what made him write a piece, and how someone thought about it. Another "general": I'd not assume that people read everything consecutively, and link every piece with an article even if it was linked before.We may have to agree to disagree here. I am preparing a broader section on style to go at the head of the music section I don't know if we should link genres such as piano quartet, and instruments such as clarinet. The linking of keys is inconsistent, and I think we could do without, - that's for people who look at the works, no? I will revisit the links and deal with them on these lines where appropriate

Early works

• I'd say "Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven", without a link and given name to Haydn, - that bio is a detour for readers who don't know him.Haydn hasn't been mentioned before this, so needs link and name

Symphonies

• "when it was given its premiere in Leipzig, the last of his symphonies to be performed in public." - that needs rewording or a qualifier, because they keep being performed in public. I heard the Scottish recently ;)done
• The Second: not "printing press" nor "printing" as in the work's article, but best described in Festgesang, - better mention Gutenberg?done

Other orchestral

• Sorry, I'm not happy with a link to Melusine from part of a title.done
• What does Op. 61 add? Same for more Op. and years, - they stop the flow of a sentence. When the piece has an article, a reader can get that info quickly.I think useful as a reminder that this is not the Overture

Opera

• Fine section but sitting a bit awkwardly between "other orchestral" and concertos, - how about moving concertos to after symphonies? And Opera to before Choral works?have regrouped

Chamber

• how a link to clarinet sonata, instead the instrument (again)? - other instruments the sameI will review

Choral

• (MWV A 15)? MWV is explained at the head of the music section
• The article hymn tune is just too bad to link to. Couldn't find this link. But anyway, badness of an article is cue to rewriting it, not to deleting links - otherwise just WP:OR
• "her own retiring nature"? reticent? retiring is standard English in this sense

Organ

• Eric Werner: perhaps add when he said that. I heard them, but remember only one time.date is in the cite, but i have given a link to EW

Conductor

• "It was his success at conducting at the Lower Rhine music festival", - any chance to avoid "at ... at"?done

Teacher

• "only a very few private pupils"? only very few?this is standard English for such phrases

Leaving for now, for a translation job, and the upgrading of Bach cantatas. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:00, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

• Many thanks for these comments, see my responses above. I'm going to revisit linking etc. generally in the light of what you have said. Best --Smerus (talk) 14:37, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for listening more, I feel understood and learn some English on the side ;) - The cantatas are still not upgraded but I will return to the review after today's article, a fascinating conductor who has only a stub so far. When we applauded at intermission, he thanked, raising the score and pointing to it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:55, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Now I read the rest, and am pleased. Just the final lines, quote about missing true greatness, - anything a bit less subjective? Readers' concepts of "true greatness" will differ. - Interesting: naïveté was the first association with Mendelssohn I had, learning Elijah. "Wohl dem, der den Herren fürchtet", utmost simplicity. The conductor began rehearsals of the piece with that movement, saying that it's naïveté in a good sense. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I've now reviewed links, etc., and changed the wording of last sentence slightly - but leave Mencken's thought there I think, it prompts reflection. Best, --Smerus (talk) 12:51, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, reflection is good ;) - Meet you at FAC then. Some of his composition articles are just lousy, sadly. May be a project for next year, as Poulenc this year. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:15, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

Many thanks to all contributors - I'm now putting the article up for FA, and your help has enormously improved it imo --Smerus (talk) 10:31, 16 December 2017 (UTC)