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Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize information in articles related to composers. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list there.
Rather than try to force information to appear in a uniform way, this WikiProject aims to present what information is available in the best way possible. The project provides a place to discuss various ways to accomplish this. These recommendations on the Composers project are based on various Wikipedia style guides and common practices in articles. Use your own judgement in applying these guidelines and all Wikipedia guidelines to composer articles and be bold.
WikiProject Composers is an independent WikiProject, listed under Music. It was started by Sketchee, Antandrus and Mindspillage on 1 January 2005. There were 8,679 articles within the scope of the project on 28 June 2013 (compared to 7,521 on 28 December 2011, 4,953 on 15 November 2009, and 3,987 on 19 June 2008).
This scope of this WikiProject includes the life and work of art music composers of all eras and all styles. Information on musical traditions, styles, and interrelationships will also be pertinent to articles.
The parents of this WikiProject are WikiProject Classical music and WikiProject Biography.
A similar WikiProject is:
To join, please add your name to the participants list.
How you can help depends on your time, resources and interest. Here are a variety of ideas for contributions ranging from simple to complex:
See also How to edit a page, How to write a great article, and Manual of Style
To help direct our efforts more efficiently to maximise the quality of these articles, please use this section to alert other participants in the project to the changing status of articles about composers.
See also WikiProject Composers Article alerts.
Please refer to the subpage devoted to a list of composers whose articles are either missing or underdeveloped.
These articles have been accepted as featured articles: they may be helpful examples.
Articles that have recently been written and would benefit from a review by one or more members of this WikiProject: Eduard Grell, Carl Ritschl, Gordon Sherwood, Auguste van Biene, Fernande Decruck, Earl MacDonald, Lucien Garban, Christopher Trapani, Robert Davine, Rutger Hoedemaekers, Gabriella Smith
These are considered best practices by the project members, they are not Policy, Wikipedia Guideline, or part of the Manual of Style.
The introductory paragraph/statement should contain the name of the composer in bold followed by the date of the composer's birth and also death if applicable. If the exact date (e.g. 16 January 1863) is not known, use the closest verifiable approximation (e.g., 19th century, 1863, January 1863). Briefly summarize why the person is important, by concisely summarizing the information discussed in the article. Therefore, unless the exact place of birth is essential information, it should be included in the biographical section or paragraph instead. Brief information on the composer's stylistic location in relation to his or her contemporaries, and in historical terms, would be helpful to many readers. If the person is notable, however, as a Hungarian nationalist or conductor for a particular organization that should be here.
The last sentence of the first paragraph may be a summary statement of the importance of the composer – i.e. in the same position as the standard thesis statement of an essay.
It is the consensus of this WikiProject that the lead should not contain an infobox, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers#Biographical infoboxes, "without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page".
Here is sample of possible sections which can be used on a composers page. Which categories apply to any one composer is dependent on the information available and what is considered as pertinent to the individual composer. Variations of these headings can be used to better describe what topics are outlined within that section. In most cases a heading is only appropriate if there is more than one paragraph of that type of information. (So don't have a header for everything here when there is only a sentence about each. :) )
The sample is provided to display aspects of the composer to discuss and research. If you are writing from your own knowledge, please provide a source that corroborates your knowledge to assist other editors.
Contributors may wish to consider covering the following points in composer articles. Of course, the needs of every article are different, so this is only a "shell", a template that needs to be adapted for each article. Some of this information may be useful at the opening, but in not much detail; most of it should probably be located in a separate section on style.
See also: How to structure the content and Wikipedia:The perfect article
The main categories and subcategories are listed on the Categories subpage.
The Assessment page explains Composers Project article ranking and gives examples.
A list of our most popular pages (in terms of page-view statistics) is available.
See the project's Guidelines for using sound excerpts page which explains about "fair use' and the quality, number and location of excerpts to be used.
See the project's Guide to online research for guidance on finding reliable sources online and a list of trustworthy sites.
See the project's Copyright guidelines page.
Images of collectibles (coins, banknotes, postage stamps, souvenirs and similar items) in music articles should meet the following conditions:
Coins, notes, stamps etc. in general circulation are more likely to meet these criteria than 'commemorative' issues.
Anecdotes, influences on pop culture, and other peripheral content or "trivia", should only be included in composers' articles if they are likely to be of interest to a typical reader of the article. Examples of content which almost always fail this test are: songs, albums, video games, TV shows, or movies that reference the music.
The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.
Most members of this project think that Infoboxes are seldom useful additions to articles for many reasons, including:
They think it is normally best, therefore, to avoid infoboxes altogether for classical musicians, and prefer to add an infobox to an article only following consensus for that inclusion on the article's talk page. Particular care should be taken with featured articles as these have been carefully crafted according to clear consensus on their talkpages. (See the Request for Comment about composers' infoboxes and earlier infobox debates.)
Talk page banner
There is an official template:WikiProject Composers talk page banner indicating the involvement of the project. This is coded as {{WikiProject Composers}}.
Stub templates
To indicate very short articles, stubs, the template:Composer-stub should be used; this is coded {{Composer-stub}}. Geographically focussed templates can be found in the subcategories of the category Category:Composer stubs.
External links