Welcome to WikiProject Composers! This WikiProject was formed to better organize information in articles related to composers, primarily those of art music. Rather than try to force information to appear in a uniform way, this WikiProject aims to present what information is available in the best way possible. The project provides a place to discuss various ways to accomplish this. These recommendations on the Composers project are based on various Wikipedia style guides and common practices in articles. Use your own judgement in applying these guidelines and all Wikipedia guidelines to composer articles and be bold.
WikiProject Composers is an independent WikiProject, listed under Music. It was started by Sketchee, Antandrus and Mindspillage on 1 January 2005. As of 27 October 2026, there are 20,490 pages within the scope of the project. Previously, there were 13,718 on 25 July 2021; 7,521 on 28 December 2011; 4,953 on 15 November 2009; and 3,987 on 19 June 2008.
These articles have been accepted as good articles: they may be helpful examples, but generally the featured articles above should be referred to first
How you can help depends on your time, resources and interest. Here are a variety of ideas for contributions ranging from simple to complex:
Identify underdeveloped composer pages and place a link on the /Composers project subpage.
Ask questions about a composer here as well as on the composers' own talk page to alert everyone involved in the project in that page. Not everyone may have that composer on their watchlist.
Ask general questions on the project talk page which may apply to various composers.
Correct links to a composer and find other appropriate articles which should link to them.
Make a note on the talk page if a composer appears anywhere as red link. (Someone is mentioned as notable, yet doesn't have an article!)
Find appropriate external links and see also categories for composer articles that are missing this information.
Identify information included in other articles which also should be on the composers page and incorporate that information on the composers' page
Identify information included on the composers' page which should also be included in other articles
Suggest possible resources which can be used for the project. (Books, websites, etc.)
Proofread composer pages for errors or fact discrepancies between other articles.
Look for "peacock terms" (such as "most important" or "greatest ever" without supporting evidence) in composer articles and rewrite the sentences to better present the information if possible. (Sometimes these may be unavoidable, but check to make sure that they are NPOV within context.)
Contact recording companies and publishers to gain permission to use sound excerpts score images, preferably after consultation with other contributors on the discussion page.
Check that composers are in the correct category/ies and change them as needed.
Create appropriate interwiki links to articles. You might use "What links here" to make sure that things that you'd expect to link to a composer does so.
Create a link to this project from talk pages of existing articles listed /Composers and/or other articles within the scope of the project. Ask the articles' editors for input on the project to see if they would like to implement any of the ideas here on the article themselves.
Tag unverified pages with {{Unreferenced}}, {{refimprove}}, {{primarysources}} as applicable. This alerts editors specifically looking to improve references and citations on Wikipedia..
The introductory paragraph/statement should contain the name of the composer in bold followed by the date of the composer's birth and also death if applicable. If the exact date (e.g. 16 January 1863) is not known, use the closest verifiable approximation (e.g., 19th century, 1863, January 1863). Briefly summarize why the person is important, by concisely summarizing the information discussed in the article. Therefore, unless the exact place of birth is essential information, it should be included in the biographical section or paragraph instead. Brief information on the composer's stylistic location in relation to his or her contemporaries, and in historical terms, would be helpful to many readers. If the person is notable, however, as a Hungarian nationalist or conductor for a particular organization that should be here.
For example: "John Doe (1863–1910) was a romantic composer who wrote much of the common repertoire for the clarinet still performed today."
The last sentence of the first paragraph may be a summary statement of the importance of the composer – i.e. in the same position as the standard thesis statement of an essay.
"Filetovich Sanovich (16xx–17xx) was a Russian composer and kazoo player of the late Baroque era. He was the most famous exponent of the newly developed Orthodox Kazoo concerto, and championed virtuoso kazoo playing in Russia as well as western Europe."
Here is sample of possible sections which can be used on a composers page. Which categories apply to any one composer is dependent on the information available and what is considered as pertinent to the individual composer. Variations of these headings can be used to better describe what topics are outlined within that section. In most cases a heading is only appropriate if there is more than one paragraph of that type of information. (So don't have a header for everything here when there is only a sentence about each.:) )
==Biography/Life/Life and career==
==Music/Works==
==Legacy/Influence/Reception==
==See also== (Links to related Wikipedia articles that are not able to fit in the text; see details at MOS:SEEALSO.)
Contributors may wish to consider covering the following points in composer articles. Of course, the needs of every article are different, so this is only a "shell", a template that needs to be adapted for each article. Some of this information may be useful at the opening, but in not much detail; most of it should probably be located in a separate section on style.
State, in broad, non-technical terms, some attributes of the composer's style; briefly position the composer in terms of the broad history of the genre.
State the style and/or school of composition in which the composer might be located.
Explain whose music influenced the composer, and in what ways.
Describe the composer's style in more technical terms, both in relation to other composers of the period, and in terms of the evolution of the style during his/her lifetime.
State whose music the composer, in turn, influenced.
The names of works, and other terms, not in English, should be marked up with the {{lang}} template, using the appropriate two-letter language code; for example: {{lang|de|Von heute auf morgen}}, or {{lang|de|[[Von heute auf morgen]]}} when used as a link.
Images of collectibles (coins, banknotes, postage stamps, souvenirs and similar items) in music articles should meet the following conditions:
Images should be free of copyright, or have a valid fair use rationale that satisfies WP:NFCC, specifically 'Criteria 8' (Significance): "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding."
Inclusion should contribute to information about the subject of the article, not be used to obtain credibility and value for the collectible by associating it with the subject.
The information should be of interest to the average reader of the music article. It should not be trivia.
Coins, notes, stamps etc. in general circulation are more likely to meet these criteria than 'commemorative' issues.
Trivia
Anecdotes, influences on pop culture, and other peripheral content or "trivia", should only be included in composers' articles if they are likely to be of interest to a typical reader of the article. Examples of content which almost always fail this test are: songs, albums, video games, TV shows, or movies that reference the music.
The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.
Many members of this project think that Infoboxes are seldom useful additions to articles for many reasons, including:
They often give trivia undue emphasis and prominence at the head of the article
They tend to become redundant (by duplicating the lead)
They can, conversely, become over-complex and thus vague, confused, or misleading, often compounding errors found elsewhere in the article, e.g. by confusing style and genre, setting forth haphazard lists of individual works, or highlighting the subject's trivial secondary or non-musical occupations.
Templates
Stub templates
Any article which falls under the scope of WikiProject Composers should be tagged as such by adding the following on the talk page: {{WikiProject Composers}}. A category containing all articles with this banner on its talk page can be found here.
Identify yourself as a participant by adding the following to your user page: {{tl|User WPComposers}} (To identify yourself without using the userbox, add this to the bottom of your user page: [[Category:WikiProject Composers Participants|{{PAGENAME}}]])
