Talk:Symphony

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Music/Music genres task force Symphony is within the scope of the Music genres task force of the Music project, a user driven attempt to clean up and standardize music genre articles on Wikipedia. Please visit the task force guidelines page for ideas on how to structure a genre article and help us assess and improve genre articles to good article status.Music/Music genres task forceWikipedia:WikiProject Music/Music genres task forceTemplate:WikiProject Music/Music genres task forcemusic genre Classical music: Compositions This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, copy edit, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that are not covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.Classical musicWikipedia:WikiProject Classical musicTemplate:WikiProject Classical musicClassical music This article is supported by Compositions task force. Citizendium Porting (defunct) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Citizendium Porting, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.Citizendium PortingWikipedia:WikiProject Citizendium PortingTemplate:WikiProject Citizendium PortingCitizendium Porting

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 30 September 2013 for a period of one week.

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 26 January 2015 for a period of one week.

From my research the musicologist, NYU professor, Jan LaRue (1918-2004) spelled his name using mixed case. Using the US LOC Authority Control file, mixed case is the preferred spelling of his family name: VIAF 34920290. It is fair to say that a few international libraries use the lowercase spelling, but not the majority. This claim is supported by several other sources including his obituary from the New York Sun and NYU (which oddly used lowercase 'r' only in the title of their article):

• "NYU Musicologist Larue Dies at 86". New York University. October 1, 2004. Jan LaRue, a musicologist and emeritus professor of music at New York University, died on Sunday, October 17, in Rye, New York, succumbing to pneumonia and complications arising from a stroke suffered in January 2003, said his wife, Marian Green LaRue. He was 86.

• "Jan LaRue, 86, Musicologist of 17,000 Symphonic Themes". New York Sun. October 28, 2004. Jan LaRue, an expert on 18th-century music and an emeritus professor at New York University who compiled a colossal database of nearly 17,000 symphonic themes, died Sunday, the university announced.

Comments welcome before I make the changes for consistency. - DutchTreat (talk) 00:25, 16 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

I had always thought that the name was "LaRue", but I changed it in this article when I was checking the New Grove and found it was spelled there with a lowercase R. I am not entirely clear what the Wikipedia protocol is in such cases, but I would imagine a single, standard spelling would be used regardless of the way it happens to appear in a particular source. If this is the case, by all means change it back.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:31, 16 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thank you JK for helping me understand the background on your choice of spelling. The Help:Authority control files from many national libraries (see VIAF link above) form a compelling case to use the rather unexpected choice of the capital 'R' in the middle of his name. These records represent the interests of reference librarians around the world and the composite view of many published sources beyond any single published work like the New Grove. There are a few national libraries with the lower 'r' (e. g. Spain), but most libraries including France, Germany, Sweden and the United States all decided on upper 'R'. I will make the change to upper 'R' based on this evidence. - DutchTreat (talk) 10:35, 16 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for checking the authority controls. I can only assume that the Wikipedia Manual of Style follows one or the other of these for author names in citations and bibliographies. I cannot find the relevant page, and not all publishers take the same position. That is what I meant about not being clear about the Wikipedia protocol. Obviously, if there are multiple items in a bibliography by the same author, the name should be spelled consistently, but when, as in this case, there is only one (or if there are two or three, all of which disagree with the chosen authority control), some style sheets may choose to use the form found in the source(s).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:54, 16 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

I understand your point better now. It may be best to keep all of the New Grove references with the lower 'r'. Appreciate the dialog. -- DutchTreat (talk) 09:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

I have his doctoral dissertation and the "LaRue, (Adrian) Jan (Pieters)" New Grove article (2001 edition, downloaded 2005), and they're both spelled with a capital R there. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 13:55, 19 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

I hadn't thought to check his biography article on Grove Online. Now that I have done so, I see that the name is spelled with the capital R. I find this also in the bibliographies to the section "Theories of form" in the "Theory" article, and section IV, "Organum and discant" in the "Sources" article, as well as the bibliographies for the biographical articles on Bartók, Monteverdi, Schubert, and in the text of the article on Ruth Steiner, who studied with him. It looks like the lowercase R in the "Symphony" article must be a simple mistake.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:55, 19 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks again for helping me bring this item to closure. I will update the article to use the uppercase 'R' for 'LaRue' - DutchTreat (talk) 16:05, 27 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry to have caused this whole problem. I should have trusted my memory and cross-checked. Had I done so, I would have seen that the NG had made an error.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

No worries, my friend. Together we make the WP the best it can be. Our dialog has helped me to learn more about an interesting person in a field that is foreign to me. I am thinking about starting a stub article for Jan LaRue to further explain his contributions. Alas, how to find the time to explore so many great things? Cheers DutchTreat (talk) 07:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Does anyone have a copy of The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven by Antony Hopkins (1981) OCLC 715201150? I am trying to decode this statement in the article: "the scoring used in Beethoven's symphonies numbered 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8 (instrumentation of Beethoven symphonies taken from the chapter headings for each symphony in Hopkins (1981)" From looking at an on-line snippets, I believe Symphony No. 1 is Chapter 2; Symphony No. 2 is Chapter 4 on page 36; and Symphony No. 4, Chapter 7. I would some help finding the page numbers and possibly a better way of expressing the source for the instrumentation. Thank you! - DutchTreat (talk) 10:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

I don't have a copy of that book, but the conventional source for such information is the published score, rather than a book which merely reports at second hand what is in that score (and because they are in the public domain, the scores are much easier to access that a copyrighted book).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:13, 3 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

I agree the public domain sources are a much better way to reference the instrumentation. I'll start to update that section to remove the reference to Hopkins (1981) since that is the only reason for including that source. Thanks - DutchTreat (talk) 11:26, 4 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Not denying Mahler his right to call his Eighth a symphony, but surely the main illustration here is not a particularly representative image of the performance of a symphony. Is there a better photo for the lead? 83.209.254.55 (talk) 19:52, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

That phrase has been tagged for a while, but I cannot figure out what source it comes from or how to clarify what it's supposed to mean. I'd delete the entire sentence, except then I don't know what to do with the remaining list of composers. Can someone help resolve this tag? Thanks! Aristophanes68 (talk) 23:13, 23 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

• The phrase was entered years ago by Jerome Kohl (see above threads), who has since passed away. Since I cannot find any reference to clarify what the phrase meant, I have simplified it to at least make more sense to non-musicians. Aristophanes68 (talk) 21:48, 24 March 2026 (UTC)Reply