Talk:Gertrud Schoenberg

Name

In addition to the various similarly named women, this article itself adds to the confusion by having the name Gertrude Schoenberg, but starting with "Getrud Schoenberg (née Kolisch …". I also note that the English and the German articles on A. Schoenberg call his second wife "Gertrud", as does Von heute auf morgen. In fact, many sources call Arnold's and Mathilde's daughter "Gertrude". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 15:13, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Possibly this discrepancy has to do with emigration to the US, similar to the (official) change of the spelling "Schönberg" to "Schoenberg". In the particular historical context of the time of emigration, conspicuously "German" spellings were often "Americanized"—sometimes officially, sometimes not. Such a change, BTW, is not relevant to the daughter's surname, since she married and changed her name to Greissle before leaving Germany. One way or another, a reliable source is needed to sort out which of these variant spellings is authoritative for each individual.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:27, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's also quite garbled in general and has virtually no information about the actual subject. I took off the soprano category, as this pertained to one of the "other" Gertrude Schoenberg's. Anyone know how else to categorize this apart from birth and death years? (I also corrected the birth date which had been given as 1989!) Voceditenore (talk) 19:25, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this article is a mess. It is partly my fault that it looks like a badly designed disambiguation page (I added the mention of Schoenberg's daughter), but I think there is serious doubt whether the main subject passes these notability tests. To address your question of categories: as far as I can tell from this article and what I have been able to discover elsewhere, Gertrud Schoenberg was notable for two things, both directly connected to her husband's work. She was the librettist of his opera Von heute auf morgen, and she founded the firm of Belmont Music for the purpose of publishing his compositions ("Belmont" of course is a French translation of "Schoenberg"). Gertrud would therefore plausibly fall under "Category:Music publishers (people)", (or perhaps "Category:Music publishers (people) by nationality", presumably American, since Belmont is located in Pacific Palisades, California), and Category:Opera librettists, though deciding on a nationality might be tricky here (Austrian by birth, but resident in Germany at the time of writing).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I copy-edited this article so it makes a bit more sense. I also removed some of the excessive detail about the "other Gertrudes" who aren't the subject of this article, as this made it even more confusing. I left in this sentence:

Arnold used the notes G and E♭ (German: S) for "Gertrud Schoenberg"

However, without more context, it's impossible for the reader to know what this is about. I'm tempted to remove it unless some clarifying context can be provided. I also agree that she may not pass the notability test for a stand-alone article, although she did write one opera libretto so might scrape through on that. I added Category:Austrian opera librettists and Category:Music publishers (people). Voceditenore (talk) 09:04, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Jerome clarified in the article the point of G–E♭ which signifies her initials in German musical notation (G–Es); maybe a link to Key signature names and translations might be helpful.
From a formal point of view, my initial concern is still there: the article is named "Gertrude Schoenberg", but starts with "Gertrud Schoenberg". While I understand Jerome's explanation, the reader shouldn't face this inconsistency even before starting to read the article. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:22, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

What I am really looking for is an authority for the spelling of the name. My gut instinct is to change the article title to "Gertrud Schoenberg", not only for the reason you mention, but also because the only sources I have found that use the spelling "Gertrude" are informal ones—that is, articles by American writers who had heard her name pronounced, but probably did not know how it was spelled. Certainly her birth name was spelled "Gertrud", but did she have this spelling legally changed, or not?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:48, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If her birthname was "Gertrud" and if the sources for "Gertrude" are dubious, that seems to be a rather good case for moving the article to Gertrud Schoenberg, a page which already has most of the meaningful incoming links. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:09, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree, especially given this evidence. Re the notes, I understand the relationship between them and her initials, but the article says simply "He used" them. My question is "What for, and where?" Simply to refer to her? Voceditenore (talk) 06:31, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I suspect the G–E♭ sequence refers to the 1924 Wind Quintet, Op. 26, and that an "A" for "Bubi Arnold" (AS's grandson) may also have been involved, but I can find no citable sources for this now. Among various snippets, there's this from The Musical Quertery, vol. 61, and there may be something in Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg: His Life, World, and Work, which I don't have. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:10, 5 December 2011 (UTC)