Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/One-hit wonders in classical music

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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. dbenbenn | talk 23:25, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The votes were 9 keep, 1 merge, 8 delete.

One-hit wonders in classical music[edit]

Delete. Basically it's what some editors feel are one-hit wonder composers. While I think some discussion of popularity (or lack there of) of some composers or works could be a developed article, I don't think it's with this content or title. While I agree with some of the POVs on the page, it's just not verifiable. It comes down to original research. See Talk:One-hit wonders in classical music for the full discussion. --Sketchee 20:19, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. Before I looked at it, I was going to vote for keeping, but the idea of calling people like Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov "one-hit wonders" is ludicrous. Deb 20:43, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Merge, see comments below (way below). I skimmed through the talk page and there are certainly problems with the page that would be difficult to overcome. Are we talking about "hits" in their lifetimes or presently? At least the one-hit wonder page can be verifiable based on radio play and chart position (though even that is somewhat subjective, as they mention in cases like the Grateful Dead and Hendrix, who had one "hit" but surely don't qualify). You can buy multiple works by nearly anyone mentioned on this page very easily at any music store with a half decent classical section. Try doing that with Baltimora or Toni Basil. It's applying modern terms to a different situation. -R. fiend 21:08, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. You can just imagine what Wetman might say... --Wetman 21:25, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and mark for cleanup. Sketchee's remarks are absolutely correct, but I'm voting to "keep" this pleasant piece of classical fancruft anyway. (Yes, I'm one of the editors. No, the article wasn't my idea). My comments follow, indented. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:24, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What we have here is a page of utterly unsourced, reasonably factual, reasonably NPOV, reasonably accurate information.
Try this experiment. Play this MIDI file: [1] (Eeeewwww... it's much too slow...) Sound familiar? I'll bet you recognize it; it's unquestionably a classical "hit." It's Narcissus, by Ethelbert Nevin. I challenge you to name one single solitary other piece by Nevin without clicking on the link. Nevin is a one-hit wonder in classical music, and that's just about as objective and NPOV as any statement you can possibly make about music. The same is true for most of the composers listed in the article. (Yes, Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov must go... and Bizet, chuck Bizet...)
So, the article is factual, it's just unsourced. Now, in point of fact, this is regrettably true of quite a lot of Wikipedia. Very few of us take the trouble to provide proper citations for information if we are sure it is uncontroversial and reasonably well-known. Our article on Beethoven begins: "Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827) was a German composer of Classical music, the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest of composers, and his reputation both inspired and, in some cases, intimidated, composers, musicians and audience members who were to come after him." All of this is factual. None of it, not even his dates, are sourced. Our article on Jupiter (planet) says that i's orbit has a semimajor axis of 778,412,027 km. That statement is not sourced. One could multiply examples.
The fact that other article fail to cite sources is not a reason why this one doesn't need to. In fact, I feel that the less encyclopedic the topic, the higher the quality of the article should be. On this article, my judgement is cleanup, not deletion.
If R. fiend can actually find an entire CD of music by Ethelbert Nevin at his local music store, I'll change my vote to "delete." Dpbsmith (talk) 23:24, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
P. S. And Amazon doesn't count. I'll accept this CD [2] and won't even complain about three of the pieces being by Arthur Nevin. But somebody has to find it in a store. (It will probably be much easier to find votes to delete than to find this CD in a store.) Dpbsmith (talk) 23:37, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My problem was never so much the lack of citations, but the fact that there's a huge grey area in what is a "hit", particularly when we're talking about music spanning centuries (personally I think there are some people who put too much emphasis on citing sources; a good deal of the information on WP is so widely known that attributing to a single source is silly). I agree this article could have some potential. I was considering voting "weak delete", but after seeing a fuss created when some people's "weak keeps" weren't counted as mcuh as "keep" votes (as if their addition of "weak" wasn't their own choice), I decided to avoid neutering my vote. Okay, so Nevin qualifies (though I'm not entirely sure I recognized that tune), but there are plenty of names who have a "hit" that they're known for more than the others, but still have an output of widely available music. I'm not a classical music buff but I'm pretty sure I own two CDs by Boccherini, to name but one. And why do I think Gorecki had a string quartet or two that were well-known? I think all the ones on the list with an asterisk should go, then I may be tempted to change my vote. I am also tempted to agree BM below. It seems like an anarchronism, but I'm a little closer to the fence now. -R. fiend 01:34, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I agree, and I've taken the liberty of adding some asterisks of my own. Deb 18:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't think this is entirely unsourced: The source was that Wikipedians picked out pieces they feel are one hit wonders and created a poll (in place of research) on wikipedia so that others could agree or disagree. As it stands, it's original research. It's verifiable in that we can look at the talk page and see that a dozen random people hold the opinion. If we can corroborate the popular opinion with information, it may work but I personally still wouldn't call the works "one-hit wonders". I'd support a move (to a title about works in classical that have become mainstream) and starting over with outside sources, but that would be the same as a deletion IMHO. :)
And you're right. The Beethoven article has problems that should be fixed, however it would be hard to argue that Beethoven isn't notable or a small internet poll is. All the items you cite on other articles are a major criticism of wikipedia. I don't question that you and the other people who edited the articles hold the opinions that you give above about Nevin and others. However, Wikipedia is not the place to create a criteria and then fill it (original research) as is happening with this page. If someone else has presented the idea of a one-hit wonder in classical music then we should start by using their criteria and their examples, not our POV.--Sketchee 01:59, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. --Xadai 23:36, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. I love this! In fact, Pachelbel was the first name to come to mind. Agree that certain names aren't really deserving. Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov were already mentioned. Add to the list Lehar, Bizet, Khachaturian and Holst in my opinion. In fact, Khachaturian just plain hated being associated with "Sabre Dance." Otherwise, bravo! - Lucky 6.9 23:49, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. I'd vote delete, and I might still, but I have a great deal of respect for Dpbsmith. However, d, (can we be on a first-initials basis? --- just call me B), I think maybe you are letting your enthusiasm for this idea get the better of you. Do you really think this is an encyclopedia topic? Its more like, you know, a cool article idea for a magazine. --BM 00:01, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • B, I think the article is in some kind of grey area. Borderline. Marginal. Iffy. The ideal VfD nomination, in fact. As I write this, virtually every comment made in this discussion has been sensible. I won't have any hard feelings if the article is deleted. The fact that Wikipedia has other amusing trivia lists is not a reason to keep this one. My own belief is that "one-hit wonders in classical music" is a concept that has some objective meaning, will probably become fairly well defined if the article evolves, and is Wikipedic. Others' mileage will vary. I personally want to keep the article because I happen to like it. It would not damage the foundations of Wikipedia to delete it. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:00, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • It doesn't seem very borderline to me: heretofore, that "original research" should be deleted is one of the very few things on which there is consensus amongst regular participants on the VfD page. In this article, we have a group of Wikipedia editors having fun carrying out a personal research project. D, are you planning to continue participating on the VfD page and voting "delete" on original research? What general principle would you advance that makes this original research project OK which would still allow us to delete original research/personal essays when they come from other people whom we don't like? You seem to be indulging in special pleading to me. --B 12:02, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Useful, interesting, notable and encyclopedic. --Centauri 00:16, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, POV original research. Megan1967 02:16, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Well, well, well. I'm not surprised this thing finally showed up on VfD. Although I passionately hate most of the listings on the page, since they are often my least favorite works by the respective composers, they often are perceived as the one-hit wonders they are because of their disproportionate popularity compared to the rest of the composer's work. And some of the listings are just wrong (Elgar? Rimsky-Korsakoff? Scriabin? Gimme a break.) What you are really looking at is a statistical problem: locating cases where one composition has received recordings and performances an order of magnitude, or so, greater than the rest of the composer's work. While compiling statistics to prove one-hit-wonderness would be exceedingly time-consuming and difficult, the article needs to be cleaned up, not deleted. Antandrus 02:58, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • My question still is still perceived by who? And what was their criteria for a Classical One-hit wonder? To me it still reads like the proposed thesis statement of this article is that certain pieces are one-hit wonders and then the statistics are trying to back up the thesis. Still original research in that case.--Sketchee 04:00, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
      • No, ideally you'd 1) establish a threshold, 2) run statistics on ALL pieces, and then determine by a strict numerical criteria which pieces were one-hit wonders. The part to haggle over would be: what is the threshold value (i.e. a piece would need to have five times the sales, or ten times, or whatever, the next nearest piece by the same composer). It's impossibly impractical, but that IS s a way you could actually do it. I'd need a really big database of record sales, for example, and I could write the query. Antandrus
        • Well, a good article starts with a definition and I'm personally uncomfortable with us making up our own definition for this concept/new term. If it's a common idea, wouldn't there be several publications out there providing their definitions which we could explore? Like I said on the talk page, I'd really like to save the concept but the title and contents seem too made-up. Taking statistics and drawing a conclusion from them? Based on our own fan created definition?--Sketchee 04:51, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
        • I think basing it entire on sales doesn't solve the problem of past renown that has faded, or current popularity that didn't exist at the time. Also, shifting through thousands of files of data on all sorts of recordings seem entirely unpractical. This isn't tracking sales of Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography, but looking at hundreds of recordings by different ensembles. Think of Pachelbel's canon, for example. No one buys a recording of just that one piece (that would be one very short CD). It's going to be on a "Baroque Hits" album which will have recordings of guys like Albinoni, Manfredini, Locatelli, and all sorts of others who may or may not be known for one piece. Who does the sale of such a CD count in favor of? Everyone on it? And it also ignores performances, which make up a lot of the classical repertoire (ensembles love to throw little known pieces into their performances all the time). I guess you might have to track the sales of sheet music too. No, if it's to be kept we won't be able to write such a simple mathematical formula. Perhaps this could be trimmed severely and moved to a section of the current one-hit wonders article (where Pachelbel is already mentioned), more as a sort of side-note that doesn't get the prominence of having its own article. I'm not sure if that would really solve anything, but it might. -R. fiend 04:53, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
          • LOL, as I said, impossibly impractical. I just wanted to get across that you could quantify this, if you really wanted to. Anyway it's an amusing article and I don't care that much, certainly not enough to go chasing after the data myself.  :-) Antandrus 05:02, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
            • So are you then saying that this should be kept because it's theortically possible to verify this, even though it's so impractical that it will not be done? If it's to be kept it needs to be very clearly defined, and again, that would make it just about impossible to verify. And bear in mind even if its cleaned up and Elgar, Bizet, Boccherini, and such are removed, it's only a matter of time before someone else stumbles on this page adds them again or says "I think Mussorgsky belongs" and throws him on the list, and we have to deal with additions and removals happening. And a final point, The article now references its Talk page, which I think qualifies as self-reference, and should be taken care of. -R. fiend 18:21, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
              • Yes, of course. Wikipedia is full of things that are incomplete. It is also full of lists that have gray boundaries around them, and people argue all the time about whether so-and-so belongs on the list or not. The phenomenon of one-hit-wonderness exists--see Dpbsmith's comment below--and we have here an article that begins to address it. Not in an optimal way, perhaps, but it does begin to address it. Antandrus 18:59, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
          • I note, as mentioned on the talk page of the article, that there *is* a recording of just the canon, and in fact it is the most prominent hit if you search for "Pachelbel" on Amazon. (All recorded by different artists, naturally.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 05:06, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
            • Man, that must be one tedious record. -R. fiend 05:28, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
            • Even if we can get the statistics to back up the idea, is the idea itself our own? "A wikipedia entry (including a part of an article) counts as original research if it proposes ideas, that is: It introduces a theory or method of solution, or It introduces original ideas, or It defines new terms, or It provides new definitions of old terms..." It seem to me as if we're doing all of the above with this one. We have a thesis/hypothesis/theory/whichever and now we're trying to find the data to support it. If there is an external publication (or better yet multiple publications) which has presented the term (or idea) of one-hit wonders to apply to classical music, it would be so much simpler to take cite criteria and examples. If not then I'll still feel the reasoning for the VfD (original research) remains. Such an analysis might be interesting for Wikisource in that case. --Sketchee 05:40, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep but rename as the title is anachronistic. Tuf-Kat 03:02, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep please Danny 03:11, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Can't think of anything to add that Antandrus and Dpbsmith haven't already said. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:50, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. This discussion has convinced me. This is another moronic list with extremely vague criteria for inclusion. People are not going to agree on what constitutes a "one hit" wonder in classics. It sounds like one of those cheesy classics CD's that they sell on late night TV: "Greatest Classics Hits of All Time". Not something that you would expect to find in a serious encyclopedia. It sounds like the subject for an idle, entertaining. conversation between classics fans before the concert starts. But from an encyclopedic standpoint: the whole concept is anachronistic and dumb: "Hit" is a modern concept and whether a song is a hit is determined by sales charts compiled by commonly recognized agencies. A "one-hit wonder" is a performer or composer who only has one hit according to that data followed by some reasonable lapse of time in which there have been no further hits. The concept only makes sense for composers and performers who have worked since the idea of "hits" and "charts" have existed. You can't apply "one-hit wonder" to classical pieces because there aren't any charts, unless you go by current sales of recordings of the pieces by countless artists and orchestras, on countless recording labels. You would have to decide how many current sales are enough to constitute a "hit". A lot of classical composers are "zero hit wonders" based on contemporary sales. Who is a "one hit wonder" is going to be defined completely by how many current sales are defined as a "hit". Set it high, and everybody is a one hit wonder except for Beethoven. For that matter, a lot of "multi-hit" contemporary popular artists are "one hit" or "zero hit" wonders based on recent sales. Even if you could decide all this in some kind of sensible way, who is actually going to compile the data, process it, and produce the results? Is that the business the Wikipedia is in? It sounds like a big original research project. And finally, so what? There might be only one piece from a composer that is currently popular, but that does not mean that the composer only composed one thing or that only one piece was regarded by his contemporaries or by scholars as good or significant. This is nonsense, and I am very disappointed in some of the people voting to keep it, who should know better. These kind of articles invite people to think of Wikipedia as a fun forum for swapping opinions, not as a serious encyclopedia. --BM 06:01, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. The discussion has shown that the concept of one-hit wonders is very real in classical music, but the article itself has wandered hopelessly astray. What it has shown that it is impossible to come up with a canonical list of composers who have written only one piece that would be recognized by the layman, because we don't have an ur-layman to make the list. We should clear the article and simply discuss the phenomenon - that so many composers seem to produce one work that has the ability or good luck to "pop" into wider consciousness. Still, I think its contributors have made a genuine attempt. David Brooks 06:32, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Another problem with this is not only is it difficult to define a "hit" in terms of what single piece is popular enough, but also in what constitutes a single piece. We have "Flight of the Bumblebee", a piece that can't take more than a couple minutes to perform, alongside a full opera like "Carmen". If you divide the opera into separate arias you suddenly have a slew of hits (though admittedly Les Torreadors or whatever is clearly the most popular). These aren't exactly even compaisons. -R. fiend 07:19, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Oh, Carmen has got to go. Given that Hammerstein's Carmen Jones was a great big Broadway hit and movie, it's quite possible that more than one song from Carmen actually made the pop charts. Your point is well taken, but I don't think it's a big problem, as I doubt there are many examples of real "one-hit wonders" where there are multiple clear "hits" that are all from a single work. It doesn't matter whether you list Grofé for "Grand Canyon Suite" or "On the Trail," as none of the other parts of it can be called "hits. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:41, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Unavoidably POV; original research. Adding anyone to the list will involve three personal judgement calls: that the person had one hit, that none of their other works have been hits, and that at no time in the future will any of the other works be hits. Remember, classical music is a genre where fame may come centuries after your death. --Carnildo 09:25, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment Deutsche Gramophon offers a CD, #472700, entitled One Hit Wonders This has never been mentioned in the Talk page of the article and I think it represents an independent list of classical "one hit wonders." Their list is: "Johann Pachelbel, Samuel Barber, Carl Orff, Tomaso Albinoni, Jean Joseph Mouret, Luigi Boccherini, Jeremiah Clarke, Jules Massenet, Pietro Mascagni, Richard Addinsell, Léo Delibes, Paul Dukas, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Joseph Canteloube, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Peter Warlock, Edward MacDowell, Emil Waldteufel, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Amilcare Ponchielli, Ferde Grofé, Reinhold Gliere, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Charles-Marie Widor, Hugo Alfvén, Aram Khachaturian." By my count, of the 26 composers selected by Deutsche Gramophon, and the 36 we list, exactly 13 are included in both lists. In 12 cases, the "hit" is the same; in one, very embarrassingly (particularly since I'm the one that added it), DG cites the Russian Sailors' Dance as Glière's one hit, while we cite Ilya Murametz. O dear. This album is an existence proof that the phrase "one hit wonder" has been applied to classical music. The degree of overlap, assuming the lists are independent, is some kind of measure of the degree of subjectivity/objectivity in making such a list. My personal feeling is that the lists are not wildly discordant and the differences are more in the nature of "Oops! how could we have forgotten Waldteufel than any indication of hopeless subjectivity in judgement. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:41, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment This just shows that the "one-hit wonder" notion has no objective meaning and is at best a marketing concept. You see some confirmation in the overlap; I see that only one-third of your choices are "confirmed" by the Deutsche Gramophon record producer, and that only one half of his choices are "confirmed" by the Wikipedia editors' selection. This shows that this concept is highly arbitrary, subjective, and error-prone. And none of this addresses the original research issue. If you want to change the article to be a report on "One Hit Wonder" selections by classical recording companies, journalists, scholars, a la DG (assuming there are any more), that at least would not be original research. But I still maintain that a group of Wikipedia editors has no business playing at being "One Hit Classical Wonders" record producers and foisting their unsourced track list on the world as an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia editors are all anonymous nobodies, registered or not, including me. Who cares what nobodies think? --BM 18:59, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree that this datum can be interpreted either way. I wasn't presenting it as a knockdown argument, I just thought it was germane. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:23, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Too subjective. -Willmcw 00:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

arbitrary break, as this page is getting long[edit]

This is becoming much more of a discussion than a vote, but that tends to happen at times. I'd be doing this on the talk page, but this seems to be where the discussion is now, and I'm not sure who'd follow me if I tried to move it. Anyway, I'll make a proposition at the end of this, so it will be relevent to this page. Dbpsmith's example of a "Classical one hit wonder CD" does show that we are not the only one's having this conversation, but it hardly qualifies as a scholarly work. It's a marketing ploy, like so many others, and no one's going to hold them accountable as to whether Albinoni's "adagio" was his only hit, or if he even wrote it. Now there is something to be said for some composers having a single piece that they are known for, but the question is whether it's worthy enough and substantiated enough to support an encyclopedia article. Take Mouret, for example, (who was listed by Deutch Gramophon and would probably qualify for this article as it stands), his "fanfare" probably doesn't sell well (and it can really only be sold as part of a compilation), and I have no idea if it was popular in his lifetime, any more so than his other works, but it is recognized universally today solely because it is the theme to "Masterpiece Theatre". Is it a "hit", or just a recognizable piece of music? I doubt it's performed very often, as it's so closely associated with a TV show (like Sousa's "Liberty Bell March") that you can't hear it without thinking of that show, spoiling appreciation for it.
I also think D (if I may call you D), is a little premature in dismissing multiple "hits" from a single work. I think "The Planets" has more than one hit in there (though I suppose Mars is the most popular), and while "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana is clearly the biggest hit, some of the later movements get their share of play. I imagine any opera that's performed somewhat regularly has to have more than one hit, as no one is going to sit through 3 hours of music to hear a a five minute piece, but I may be getting a little off topic there.
So I have a proposal. It seems to me that a rather subjective, somewhat unencyclopedic subject should not carry an article on its own, but as a coda to a more encyclopedic article it could perhaps stand. So I brought it up before, but now I formally propose trimming this article to the examples that can be most agreed on and merging it to a section at the end of one-hit wonder. The Deutch Gramophone recording (and there are probably others too) allows us to write a paragraph where we can say that the term "one hit wonder" has been used for classical music as well, followed by a brief synopsis of the problems in doing so. Then a few examples can be listed of composers who fit the bill, in some sense, perhaps with a few notes on it. Does this get us out of the original research field altogether? Probably not really, but saying that Pachelbel is known for one piece of music is hardly a controversial statement; I bet it even says that in his article. I think this is the best compromise we are likely to get, and it lets us address this quite interesting topic without stating or giving the impression that these composers are the one hit wonders of classical music. -R. fiend 23:38, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I like this; it sounds promising. But I can also see a danger of it going astray like this one. Also - I have hinted at this before - I think the OHW's are showing up in two distinct classes: those that have become recognizable to the broader public because they have been co-opted for a use outside the concert hall (the Elgar, the Flightle-Bee) and those where even the fairly well-educated musician is hard pressed to name another work (d'Indy hits the spot for me). I can see this isn't a hard and fast line, but it might help clarify the thinking. David Brooks 23:46, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
You certainly have a point. I think if presented in the right way it may be less likely to "go astray" in that it will not be presented as a "complete" list, so the temptation for people to say "OH! They forgot Gluck!" and add his name will not be as great. I hope. Certainly some of us can keep a watch on it. As to your second point, I do think we need to decide. I think a "hit" would have to be something that is recognizable to the layman, to an extent. I consider myself more well versed in classical music than the average person, and I have not heard of several of the composers mentioned in the wiki-list and the Deutch Gramophone list. I think calling those "hits" might be an overstatement. I think as a general guideline, if it is very easy to find one recording by an artist, and it is reasonably well known, but quite difficult to find another, they might well be a "one hit wonder". That would rule out Elgar, Rimsky-Korsakof, Delibes, Bizet, Scriabin, and many others. But also, I imagine, d'Indy, because whatever his piece is (I have no idea, I am not ashamed to say) I would likely be hesitant to call it a "hit" (though I could be wrong). I also think ruling out any reasonably contemporary composers is a good idea, as they have to be given time. -R. fiend 03:28, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
That would certainly be fine with me. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:54, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think this is an excellent compromise, and is fine with me; see my comment below. Antandrus 01:50, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Concur. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 04:07, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Extraneous side comments re R. fiend's remarks. 1) It is quite likely that you might recognize several of the "hits" even if you do not know the name of the composer or the piece. This is a characteristic of several of them. Some of them have short fragments quoted all the time in animated cartoon music or movie music, for example... if a comedy sketch has a middle-eastern bazaar or a snake charmer or anything like that, it is unlikely that they will resist the temptation to play a few bars of "In a Persion Market." 2) d'Indy's "Symphony on a French Mountain Air" (or "Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français") falls in the category of "things which a lot of people who like classical music have not heard but which you probably can find in a good record store." It's a very pleasant piece but you can live a perfectly complete life without ever hearing it. I think d'Indy may have a slightly spurious fame due to the relative lack of great French classical composers, so he tends to make it onto lists of French composers. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:36, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm still somewhat skeptical although if it survives the VfD, this kind of change would probably be necessary to get somewhat less pov. :) I think we could do better in doing more general article on the Popularity of classical music (or similar) where we could discuss these kind of pieces freely in referenced prose without the (hard to define) "one-hit wonder" label. It'd then be harder to go astray. That's just my opinion of course. I'll be happy to help no matter which direction we decide to go. --Sketchee 18:24, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
I like that or something close to it as an article title... I'm not that interested in trying to get a clean definition of "one-hit wonder." There could be sections on pieces became famous because of being used as theme songs (even the William Tell Overture must have gotten a significant boost from its Lone Ranger associations)... pieces that are frequently quoted in animated cartoons and comedy sketches... etc. etc. I wish I could remember the name of a book I read that had all sorts of charts on the frequency with which various pieces of music appeared on symphony orchestra programmes. Does anyone remember just how the Pachelbel Canon became famous? Do I vaguely recall that some pop disk jockey took it under his wing and gave it air time? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:36, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Comment: I've never been crazy about this page because of its subjectivity. But the phenomenon of a one-piece composer is well known, often discussed, and well documented; it's one of the things music grad students blather on and on about over pitchers of beer, myself included. Why did Roy Harris score so well with his Third Symphony, while none of his other works rose into the light? Why is that Schwanda the Bagpiper opera so well known, and no one can name a single other piece by Weinberger? So I think the discussion, and documentation of the phenomenon, belongs somewhere on Wikipedia--maybe not in this page though. By the way, we never called them "one-hit-wonders in classical music" --we called them One piece composers. If people want to delete the page it won't hurt my feelings; I'm fine with the consensus view; but again, the phenomenon itself is encyclopedic and deserves a home on Wikipedia somewhere. Antandrus 01:50, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep, it's charming, there's a source (the CD referenced above). dbenbenn | talk 23:24, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.

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