Template:Did you know nominations/Requiem für einen jungen Dichter

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:29, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Requiem für einen jungen Dichter[edit]

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~~... that Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Requiem für einen jungen Dichter, premiered a year before his death, has been termed "a humbling polyphony of twentieth-century misdeeds"?~~ Source: "[1]
- ALT1:... that in his Requiem für einen jungen Dichter, composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann combines the Latin Requiem with literary, philosophical, religious and political texts that shaped his lifetime? Source: [2]
- ALT2:... that Bernd Alois Zimmermann's called his Requiem für einen jungen Dichter a Lingual (speech work) for narrator, soprano, baritone, three choirs, electric tape, orchestra, jazz combo and organ?

Reviewed: 500 Miles High
Comment: Everything about this piece is huge, sorry.

Created by Gerda Arendt (talk). Self-nominated at 10:02, 2 May 2017 (UTC).

New enough, long enough. Rephrase "took his own life" per WP:EUPHEMISM. Only copyvios ping was a properly-attributed quote, and no close paraphrasing detected through spot-checks. On a picky (and not technically-DYK-criteria-related) note, please clean up the references a bit. I see nothing so controversial that you need to throw a reference in the middle of a sentence to attribute it properly, so things like cite 7 should be moved to ends of sentences. Cite 2 can be removed from the lead, since you cite the exact same information to the same source in the body of the article. AGF on content of references, which are mostly in German. ALT0 fails the "interesting test" as just a review-babble quote, and ALT2 fails the same as a long list of instruments. ALT1 is cited properly, short enough, about as interesting as we're going to get with this article. At first, I wanted to suggest focusing on the suicide connection between the texts used and the composer, but that's a bit too morbid given that he likely still has living relatives. Ping me once you fix the couple things mentioned above. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 06:49, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for looking deeply! You please reword how he died, because I don't know what's the current phrasing. Please don't use "committed suicide", because that puts him in a guilt corner ("committed a crime"). Cite 2 (still) in the lead was my mistake. The other: Cite 7 is about the second recording, but has the correct year of the first, while cite 8 is about the first recording but has the year wrong (or rather: only mentions a re-release). But I did what you asked, hoping that readers won't be confused about the different listings of performers. I struck ALT0, but left ALT2 to be considered as more musical. I almost hear the conflict (jazz combo and organ), and the dimensions (three choir). It's also the (translated) words of the composer ;) - Thank you for not going the morbid path! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:10, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: "Committed suicide" is the phrasing usually supported by the MOS, and it's really the only option unless we want to get creative/awkward with phrasing ("died by suicide"? yuck). "Took his own life" is the current language I object to. Perhaps the best solution is just to remove the whole sentence? It isn't strictly necessary for the article on the song. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:17, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Please insert that phrase then. I forgot where I read the argument (somewhere on Wikipedia) arguing not to use "commit", - it makes sense to me. - I don't want to add speculations such as "wrote it as a Requiem for himself" - compare Mozart and the myths around his Requiem - but the fact how he died seems needed in the context of this specific piece. I would not mention it for his other works, - so far only the opera has an article. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:26, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

After some thought and a bit of reading, I elected to go with "died by suicide". Not the best phrasing, but probably the best we currently have in the English language. Struck ALT2 as not terribly interesting for anyone who isn't musically-inclined enough to get that the combination of instruments is odd. That certainly went over my head, and I enjoy a good bit of music. ALT1 is good to go.