The Rambler

A new musicology blog - is it a blog about new musicology, or a musicology blog that is new? Only one way to find out. (Either way, it’s looking very good, and certainly worth your eye-time.)

Wall Street Journal article on declining record sales; a follow-up in the Economist. Meanwhile, this story that DRM hurts online music sales is entirely unrelated…

Still on a copyright tip, Matthew has a round-up of reactions to the US Copyright Royalties Board’s current project to kill web radio; Kyle Gann is essential reading on this score and how it relates to his own Postclassic station. Sick of all this copyright business? Well, me too. As Matthew puts it: “Message from an actual working musician to the industry organizations allegedly working on my behalf: cut it out, will ya? I’m trying to make a living here.”

Sideblog for Ligeti reception nerds (ie, me) - Underworld’s Karl Hyde on Kubrick’s 2001:

This conclusion may be obliquely expressed (I remember thinking ‘what was all that about?’ and having to read the novel to find out) but the mesmerising symphony of sound and vision which constitutes the film’s final act clearly suggest a metaphysical encounter way beyond the realms of rational explanation. Dubbed ‘the ultimate trip’, Kubrick’s psychedelic movie used music by the avant garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti, which Underworld’s Karl Hyde admits profoundly influenced his own work on the music for Boyle’s new film. ‘I’d never heard anything like it,’ says Hyde of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, which sounds for all the world like choirs of alien angels ringing throughout the heavens, investing 2001’s baffling denouement with undeniable overtones of religious ecstasy and unearthly transcendence

Oh, so much to say about this Arizona Star story, spotted by the ever-alert Soho the Dog. Here’s your executive summary:

Alexander Temple Wolkonsky Rachmaninoff Wanamaker is great-great grandson of the composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. The great man is one of very few genuinely bankable names in 20th-century classical music – according to the Star article, Rach has been worth a whopping $50 million in royalties over the last 30 year. He also died back in 1943 and is one of the next generation of major-name composers whose music is shortly to come out of copyright; this combination makes him an interesting test case for issues that will likely begin to rear their heads over the next few years, although rarely with so much moolah at stake.

ATWRW’s plan is to enlist a composer or two to do some gentle reworking of the existing Rach scores; by doing this, he believes he can do just enough to see them into a new copyright term, and keep those royalties coming to the Rachmaninoff name. As he bizarrely puts it:

We’re in the process now of having the music rearranged so that we can re-establish the rights and generations can enjoy it for futures to come.

(Do even children think this claim makes sense?) Matthew and his commentors have already noted the basic awfulness of this story; here’s my take.

First of all, ATWRW’s plan, as described in the Arizona Star, won’t work. The new versions of the Rach scores will exist as new works in their own right; copyright for Rachmaninoff 1.1 will sit with the composer that did the reworking, or with ATWRW himself, depending on how things got contracted. See, for example, that well-known Hyperion case for an example of such a thing in action. The thing is, this won’t make a jot of difference to the original Rachmaninoff 1.0, which will come out of copyright after 75 years just as it was supposed to. Despite such atrocities as Sonny Bono, US copyright law is not actually designed to protect copyright in perpetuity (and nor should it). Incidentally, on the subject of Hyperion, I understand that standards for originality in US courts are higher than in the UK, so the changes would likely have to be more than just touching up a few corrections.

So, following ATWRW’s plan through, publishers and performers would be left with a choice: do they stick to the well-loved original Rach, now available at bargain price, or the still-expensive, musically suspect ‘new’ Rach available from ATWRW? Quite a dilemma, you’ll agree.

Of course, if ATWRW is concerned that so much money is going to the pockets of nasssty publishers like Dover (who, he acknowledges, have “done a marvelous job creating study scores. I don’t know what they would do to improve on Dover”) there is one strategy he could take: follow the lead of the Steinbeck estate and move to recapture the copyright of his great-great-grandfather’s music from the publishers. This tack isn’t mentioned in the Star piece, but if ATWRW wants to make the most of Rach’s royalties, this is something he could do (and it’s about a billion times more achievable than stopping the music moving into the public domain). Of course, by doing this he would lose the good will of the entire music publishing industry, and would be left to self-publish all this music if he wanted to see a penny out of any of it. Not an attractive option.

Incidentally, that Arizona Star article is the usual sort of misleading junk on copyright that one expects from newspapers (you’d have thought professional writers would be a little more clued up than this…), but it does make one interesting, if wrong-headed assumption:

To apply for new copyrights, Wanamaker and his kin will have to rearrange their great-great-grandfather’s works. The changes can be relatively minor, from cleaning up the notations to drafting study scores, which include comments about the music and how it should be played; or all-out re-arrangement that could change the personality of the music.

To some, this could be downright musical heresy. But Wanamaker is quick to note that the rearrangements will be minor.

The assumption is made that the musical community will be up in arms about the forthcoming vandalism-for-profit soon to be perpetuated on Rachmaninoff’s scores. This hasn’t in the main been the case; with the exception of Robin Hill, bloggers and commentors are all appalled first of all by the abuse of copyright law that is perceived to be taking place (Hill empathises with the wish to retain family control, even if this isn’t practicable). Well, as I say, this isn’t going to happen: ATWRW is as free to rework Rach’s music and market it under his own license as you, me, Lionel Sawkins, Alex Ross or Milton Babbitt. Whether any of us will make enough money to make it worth the endavour is our own concern, but nothing’s going to stop people playing original Rachmaninoff for themselves; and when those 75 years are up, not even quadruple-barrelled heirs can stop us doing so for free.

Alex Ross posts the results of his latest research into classical music sales.

From an article in the Charleston Daily Mail:

At Contemporary-classical.com, Adrian Koren plays music that most folks don’t want to hear. But for those who relish exploring the classical works of the past century, Koren’s Web radio station is a godsend.

For just the $300 a year he pays Live365.com for bandwidth and music licensing, the Massachusetts software developer can share his beloved music with people around the world.

For more than three years, Koren has led listeners — a few dozen at a time — to new discoveries, a process repeated tens of thousands of times on Web stations based in bedrooms, basements and attics. But a new ruling from the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board — an arm of the Library of Congress charged with determining how much radio stations must pay artists and record labels for songs they play — threatens to silence many, and perhaps most, webcasters.

Pocket conclusion: Copyright fanatics are killing contemporary classical music.

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William Houston gets carried away, perhaps?

Although I have decided to at least temporarily continue to make my music available, I am entirely finished with the music establishment. No mainstream American music institution will be permitted to perform my work (Not that there’s much chance of it anyway). Why? Because it’s a rigged game and because it’s run by the elite; the same people who profit from dead Iraqi women and children. Some of the same people who stage terror attacks. Am I saying that, for instance, Esa-Pekka Solonen is a terrorist? No, but I am saying he works for terrorists, among others. I don’t want that job.

(via)

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Belinda Reynolds at NewMusicBox:

Perhaps it is time to take matters into our own hands and create something like match.com for facilitating the creation and playing of new music by young players.

Y’all have heard of myspace, right?

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The RIAA is now offering extremely dodgy sounding ’settlement’ deals to students not actually accused of any infringements yet. Ripley has more.
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Glenn Branca offers up his vision of the 2007-08 season for the NY Phil. A highlight of this mouthwatering fantasy:

Wed. 24, Thurs. 25, Sat. 27
DUMITRESCU Au Dela de Movemur
SCELSI Vaxuctum
DUMITRESCU Syllogismes
XENAKIS Jonchaies
FELDMAN Turfan Fragments

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And… wishlisted.

Been something of a manic weekend, so only just getting round to posting about Counterstream Radio, which launched yesterday. The big flagship programme that launched the channel, an interview with Meredith Monk and Björk is available as a listen again stream (not sure for how long), and well worth catching. As an offshoot of the American Music Center the station’s focus is understandably US-based, but that hasn’t stopped them playing Ferneyhough, Shulamit Ran and Thea Musgrave in the last hour.

Anyway, give it a listen. The recent demise of Mixing It at the BBC (and its subsequent reincarnation at Resonance) serves as a useful reminder of how fragile the ‘official’ distribution channels for exploratory music are. This only reinforces how valuable internet stations like Counterstream, Kyle Gann’s Postclassic, WPS1’s Sonorama, as well as podcasts like Scott Unrein’s Nonpop and the Vital Weekly cast, are. Come to think of it, who needs the BBC anyway?

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This week we bid farewell to the following members of the musical community:

:: Peer Raben Film composer
:: Per Skans Musicologist specialising in Soviet composers
:: Dietrich Kessler Viol maker
:: Betty Hutton Star of film musicals
:: Andy Young Brass player
:: Mark Spoelstra Folk singer, songwriter and guitarist
:: Natalie Bodanya Operatic soprano
:: John Beckett Harpsichordist, conductor and radio producer
:: Bill Chinnock Guitarist and keyboardist
:: Kostas Paskalis Oper baritone
:: Brad Delp Boston lead singer
:: Julian Budden Musicologist and broadcaster
:: Thomas Alan Brown Musicologist
:: John Beckett Composer
:: Alan Sievewright Opera impresario
:: Gareth Morris Flautist
:: Ray Minsull Producer and A&R man for Decca
:: Al Viola Guitarist
:: Peggy Gilbert Jazz saxophonist
:: Ian Wallace Prog rock drummer
:: Wally Ridley Record producer and songwriter
:: Jim Aiken Northern Ireland music promoter
:: Billy Thorpe Rock guitarist

Rest in Peace.

Just a quick post to note Martin Anderson’s fine obituary of musicologist Per Skans in today’s Independent. Skans was a leading expert on music in the USSR and a great champion of Moisey Weinberg, a Polish emigrant contemporary of Shostakovich; Skans was near completion of his pioneering book on the composer. I was introduced to Weinberg’s music in a conference lecture by David Fanning only last month, not long after Skans’s death, and it really grabbed me. Not quite the genius of Shostakovich, but not far behind. There is mention in Anderson’s obit of plans to complete the book (he was to be its publisher), and new recordings of Weinberg’s string quartets are due for release later this year. Look out for them.

Or, The Rambler has a Second Mini-gripe at an American Composer in the Same Day.

Michael Gordon’s latest post on The Score, ‘What if I like your politics but don’t like your art?’, seems rather too simplistic to me. Gordon falls into the trap of equating the political with the explicitly political; he then, in a somewhat circular argument, accuses those who make explicitly political music of a dubious anti-intellectualism (”I am suspicious of music that wears its political message on its sleeve. I know in advance that the composer has chosen this idea of immediate acceptance over a more thoughtful and metaphysically deeper experience.”), while at the same time claiming that “There is no way to attach an intellectual meaning to a D-sharp.” Well there is, you just have to think a bit harder about it. Not D-sharps in general, but this particular one, played like this, right here, can be - some would in fact argue always is - politically charged. And as one commentor notes, Gordon’s avoidance of political responsibility in music, “I for one am not convinced that politics and music should mix”, is itself a political stance. It’s not, necessarily, spelt out in his notes (although to some extent it will be) but music, like politics, does live in a “world of tangible ideas and actions” (I mean, how is ’sonata form’ a less tangible idea than ‘freedom’?).

A curious article on music in the New York Sun, which touches on something I’ve been reading/thinking about quite a bit recently. Referring to a recent panel discussion between Aaron Jay Kernis, Joan Tower, Karel Husa and John Corigliano held at the Bruno Walter Auditorium:

Ms. Tower discussed the benefits of composing in America, concluding she “would die in Europe.” She described the European system of cliques and Europe’s rigid requirements of conformity — elements, she pointed out, that formerly existed on this side of the pond.

Ms. Tower, however, may be a bit too close to the subject to realize that she too is part of a rather closed society. In America, it is virtually impossible for someone who is not a part of the academic community to have his or her works taken seriously.

Two brief observations to make here:

1. Could Tower please point to some of ‘Europe’s rigid requirements of conformity’ (a prize to anyone who knows what she’s referring to - mention of a 55 year-old piano duet by the young Boulez doesn’t win you the prize)
2. Apart from Babbitt, how many major American composers are/were totally embedded in the academic community? Cage? Reich? Feldman? Glass? Young? Wolff? Riley? Partch? Nancarrow? Adams? Lucier? … (the list goes on). (Writing this list it did occur that someone like Tenney perhaps might have been considered part of the academic community, but such thoughts do such a disservice to his music as to only further highlight the weakness of the original argument.)

Björn Heile’s excellent article ‘Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism’ (twentieth century music, i/2 (2004), 161-7 is essential reading here.

One for the DRM activists: sign DefectiveByDesign’s Open Letter to Steve Jobs.

From the DBD campaign email:

Last month, Steve Jobs told the world that he thought DRM was dumb and pointless. He pledged to ditch it on the iTunes Music Store, if only the 4 major music labels would let him. He told us that it was up to the consumers to take action, and that there was nothing he could do, his hands were tied, so to speak. Since then the internet has been abuzz with all kinds of theories and ideas about what Jobs was thinking, and the things he could do to show his commitment.

We have drafted an open letter to Steve Jobs asking him to take action and show us that his DRM diatribe represents a pledge that he’ll make good on, and not just a prank to divert attention and criticism from Apple.