Presenting a Trio of Composers' Websites
This month, we are pleased to announce three Vienna Award winners. All of these sites showcase well-known classical composers, are well written, and are fine examples of sites that meet or even exceed our evaluation criteria.
We will present them in order of the composers' births.
Mozart's Own Website
The first composer on our list is our old friend Wolfgang Mozart. The site, written as though by the composer himself, presents a gallery of images and text illustrating the life and acqaintances of the composer. Also included are various quotations about Mozart, a calendar of major events in his life, and a message board.
The Beethoven Reference Site
A comprehensive site with very detailed information on the life and works of Beethoven. The site includes midi files, mp3's, discussion forum, picture
galleries and much more, including two sections on Vienna.
Aire Puccini
A Spanish language site dedicated to Giacomo Puccini where you can find all kinds of information about this great composer. Included are an image gallery, and sections on the life, works and world of Puccini.
Site Update
Last month we announced another Spanish language award winner, Operacalli. Since that time, the Webmasters of the site have notified me that they are constructing an English language version of their site. Several pages have been completed so far, enough to provide plenty of interesting reading about the history of Opera. So if you hesitated to view the site because you didn't speak the language, you may find it worth a visit.
Honorable Mention
We had another applicant during this period, a site that is well done and would otherwise merit the award, but due to its content (see criterion 1 below) will have to make do with this honorable mention.
Jamming With The Cream Of The Crop is a site dedicated to Bluegrass music. The site is by and about Cotton Ginnee and Windy Mills, and also includes links to pages about many other bluegrass and country music legends.
I just couldn't see how the subject matter (bluegrass and country music)could be reconciled with our content criterion (classical music and Vienna) but if the owners of the site or any of our Vienna members would like to present some convincing argument to the contrary I'd be happy to reconsider. It's an interesting site.
Some further thoughts on the Vienna Award criteria
In the process of evaluating a Website for the Vienna Award, I do not award a grade for the excellence of its content, design, or artistic merit. I do not say, "This site is better than that one," or, even worse, "This site is really awful."
I do not see myself as an art critic, or really, as a critic of any sort. As the evaluator for the award, I merely apply a set of conditions, predefined, by which the eligibility of a site can be judged.
In instances where I choose to voice an opinion as to the quality, appeal, or interest of a site, it must be remembered that it is just my opinion after all.
(Of course, if someone is foolish enough to ask me to critique a site, I'm usually foolish enough to do it, but I keep my opinion between us, and don't publish it for the world to see. And I do this as a totally different excercise than performing an evaluation for the award.)
Nevertheless, due to the fact that it is also my task to refine the evaluation conditions or criteria, it is not totally possible to separate my personal tastes and opinions from the award process.
This being said, here are a few observations on our criteria as are presently applied:
- Content - first and foremost, the content of a site, its subject matter, must in some way relate to one or more of these themes:
- "Classical" music, as popularly interpreted to mean art music, music of a scholarly or intellectual nature, or music of past eras that has withstood the test of time.
- Classical music, as narrowly defined as that music, generally written for the diversion of the aristocracy or the use of the church, from that period represented by the Viennese Classics: Haydn, Mozart, and the earlier works of Beethoven and Schubert. (The Classical Period, approx. 1750-1820)
- Opera and other types of musical theater, ballet and theatrical dance whose music falls into the above categories.
- Descriptions, essays, and histories of life, lifestyles, and persons associated with the musical Classical Period.
- Descriptions, essays, and histories of life, lifestyles, and persons associated with the city of Vienna, Austria, especially Classical Vienna.
Furthermore, the site must be suitable for family viewing, containing no sexually explicit, socially or racially offensive, or otherwise unsuitable content, or links to sites having content of this nature.
- Design - the site must be easily navigable, with most if not all of its pages linked in a clearly understandable way. No links should exist to non-existing pages; if a link exists to a planned but unfinished page a temporary "stub" page with an "under construction" or "coming soon" message and a return link should be presented or the link should be hidden (with remark tags) or removed. A link to another page within the site that produces a "404 - Not Found" error will not be acceptable.
The site must be without visible errors, that is to say, no HTML errors should exist that degrade the appearance of the pages, such as missing closing tags, etc. While I often view the source code of applicants' pages, I do not exhaustively examine the code; errors may exist that do not affect the appearance, although the author should strive to construct valid HTML.
Links to images must be operable also, although some leniency will be given here. Page background colors should be chosen similar to the predominant color of background images, if used. Missing backgrounds should not make the text unreadable.
Links to media, such as MIDI, Wave, Real Audio, and movie/animation files should be operable also, but in consideration of the fact that these files are often stored on different servers than the HTML pages, if it appears that the non-appearance is due to server or host programming problems it will not otherwise affect the evaluation.
Links to external pages or sites must be at least 85% operable. It is understood that a site owner cannot guarantee the availablity of another site, but an effort should be made to provide only working links.
- Presentation - pages' appearance should be pleasant, colors and fonts chosen to enhance the content of the page. Page layouts should be designed such that the page looks attractive at any screen resolution setting, it should not be necessary to scroll sideways in order to read the text. Frames and tables, if used, should work properly. This criterion is by necessity more subjective than the others, therefore I am prepared to allow more leniency in this respect, but simple sloppiness will not be tolerated.
I invite discussion amongst the Vienna virtual community regarding these criteria. Those members wishing to suggest changes, alternatives, or additions to these criteria are invited to discuss them with Flori, the new caretaker, by e-mail, or by post at the Vienna Residents Group club.
