A Work in Progress

I recently created a Wikipedia account and had the experience of editing an article for the first time.

When I was in high school, there was a piece we played in orchestra called the Overture to Waverley by Hector Berlioz. I enjoyed the piece quite a bit (even though the French horn parts were not the most interesting from what I recall). I remembered that our orchestra conductor talked quite a bit about the history of the piece and even on our orchestra’s Facebook page, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Now that I’m in college, I have realized how obscure the pieces I played in my high school orchestra were. I was exposed to a lot of great music, but a lot of it is quite unknown by the masses.

So when I was choosing what article to edit, this Overture came to mind. The Overture to Waverley is combined in an article about the Overtures Berlioz composed. The article seems to be lacking a lot of information, but the part that I thought was most important to add first was the instrumentation for the Overtures. I often use Wikipedia as a preliminary source to find pieces to play or suggest to our orchestra conductor for the orchestra to play. The instrumentation is crucial to figuring out if it makes sense for our ensemble, so it seemed like a no-brainer. It seemed odd that it wasn’t added in, especially since it’s relatively easy to find that instrumentation.

I used IMSLP (International Music Score Lending Project) to look up the scores and figure out the instrumentation for most of the Overtures. In the future, I plan on adding a little more information about the history of the pieces and the rest of the Overtures’ instrumentation.

Though it was my first time editing a Wikipedia article, it wasn’t difficult to figure out how it worked. There are many help pages that explain what the procedure and protocol is. There’s even a specific page for the protocol/procedure for articles on classical music. If I were making more in-depth edits to the article, citations and finding evidence from what I know from music history classes, etc. might have been more challenging.

One aspect that is monitored closely is any kind of analysis. Wikipedia aims to have a very facts-based approach to their articles, so even if something may make sense from analysis in a music theory-type class may not fly with the other contributors. It’s a thin line to walk as well, but I look forward to exploring that further as I edit more articles.