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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Homophony (music)/archive1

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Homophony

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A well-written, comprehensive article that explains the concept rather well (someone who knows very little about music should have a clear understanding of homophony after reading the article), and it definitely has enough sources for an article of its length. It has been listed as a good article for quite some time, and I've reread the article several times, without finding any errors or any content to be missing, so I think it's about time for the article to become a FA. Self nomination. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 01:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC) Withdrawing nomination - Thanks for the comments everybody. This article is definitely not ready for FA status, so I'll work on it and possibly renominate it in due time, after seeking a peer review. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 17:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Object It is a good introduction to the topic but seems very brief. I'd like to see much more historical analysis of compositions showing more details about how homophony was employed and changed over time. The section about non-western music could use quite a bit more. I know a bit about Indonesian music, and found the single mention to be very brief and even somewhat misleading, and I suspect the mentions of other cultures are similar. --Samuel Wantman 02:47, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Point taken about going into further detail about how it was employed over time, but I'm not sure that going into detail about homophony in each culture would be appropriate. There are countless cultures that have used homophony, so wouldn't the better place to go into detail about that music be in their respective articles? I've wikilinked the Indonesian music article and a few other items, so maybe that would help. As for the statement being misleading, may I ask how? The Grove article went into detail about eastern Indonesian homophonic music ("Two-part homophony, with all or most changes of pitch or text made simultaneously, is uncommon in western Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Bali and the western and central regions of Kalimantan), but it occurs comparatively often in the eastern half of the country (e.g. among the Toraja of South Sulawesi, and in Flores, East Kalimantan and North Sulawesi)..."), so if this is untrue, please elaborate. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 03:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • The quote is much more illuminating. I thought the reference was talking about Balinese music which often has two lines moving together in paralel in a relationship called "empat" (which means four), but is not a fourth in western terms. There are so many different types of music in Indonesia, that a blanket statement is fairly meaningless. "Eastern Indonesia" often refers to anything East of Java which includes Bali. Each island may have a musical tradition that shares very little with a neighboring island, so the blanket statement could be misleading. This is part of the problem -- I don't know if there is much value in mentioning homophony in other cultural contexts without giving details. If each and every culture is not expanded, at least those examples that are mentioned could have enough detail to understand how and where it is used, and the range of variation. -- Samuel Wantman 08:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Prose is explanative, but they sound too much like run-one sentences. And the article is too short, and does not cover more in terms of specific examples & history.
  • Melody dominated homophony is a type of homophony in which the accompanying instruments or voices provide chordal support for a lead voice or instrument, often the highest in pitch, which provides a melody. Here's an example of what I consider as a really messed up sentence. (Wikimachine 03:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC))[reply]
  • I've copyedited the article a bit more, but I do not see any obvious awkward phrases in the prose. As for the length, what do you think should be expanded upon? Its history in non-Western music, its history in Western music? In art music or popular music? -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 03:56, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment That first image is rather ginormous on my screen...is there any way it can be reduced in size and placed to the right of the lead instead? I'm also concerned about the red link in Examples of pieces that are homophonic. Gzkn 02:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I actually had it smaller, but another user commented on the talk page that it was too small to read, so I enlarged it. I will make a little smaller, but either way, people with different resolutions will prefer it one way over the other. As for the red link, I've fixed that. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 03:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Woefully inadequate in coverage, problems in what content there is, and the prose needs sprucing up.
    • "Homophony first appeared as the predominant texture in Western music during the Baroque period in the early 17th century, when composers began to compose with vertical harmony in mind, as opposed to the practice of counterpoint, the homophonic basso continuo becoming a definitive feature of the style.[3]" This sentence has a number of serious problems. Does reference 3 cover just the last point, or the whole lot? Was homophony really the predominant texture in Baroque music? Most people would associate counterpoint with that period. Are you sure that pre-Baroque composers composed without regard to "vertical harmony"? The realisation of a figured bass, and forms such as the choral harmonisation, were probably the most homophonic forms of Baroque music, but I'm worried about the sweeping assumptions in the sentence. The sentence is rather long and winding.
You haven't dealt with the problem that "vertical harmony" had been inherent ever since polyphony developed in the 12th/13th centuries. And the non-expert will wonder about the relevance of the "basso continuo" bit in relation to homphony. It probably needs to be dealt with further down, when you can explain it in the necessary detail and even show notated examples of its realisation. You might also provide an example of recitative, a quintessential form of homophony in the Baroque (since the isolated chords are "prolonged" through the single-line recitations). I still don't see the relevance of SATB right here; it complicates matters, since SATB can be polyphonic too. Why introduce it? Again, it hearks back to harmony textbooks, I fear.
      • I have cleaned up the sentence, but its content is referenced by an authoritative source. Yes, homophony really was the predominant texture in Baroque music. There was a lot of polyphony, but most scholars agree that homophony really was definitive of the era. Check the sources if you disagree. As for the reference, it covers the whole lot. I don't think it's necessary to have the marker twice in the sentece (would you really want a footnote after every single statement in the article?). -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 00:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The score excerpt at the top is not referred to in the text, so a more explanatory caption would be nice: at least give us the year of composition, and point out the rhythmic unanimity and the melodic quality of the top line. Why not positiont the audio sample immediately below the score?
Same for the Chopin example at the bottom. This needs technical explanation; the punters are going to have a hard time relating the visual complexity/activity of the left-hand figurations with the "purer" example at the top. Quite an involved explanation is required to induct them into the wider definition of homophony—it's not easy. As for the "who" example at the bottom, most of it doesn't look homophonic to me. Confusing example.
    • "The case was similar during the Renaissance period,"—what case? It's not referred to in the previous text. I find the paragraph about notation, monophony, polyphony and homophony winding and laboured.
    • "The standard choral arrangement of four voices (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) has since become standard for Western music." Standard x 2. I'm not sure that I agree with such a blanket statement. It's certainly a favourite texture for exercises in harmony textbooks, but whether it's a standard in the real world is debatable.
    • "Homophony began by appearing in sacred music, replacing polyphony and monophony as the dominant form, but spread to secular music, for which it is the standard form today." The start is an attempt to avoid repeating the start of the paragraph, but now it's clumsy. Pity that another encyclopedia is relied on heavily in the referencing.
    • "17th century" isn't linked, and subsequently it is. But why link centuries in the first place? Links need to provide focused information, relevant to the article.
    • Such textural devices as Alberti bass and repeated chords are used without telling the reader that they're homophonic triats, even though rhythmically activated. Not good.
    • "it still has appeared"—clumsy.
    • The treatment of homophony in non-Western music is laughably inadequate. I'm sorry to be harsh, but how can you put this up as a FAC? It's a vast topic, and one paragraph that chucks in a few references to African, Indonesian, Chinese music is way short of the mark. Vasco da Gama gets quite a mention, and we're told that "the concept of harmony as understood by people of that time is not necessarily the same as the concept homophony as understood by modern scholars". Really?
      • As for the last statement, harmony actually was understood differently several hundred years ago than it is now understood. It was often used to describe any music in which there were multiple voices (i.e. polyphonic music). Check the source. I've come across descriptions of music which is described as 'harmonious' several times in my studies, when that music was actually polyphonic or even monophonic, but with multiple voices. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 00:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Melody dominated homophony"—hyphen obligatory. It occurs twice. Tony 14:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This page is for talking about the article Homophony and its quality, not about the person who nominated it. Hyacinth 10:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Tony 12:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I gave a "huh?" at that too...I'm pretty sure every point that Tony brought up addressed the quality of the article... Gzkn 12:50, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The way he phrases a lot of the criticism is very accusatory. For instance, did he really have to say "how can you put this up as a FAC?" Honestly, that is hurtful to me. I've worked a lot on the article, and to say that is basically a terrible is overly harsh. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 00:25, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • To summarise, the nomination fails:
    • 1a (faulty prose);
    • 2a (inadequate lead, which says nothing about one of the major sections);
    • 1c (lacks comprehensiveness in what is a HUGE topic—it's just over a page long and needs to be, IMV, about four times the length in our summary style) and not factually accurate, at least IMV;
    • 2c (substantial table of contents required);
    • 3 (Images required if appropriate to the subject—there are some beautiful examples of early manuscripts on the Commons, I think); and
    • 4 (Not of appropriate length).
  • I'm going to pull apart bits of the lead, especially where it makes sweeping statements that are precarious. It doesn't matter that it comes from Groves or anywhere else that has been described here as "authoritative". There is a similar density of problems in the whole text.
    • Opening sentence: "In music, homophony is the texture of two or more instruments or voices moving together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords." Two or more instruments? Like a keyboard instrument? No, what is intended is musical lines or parts or "voices", if you want to use that in a technical sense. I don't think you can escape doing so in such a topic, and to use "instruments" in this sense at the start may well confuse non-experts, who may first think of the piano. "... the relationship between them creating chords" is not, strictly speaking, grammatical. Try "; the relationship between them creates chords." But the relationship between the parts in polyphony causes chords too. Is this confusing?
    • "monophony, in which all parts move in parallel rhythm and pitch"—This appears to say that monophony requires more than one voice/instrument (in unison and parallel octaves), whereas I'd hazard a guess that most monophony in the world is and has been performed by a single voice/instrument. If not most, a lot of.
    • "A homophonic texture is also homorhythmic[1] or uses a "very similar rhythm"." Here's the ambiguous "or", which can mean =, or "alternatively". Try "i.e.,", or "that is", or parentheses.
    • "However, in melody-dominated homophony, one voice or instrument, often the highest, plays a distinct melody, and the accompanying voices work together to articulate an underlying harmony.[3]"—No, the melodic component is part of the underlying harmony. The wording gives the wrong sense.

This is not ready to be a FA. I'm sorry if I've been trenchant in my criticisms, and I congratulate the contributors on the effort that they've already made. It's a highly technical topic that will be excellent when it allows non-experts to understand the concept in its richness and diversity. At the moment, it's biting off more than it can chew. Better to let it evolve over many months, beefing up or excluding the section on non-Western homophony, which is massive in its scope and involves cultural complexities that I wouldn't want to have to deal with in a NPOV, clear, cogent fashion. Tony 02:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your criticism, Tony, I do appreciate it. I realize that this article is definitely not up to snuff, and I'll try to improve it over the course of the next few months and maybe renominate it then. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 07:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have one last question, though. I disagree with several of your judgements regarding specific statements and their factual accuracy, so is there any way to have this settled by some kind of expert? More specifically, is there a simple way to search Wikipedia for an academic in the field of music who would be willing to review the content of the article? -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 07:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm quite willing to discuss further these "specific statements". I am some kind of expert. Perhaps you are too. Tony 08:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm definitely not some kind of expert. Perhaps we should continue this on the article's talk page, though. -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 20:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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