Talk:Antonio Salieri

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Lead[edit]

The following discussion has been copied from User talk:Michael Bednarek to enable a wider discussion. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, you have just now undone an edit of mine, on the Saieri article. My edit accomplished several things, especially clarifying excessive ambiguity in the original phrasing.

I would be happy to give you an annotated, detailed explanation of why I made all my changes, if you'd like. I'll offer one example, for now: the current version of the sentence I'd changed begins with the pronoun "This". Pronouns refer to antecedents (which must be nouns, or noun phrases), when used properly. What is the antecedent of "This" in this case? To what word does it refer? It seems to perhaps point back to "popularly remembered", that is, it seems to refer to the (hypothetically constructed, for the purposes of this illustration) "popular memory [of the rivalry]", yet "popularly remembered" is not a noun, it is an adjective (adjectival phrase) and therefore the use of "This" in the following sentence is grammatically improper English.

My edit corrected several such errors. Please share with me your reasoning, regarding your reversion of my edit. Thank you. catsmoke (talk) 10:11, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My reversal of your edit at Antonio Salieri ought to be discussed at that article's talk page so that other editors can comment, too.

My action may seem to have been hasty, but here is what I thought at the time. The reversal was triggered by several items: your prose introduced an awkward repetition (rival/rivalry) and a colloquial use of a contraction (it's) which is frowned upon per MOS:CONTRACT. There was also a questionable comma before "out of jealousy", and you added an extraneous blank line, resulting in a gap above the table of contents. Your analysis above of the shortcomings your edit was trying to correct seems overly strict. "This" can be seen as referring to the whole of the preceding sentence (what Salieri is popularly remembered for). (And the Purdue Online Writing Lab you quote above is clearly out of date – the singular they is now widely used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.) On the whole, your edit added verbosity and was no net improvement.

On reflection, the usual remedy for bad writing should be applied – rephrase. What about rewriting the two sentences as: "He is popularly remembered for rumours that he poisoned his supposedly bitter rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, when most likely, they were at least mutually respectful peers." This could be further improved if a link to the article Death of Mozart could be worked into it. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:50, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, for the prompt response. Please tell me the best way to move this discussion to the venue which you have recommended (I do not, for example, know the protocol, regarding preservation, repetition, or transfer of what we have already written, so far). I would like to do so, and to continue to work out—and hopefully settle—our differences, regarding my reverted edit. catsmoke (talk) 13:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the work of Michael Bednarek, in noting my mistake and in moving our previous discussion here, and I express my thanks. I made an edit, and Michael Bednarek reverted it. Then Michael Bednarek made his own edit, which addressed some of the problems which my edit had corrected, but not all of them. Therefore, I am going to make another edit, based on the reasoning which follows. I am aware that "edit wars" are forbidden on Wikipedia and my action is not merely counter-reverting a reversion made by another editor, but a good-faith attempt to craft a sentence which effectively communicates the information which it seems the original author of the sentence meant for it to convey. Michael Bednarek's edit was an improvement on the original, so I will edit his sentence, because it does not correct all of the sentence's problems. The current form of the sentence, which my edit will modify, follows:

He is popularly remembered for rumours that he poisoned his supposedly bitter rival Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, when most likely, they were at least mutually respectful peers.

"Popularly remembered," although an idiom which one sees in informal usage, is nonsensical, and its tone is unacceptable for Wikipedia. It seems to mean "remembered by the populace," but its literal meaning is "remembered in a manner that is popular," which, even if we spare it the further analysis to which it is susceptible, has already become untenable. So it must be discarded. The intent behind the original use of the phrase was to describe the perception of Salieri which the members of the general public hold within their minds. Unless there is some authoritative source for this information, drawing such a conclusion relies upon conjecture, and that is outside the provenance of Wikipedia. Yet, there is evidence, cited later in the article, that the referred-to "rumors" are a matter of fact (factual not in that the rumors were correct, but that there have been, indeed, such rumors). So, the rumors, themselves, have a place in the corrected sentence.

When a construction such as "He is popularly remembered for rumours" is used, the meaning is that the subject of the sentence is responsible for the object of the preposition. Consider the example "He is remembered for paintings that depicted the Parthenon." I am not saying that the phrasing, as it is used in the article's sentence and as it is used in my example, is the exact same in both; I am saying that it is close enough to being the same to warrant revision, due to the potential ambiguity which it invites.

The construction "supposedly bitter rival" is also problematic. What is the supposition? Salieri was supposedly rivals with Mozart, or the rivalry was supposedly a bitter one? "Supposedly" is, due to its form, most likely to be an adverb, and thus it could properly modify only an adjective; "bitter" is an adjective, and "rival" is a noun. But clarity makes for less ambiguity. "Rumors" are, by definition, of uncertain verity. Anything rumor says is "supposed" and not confirmed or verified. The extraneous word "supposedly" may be dropped. Although the idea of a rivalry without bitterness is conceivable, the idea of bitterness supports the alleged resultant act of poisoning, so the bitterness will ideally be preserved, as will the rivalry, in the revision of this sentence.

Michael Bednarek suggested that the death of Mozart is important, relative to this sentence, so it will be the new subject. The sentence which I will submit:

The death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was followed by rumours that he and Salieri had been bitter rivals, and that Salieri had poisoned the younger composer, yet it is likely that they were, at least, mutually respectful peers.

Michael Bednarek makes the argument that the Purdue Online Writing Lab is "outdated" because in its style guidelines it endorses one rule that is debatable (perhaps the word choice "outdated" is the result of the Lab standing on the same side of the debate as that taken by most authorities on the topic, over the past 300 years, or so). If I find that a source, which is being appealed to, as an authority, contains an error, then is that source therefore invalid, as an authority? And what if that source has not made a demonstrable error, but has endorsed the side of a debate that is not the same side as another source, in a debate which is current and regards a relatively radical reversal of a grammatical precept (in this case, the agreement, in number, of a pronoun and its antecedent) which has been seen as an immutable axiom in the proper use of English, for generations? Closer study should remedy a faulty argument. catsmoke (talk) 20:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looking more closely at my edit, which is at the end of the final paragraph of the article's introductory section, there needs to be a more gentle transition, to link the sentence I've added back to the preceding two. I state this as a recommendation for a potential edit. It is a matter that I will, myself, address, as soon as I can. catsmoke (talk) 23:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I regret having applied my ultimate edit immediately after I'd posted my explanation of its form. The best practices are those practices which best serve Wikipedia. Yet, I did not give Michael Bednarek any time to look at, or to respond to, the changes that I proposed to apply. Ideally, we would have crafted an edit that was a compromise, based on a more extensive dialog. catsmoke (talk) 05:45, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Depiction in fiction[edit]

Noticed this article lacks a mention of there being a rather major plotline regarding amadeus and salieri in <SPOILERS!!!> Steins gate. </SPOILERS!!!> (cant figure out how to color the bg black, so will leave the spoiler in cleartext like this.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.248.100.73 (talk) 18:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]