Wikipedia:Peer review/Klang (Stockhausen)/archive1

Klang (Stockhausen)

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I think it may be nearly ready for nomination for Good Article or Featured Article, but would like some feedback.

Thanks, Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:39, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: I know a little about music but nothing about Stockhausen. My comments are limited mainly to issues of style and layout. The article is broad in coverage, but it needs more work to prepare for GAN.

Lead

• The lead is to be an inviting summary of the entire article. If you can imagine a reader who can only read the lead and nothing else, you can see why the existing lead is too skimpy. It includes virtually no information about the nature of the work or its component parts. A good rule of thumb for writing leads is to include at least a mention of the main ideas in the main text sections and not to include material that is undeveloped in the main text. WP:LEAD has details.

• Linking directly to an external site from within the text is a Wikipedia no-no. If you want to link to MusikTriennale Köln, one way would be to create an inline citation to replace the direct link.

• "The twenty-one completed pieces... " - Numbers bigger than nine are usually written as digits unless they start a sentence. I would use 21 here instead of twenty-one.

• Shouldn't the citation to Gimpel 2010 include a page number? It may be that I just don't understand, but the Gimpel listing in the "Sources" section says, "Gimpel, Othmar (ed.). 2010. Karlheinz Stockhausen, KLANG, 8. und. 9. Mai. Cologne: MusikTriennale Köln". This appears to be a book. Does it have an ISBN number? Does it have individual chapters or essays written by someone other than Gimpel?

• Would it be helpful to include the pronunciation of Klang?

Images

• An image caption consisting solely of a sentence fragment doesn't take a terminal period.

Heads and subheads

• Would it be better to simplify the "Hour" heads by using an overall head, "Hour", and making the individual hour sections into subsections of "Hour"; i.e., "First", "Second", "Third", and so on? That would eliminate 20 repetitions of "Hour" The few subsections of the "Hour" subsections might become sub-subsections.

History and character

• "several possibilities for the title: Day, Nacht und Tag (Night and Day)" - Is the first "Day" a typo?

• "the INNER EAR, for the divine Klang, the mystic sound of the beyond with the voice of the conscience, in German: die Stimme des Gewissens" (Stockhausen 2006a, 10)" - Is this an exact transcription? I ask because of the all-caps for INNER EAR and the bolding on Stimme and Gewissens. Those typographical effects should not be added by Wikipedia if they are not in the original.

Extramusical aspects

• The two blockquotes should probably be ordinary quotations embedded in the text. Is the bolding part of the original?

• Rather than introducing the hour sections with "The individual pieces are:", would it be better to delete this sentence? I don't think readers would be confused if the sentence were not there.

First hour

• "Himmelfahrt (Ascension), for organ or synthesizer, soprano, and tenor. 2004–05 (36 mins.). Work number 81. The specified colour is deep violet-blue." - Although the article seems well-sourced, it's good practice to provide at least one source for every paragraph except, usually, the paragraphs in the lead. Most paragraphs in the article are sourced, but this one isn't. A claim like "the specified colour is deep violet-blue" must have come from a source. Which one? A similar situation arises with the "Katikati" subsection of the Fifth hour.

• I would make the lead statements, such as the one beginning with "Premiered at", in this and other sections below into complete sentences.

• "in a chromatic time scale, and the organ/synthesizer part requires 24 corresponding registrations/timbres... " - It's generally better to replace the front slash with "or" or "and", or in some cases a hyphen, whichever is appropriate.

• The direct link at the end of the section should be removed.

Short paragraphs and sections

• Extremely short paragraphs such as those in "Eleventh hour" and "Twelfth hour" would be better if merged. It might also be useful to think of combining extremely short sections like these two into a single section with a head like "Eleventh and 12th".

Thirteenth hour

• I would not use so many direct quotations. Would they not be better paraphrased and merged?

Centered offsets

• Six long quotations set off in centered texts may be about five too many. I think it might be a useful device for the sake of variety or to call special attention to something, but it seems overused here. Other possibilities are to use pull quotes (with box) at the side for one or more of these or simply to include them as normal quotations embedded in the text. You can see an example of a quote box in Columbia River#Dams: harnessing the river.

Other

• Is "First Hour" correct, or is "first hour" correct?

• Is Klang correct, or is "KLANG" correct? How about "Cosmic Pulses" and "COSMIC PULSES"? My point is that the titles appear in more than one form in the article. Should they be consistent throughout, or is there a good reason that they differ?

• The dab-finder tool in the toolbox at the top of this review page finds one link, Teatro Rossini, that goes to a disambiguation page instead of the intended target.

• The link-checker tool shows Oxfordmusiconline.com as "forbidden". You should probably add (subscription required) to the "Sources" entry.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 19:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks, Finetooth. Most of your suggestions have been implemented. To answer the seven open questions: (1) the source Gimpel 2010 is unpaginated, and contains no signed material; I have annotated its listing to clarify this point. (2) I don't think an overall heading of "Hours" with subheads "First", "Second", etc. would be an improvement; I have instead added the titles of the individual pieces to the headers. (3) Regarding "'several possibilities for the title: Day, Nacht und Tag (Night and Day)' - Is the first 'Day' a typo?" No, this is exactly as in the source. The composer considered the English title "Day", the German title "Nacht und Tag", etc. (4) All "typographical effects" are exactly as in the source. It is improper to change anything in quoted material, except for exchanging single and double quotation marks when nested within a quotation. (5) "Pull quotes" are inappropriate for block quotations (see the instructions for the "Cquote" template). Quote boxes are new to me, and look interesting, but seem inappropriate if the text then requires an inserted "see box at the left". (6) "First Hour" is correct, because it is a subtitle within the cycle. That is why it always appears capitalized. (7) The different formats for Klang/KLANG and Cosmic Pulses/COSMIC PULSES has to do with quoted material, which may not change anything except for exchanging single and double quotation marks, etc. The composer's publishing-house style presents titles of his works in full caps, so that material quoted from those sources has them that way; otherwise they are treated according to Wikipedia:Manual of style (music). Thanks once again, and I will certainly return the favour as you suggest, by reviewing another article in this review list.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley At first read-through these three typos jumped out at me:

• "et in terra pax in hominibus" – just "pax hominibus" – no "in"
• "a stentorous trumpet" – a conflation of stertortious and stentorian? I think you mean the latter
• "bassett horn" – only one "t" according to the OED

More pernickety spelling points: the article is mostly written in UK English, but I have spotted "catalog", "spatialized", "counselors" (though you may class that as part of a quotation), "centermost" and "analyze". Contrariwise, if the spelling is intended to be American, there are the English "colour", "panelled", "sulphur", "analysing" and "realisation."

I'll read through again and come back with any more comments shortly. I shall enjoy the task - there's a lot a good stuff in this article. Tim riley (talk) 11:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Final pernickerty comments:

• "Ensemble recherche" or "Recherche"? Both appear.
• If (as above) this article is, as it seems, written in UK English, the Americanism "through" ("Mantra (1970) through completion"; "comprising hours six through eleven") strikes a jarring note.

More generally, this is a highly technical article. It is well presented; the layout and illustrations help the eye along. Nonetheless, readers will need a fair grasp of musical terms to understand all of it (not that I claim to do so completely). However, in my view, a reader who turns to this article is prima facie likely to be willing and able to cope with the technicalities. It is not a general "life and works" composer article and therefore can reasonably stray from lay language here and there. It is duly blue-linked for the hard words. I shall be interested to see if the assessors at GA/FA agree with me. It would be a pity to dumb-down such a scholarly article. – Tim riley (talk) 12:31, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Tim riley, for your kind words and sharp eyes! Corrections have now been entered. In the process, I discovered a few more Americanisms (as an American myself I find these easy to overlook), such as "English horn" instead of "cor anglais". Some of these stem from the style used by the Stockhausen-Verlag, which at base uses UK English, but with a few deviations (such as "English horn" instead of "cor anglais", and note-names as "quarter note", "eighth note", etc., instead of "crotchet", "quaver", etc.), mainly on grounds of comprehensibility in a context of English for non-native speakers, but also I think because they are closer to the German equivalents. This should not be transfered to Wikipedia, of course, except in direct quotations. "Counselors" (as you note), is an example, which is found in a quotation of the "official" translation of the text of Uversa. This could be a typo—I shall double check this against the source—or may reflect the spelling in The Urantia Book, which of course is an American publication. That book was responsible for a few other American spellings in this article on Klang though, again, they should be retained only in direct quotations. Thank you once again, and I'm glad you enjoyed reading the article!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:40, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but I find the title of this article confusing. I had never heard of Stockhausen before, so I had no idea what the article was about until I clicked through. Would this not be better titled something like "Klang (composition series)" or "Klang (compositions)" or something like that? Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:37, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, it does not appear usual to so specify other composition cycles, such as Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise, Der Ring des Nibelungen, or indeed Licht or Tierkreis by this same composer. The title is already sub-categorised with the composer's name (the usual procedure on Wikipedia when a musical work's title is not unique to that work), and an explanation of what it consists of occurs in the first sentence of the lede. The logical extension of this suggestion would be to retitle, e.g., Winterreise as "Winterreise (song cycle)", or more generally, String Quartets, Op. 76 (Haydn) as "String Quartets, Op. 76 (compositions)". If Klang happened to be a cycle of compositions to which several different composers contributed, this might be a different matter, but even the Genesis Suite is not so treated, and how many people who do not know Stockhausen's name would recognize Nathaniel Shilkret, Darius Milhaud, or Ernst Toch?.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:16, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Ummm, I must had too much wine in me or something, but from what I can tell none of those articles you linked to have the composer's name in the title of the article? Maury Markowitz (talk) 02:22, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed not, apart from the String Quartets, Op. 76 (Haydn), of course. If you would like some more examples of work titles that require this kind of differentiation, you might try Symphony No. 8 (Piston) as opposed to Symphony No. 8 (Shostakovich), Symphony No. 8 (Beethoven), etc.; The Seasons (Cage), The Seasons (Haydn), The Seasons (Tchaikovsky), The Seasons (TVB Program); Stabat Mater, Stabat Mater (art), Stabat Mater (Szymanowski), Stabat Mater (Dvořák), Stabat Mater (Boccherini), etc.; Faust, Goethe's Faust, Faust (Spohr), Faust (1926 film), etc. There are indeed other ways of dealing with these, such as Faust (opera) (which will not lead you to Spohr's opera, but to Gounod's—and this seems to me less than totally helpful). It seems to me that the likelihood of someone looking for some musical composition titled Klang, without knowing that it was composed by Stockhausen, is extremely low, and a search for just plain Klang ought to lead (eventually) to a disambiguation page that will sort such things out. Klang (music), unfortunately, will simply add to the confusion. (That article obviously needs a hatnote.) Have another glass of wine.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 08:05, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

My concern is that very last assumption. That's not how people find anything on the web. They will, if they do, come across this page by typing "klang" into Google. They may type another word to narrow the search, but I doubt that word would be the hard-to-spell "Stockhausen". I would much more likely be "music", "opera" or even "song". Try that right now, and you'll see the problem. I had no idea who Stockhausen was before reading this article, but I had heard of Klang. Had I gone looking, this article would have been buried in the search results. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I am very curious to know how you could have heard of Klang without at the same time hearing the name Stockhausen, since as far as I am aware all publicity concerning this cycle of compositions has been with reference first to the composer's name ("New Stockhausen Piece “Balance” Premiered in Cologne", "[http://www.anygivensound.com/ Klang: A Tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen", "MusikTriennaleKöln: Karlheinz Stockhausen KLANG", "Stockhausen: more parts of Klang completed", etc.). I'll grant you, doing a Google search for "Klang" and "music" produces some amusing results ("Places for music near Klang, Selangor, Malaysia", "Carl Klang, Music Ministries", "Klang Music Centre Sdn Bhd", "Donnie Klang | Music Videos, News, Photos, Tour Dates, Ringtones ...", etc.), but I fail to see how this is supposed to help the browsing newbie find this particular information, without typing in the composer's name (which, BTW, is not at all difficult to spell—try finding Violin Concerto No. 1 (Szymanowski) sometime). It is also true that Google searches work very differently from article-title searches on Wikipedia, and while it is always worth considering what a Google search will turn up (i.e., what keywords should we be sure to include in the lede paragraph), it is more important to make sure a Wikipedia search is as transparent as possible. Have you checked Klang (music) yet? That one is already taken on Wikipedia, and already needs a hatnote to a disambiguation page, since there are eight other music articles that direct to the name Klang—this one and Klang (album), Kling Klang Studio, Klang Box, Klaus Klang, Donnie Klang, Kling Klang (band), and Der ferne Klang. No, it is clearer and clearer that the best way of listing this cycle is with the composer's name—which, BTW, is how it is done with all of the other works with ambiguous titles in the List of compositions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, namely Amour (Stockhausen), Gruppen (Stockhausen), Klavierstücke (Stockhausen), Kontakte (Stockhausen), Kontra-Punkte (Stockhausen), Mantra (Stockhausen), Mikrophonie (Stockhausen), Sirius (Stockhausen), Tierkreis (Stockhausen), Trans (Stockhausen). Are you going to argue that the reader would find Amour more easily on Wikipedia by searching for "Amour (cycle of five pieces)", or Kontra-Punkte by searching for "Kontra-Punkte (composition for ten instruments)", or Mantra by searching for "Mantra (ring-modulated pianos)"? Doing a Google search with these terms should work in any case, because these keywords all occur in the lede paragraph of the respective articles, just as "cycle of compositions", "chamber music", "solos", "duos", "trios", "septet", and "electronic composition" occur in the lede of the article here under discussion.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

My roommate was a music major at York, he played it. But I'll bow out here, it's clear my objection is not being shared by anyone else. Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:51, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Played "it"? I'm sorry, but I really am curious to know which of the Klang pieces your roommate played, since they have only existed for between five and three years now, and so not many musicians have had the chance to learn them. Could it have been Natural Durations?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)