Template talk:Composition schools

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Why the heck does this template exist? I can't imagine someone looking at Rimsky-Korsakov would particularly need to navigate to Peter-Maxwell Davis just because the later happens to be in a completely unrelated 'group'. Making individual nav templates for each group, yes a very good idea, but this large one is completely worthless. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 07:22, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that User:Hyacinth is actually the right person to answer this question, since I believe he was the creator. However, as you will have noticed that I have become an enthusiastic expander of the template, perhaps my view counts for something as well. It seems to me that the function of this navbox is not to make connections between seemingly unrelated composers, but rather to allow a reader who happens upon, for example, the article Les Six to discover other, similar composer groups. Further, upon discovering that Darius Milhaud belonged to a group of composers called "Les Six", a reader may think, "how quaint" but, upon investigating further, discover that in fact there have been many other composer associations, with similar goals. Just my 2¢ worth.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:42, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then it should be turned into something like List of composer groups, and add it to the see also section, or maybe even in the running prose in the article where it describes the group they are in. Nav boxes aren't really supposed to be used for such loosely related associations, they are supposed to be for things that someone looking at an article would be expected to want to go to. A navbox for Les Six itself? Yes, very sensible, an I'm actually quite surprised there wasn't one already for at least The Five and Les Six. But I ask again, why would someone reading a page about Darius Milhaud have any need to care that Carl Ruggles was also in a completely unrelated composer group? There's not even an article on the concept and looking through some of the groups don't even have an article of their own, just a passing mention in bigger ones (not necessarily an issue, just further compounding the point). But look at it another way. We don't have navboxes for French composers, or composers of symphonies, or composers who used Opus numbers, or French composers who used opus numbers in film music (as an extremely silly example)....so why one for this? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:39, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As I have already said, I cannot speak for the creator of this navbox (who, by the way, has been very busy over the past week or two creating a variety of navboxes). Perhaps he will soon weigh in with his reasoning concerning this particular one.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:42, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Completely worthless" is more than seemingly inaccurate. It is overblown rhetoric, bordering on insulting. "Relatively little value" would have been far more accurate, and far more convincing.

At the very least, this template caused someone (you) to propose that it be broken into smaller templates, whose existence you not only think would be of value but would be "a very good idea" which you're surprised didn't already happen.

Note that this template began, two days ago, was a much smaller template: [1]. See: Wikipedia:Splitting. Hyacinth (talk) 05:18, 16 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. The following are links to templates, not to articles. I would not expect that as a user. Maybe they could be replaced by links to their hopefully future articles? Or maybe create stubs and put the navboxes in the stubs? Given of course that these are in line with WP:GROUP.
   • Ears Open Society > Ears Open Society
   • Oeldorf Group > Oeldorf Group
2. These are not present in Category:Composition schools. Is that on purpose or can they just be added?
   • New York
   • Viennese: Third -- also deviating name, see below.
3. These have deviating names from the main article names. I think it would be beneficial if these are in line by either changing it at the article side or the navbox side:
   • Boston Six
   • Dutch
   • Grupo de los ocho -- compare Grupo de los cuatro
   • Manchester
   • The Mighty Five
   • Neue Einfachheit
   • Viennese: Third
4. Grupo de renovación musical confuses me a lot since it redirects to Music of Cuba discussing a Cuban school, but Category:Composition schools links to an Argentine school Grupo renovación. Oddly enough with two Castro brothers involved (coincidence?) :).
5. The main article Composition school has a See also section with Prima pratica and Seconda pratica. This suggests implicitly that these are composition schools too. Yet the article does not explicitly state that nor are they included in the navbox and neither in Category:Composition schools. Intuitively I think these are composition schools, but I did not check sources. LazyStarryNights (talk) 08:06, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In addition: to various extend the above (1-5) also applies to the various navbox names and contents of the individual composition schools at Category:Composition school templates. LazyStarryNights (talk) 22:52, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For example, New York School doesn't belong in Category:Composition schools because it is only partially about music. Hyacinth (talk) 23:36, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note that New York School also is categorised in Category:Literary movements and Category:American art movements so this example could be followed.

An alternative is creating a redirect page, e.g. New York School composers > New York School (art)#The composers and then categorise that redirect page in Category:Composition schools in line with Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects#Subtopic categorization.

Or if it is more appropriate to refer the whole article then Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects#Redirects whose target title is incompatible with the category could be followed. LazyStarryNights (talk) 06:17, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just a couple of comments, without any solutions to offer yet: With respect to the Cuban and Argentine groups with very similar names, this kind of thing occurs all too frequently, and will be found again in the article New Simplicity, referred to above as a redirect from Neue Einfachheit. The Castro brothers from Argentina (and there is a third one, though evidently he was not associated with the Grupo renovación) are not related, as far as I am aware, to the well-known Cuban brothers with the same surname, nor did Fidel and Raúl have anything to do with the Grupo de renovación musical (emphases added), which was a little before their time. The difficulty with making a direct link to "New Simplicity" is that it is not only the English translation of two very different "schools" of composition (one Danish, the other German), but it is also a general epithet applied to any number of groups of composers, some of which cannot be said to constitute a "school", and others of which already have a different "school" name, such as the Cologne School (music), which itself is not very well-defined and may in fact be a term used for several distinct but partially overlapping groups, including the (very precisely defined) Oeldorf Group. The link for the latter, at least, can be changed without any problems to point to their actual article instead of the template, if that is the usual way of doing things.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:37, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like this template would be more useful if the groups were ordered chronologically, or at least grouped by era, rather than alphabetically. Someone reading about the Franco-Flemish school is probably more likely to also be interested in the Burgundian or Venetian, than in Les Six. Thoughts? Jfmantis (talk) 14:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]