Opus Clavicembalisticum

[bernhard]

Another example is drugs. It costs about $1Billion of get a drug to the market. Producing the tablets themselves costs only a fraction of a penny, but obviously, one would not sell them for that little.

And let us not forget the cost of compensations claims when the drug effects happen to be worse than the disease it is supposed to cure. Thalidomide comes to mind, but today in the news Merck was bracing itself against their fiasco with their anti-arthritis drug.

[prometheus]

Uuh, the drug industry is the most dirty part of whole capitalism.  Things like AIDS and the US health care, mass prozac and ritalin for children. copyrighting genes, it doesn't get much worse...

[xvimbi]

Uuh, the drug industry is the most dirty part of whole capitalism.  Things like AIDS and the US health care, mass prozac and ritalin for children. copyrighting genes, it doesn't get much worse...

Finally, something we both agree on 

[JCarey]

Welcome, Alistair, to Piano Street -

First, I must admit that I too have downloaded this music illegally. Do realize, however, that I had no idea about copyright laws when I did so, as it had not previously been a concern of mine. I thought that when a composer died, one could automatically trade their music online for free. As it turned out, I was quite wrong.

For the people who want a glimpse of what the music looks like, I have offered them a free and legal opportunity to do so, with this "blog" that I have created myself, with some snippets of the first two movements - https://www.opusclavicembalisticum.blogspot.com.

I encourage everyone to give people that link when they ask for the sheetmusic. That way, you aren't breaking any laws, Alistair isn't losing money, and they may be interested enough to purchase the sheetmusic if they want to.

Regards,
John Carey

[ahinton]

Welcome, Alistair, to Piano Street -

First, I must admit myself that I too have downloaded this music illegally. Do realize, however, that I had no idea about copyright laws when I did so, as it had not previously been a concern of mine. I thought that when a composer died, one could automatically trade their music online for free. As it turned out, I was quite wrong.

For the people who want a glimpse of what the music looks like, I have offered them a free and legal opportunity to do so, with this "blog" that I have created myself, with some snippets of the first two movements - https://www.opusclavicembalisticum.blogspot.com.

I encourage everyone to give people that link when they ask for the sheetmusic. That way, you aren't breaking any laws, Alistair isn't losing money, and they may be interested enough to purchase the sheetmusic if they want to.

Regards,
John Carey

Thank you very much for your kind welcome. The posting of samples such as these is, from our standpoint, most helpful and constructive; it gives potentially interested people an opportunity, for free, to have a look at brief extracts from what in this instance is a mammoth work, in order to give some idea of what may be found within it. The excellent Swedish pianist Fredrik Ullén has done the same with extracts from Sorabji's 100 Transcendantal Studies, with sound clips of his playing of them, although these do not include any complete study. Fredrik asked for our permission to do this; you, John, didn't, as it happens, but this really doesn't matter to us at all, because we are very happy that both you and Fredrik have taken the trouble to do this in the interests of tempting people to want to find out more.

In the right hands, this music can be awesomely powerful, profoundly moving, electrifying and all manner of other things. We thoroughly support this kind of activity in putting up brief extracts of Sorabji's scores for the purpose of interesting people in them; we are pleased to think that anyone would want to do this. This is a classic example of how the internet can really be used to help where even the public or academic library may be less able to do so with anything like the same immediacy.

I guess that these represent a cyberspatial equivalent to the amuse-bouche...

Once again, many thanks.

Best regards,

Alistair

[JCarey]

You are quite welcome, Alistair. Hopefully this will keep those who are interested in seeing the music from trading it illegally.

BR, John Carey

[iumonito]

1.  The well tempered clavier was written and diseminated without the expectation of copyright protection.  The first copyrighted edition of the well tempered clavier came about 200 years after its composition.  You would not seriously contend that the motivation of a Tony Newman or the likes of him of making a new edition lies remotely in the financial incentives copyright creates.

2.  OC is largely unknown outside of select circles.  Cheaper disemination of the available sources would serve this music rather than discourage further effort in learning it and enjoing it.  When Powell records it, I believe this music will have the type of resurgence that the Godowsky Studies achieved with Hamelin's recording.  (Mr. Powell, please don't be so picky, record it now so we get a taste of it and you can record it again if you get to a point when your inner Dinu Lipatti is finaly satisfied).  Along the same lines, disemination of the score at cost of distribution (which in pdf format is virtually 0) would be a very nice thing indeed.  Alistair, every now and then you guys should at least talk about what would happen if you just posted the work on your website.

3.  Hopefully someone is working on a clean edition of the work (Powell sounds like a good candidate to partake in the effort).  Once that is done, I would be surprised if the free disemination of the "working copy" would not act as a marketing anchor for the good edition.  After all, who would not prefer to replace their clumsy printed out copy o fthe working copy with the neat and clean and easy to read paperback edition of it?  (A note here: less is more, use typeset like Henle's, with the big notes and lots of space so the music is not cramed like in an old Breitkopf book).

Think of it as Internet Explorer.  It is given for free for a reason.

Cheers,
H

[ahinton]

1.  The well tempered clavier was written and diseminated without the expectation of copyright protection.  The first copyrighted edition of the well tempered clavier came about 200 years after its composition.  You would not seriously contend that the motivation of a Tony Newman or the likes of him of making a new edition lies remotely in the financial incentives copyright creates.
I am aware the first of these facts, of course. Indeed I would agree with you that music score editors do not their work for the sake of financial gain and it must in any case be borne in mind that, when such an editor edits a copyright work (as distinct from public domain ones such as those of Bach), that gain may be little or nothing in any case, especially as the existence of a new edition (which is the copyright of the editor) does not reduce or otherwise affect the copyright status of the edited work itself.

2.  OC is largely unknown outside of select circles.  Cheaper disemination of the available sources would serve this music rather than discourage further effort in learning it and enjoing it.  When Powell records it, I believe this music will have the type of resurgence that the Godowsky Studies achieved with Hamelin's recording.
OC is not quite as little known as you appear to imply. It has for many years been Sorabji's best-known and most discussed work (and I'm not talking mere Guinness Book of Records stuff here); in the past quarter century or so it has been recorded three times, received at least two private and fourteen public performances in its entirety as well as at least 20 further partial performances,in the hands of five pianists in at least a dozen countries and has been broadcast in part or in its entirety on a number of occasions in at least as many countries. All that said, of course, we are obviously not talking about music as universally known as Bach, Beethoven and Chopin. Whilst I am quite sure that Mr Powell's recording, once it has been made and released, will do nothing but favours for the reputation of the work (just as his performances have already done), it must be recognised - as indeed Mr Powell himelf and others already do - that he will not exactly be rescuing it from complete obscurity. You cite Hamelin's Chopin/Godowsky Studies CDs as an example; again, do bear in mind that his is (chronologically) the third of four complete recordings of this magnificent cycle to date and, whilst I will refrain from any comment about the first such recording (which has in any case been unavailable for quite some time now), Grante's recorded account began to appear several years before Hamelin's did. This is not to undermine - or indeed offer any other kind of value judgement on - Hamelin's recording but to put your example into historical perspective.

(Mr. Powell, please don't be so picky, record it now so we get a taste of it and you can record it again if you get to a point when your inner Dinu Lipatti is finaly satisfied).
Whilst I am sure you do not seek to insult Mr Powell by writing this, it must be said that Mr Powell's stance vis-à-vis recording OC is perfectly understandable and sensible and accordingly deserves due respect, coming as it does from an artist who knows exactly what he's talking about and what he will be taking on. He wants his performance to mature a little more before committing it to disc and, inevitably, this would involve rather more time and public airings than would be the case with some of the shorter Sorabji works that he has already recorded.

Along the same lines, disemination of the score at cost of distribution (which in pdf format is virtually 0) would be a very nice thing indeed.  Alistair, every now and then you guys should at least talk about what would happen if you just posted the work on your website.
Yes, it would be very nice, of course - for the recipients! Why, however, should you assume (as you do here) that we have not already given ample consideration to this and other like matters and discussed them with colleagues?

Now I must without further ado apologise in advance for the possible risk of boring people who have already read the kind of thing I am about to repeat for your personal benefit in direct response to your comments here which appear to suggest that you have either not read - or have read only selectively - what I and others have written on this and allied subjects on this and other fora in the recent past.

You single out OC in what you write here, but I imagine that you would not expect that it should have special treatment because it happens to be OC; I imagine that you assume that we should make all of our material available in this format free of charge to the recipient. If this is the case, we would be talking about some 13,000 pages of music, 1,300 pages of published literary writings, hundreds of pages of correspondence, programmes, etc. When we began our work, our purpose was - as indeed it remains - to make all of Sorabji's output available; in those days, there was no alternative format to paper copies as has become the case since. In order to achieve this, we therefore had to source and make master-copies of all the mss. and out-of-print publication scores as well as all the articles, reviews and "letters-to-the-editor" that Sorabji published in various journals. Quite a few of the ms. scores were elaborately bound volumes which had to be taken apart by a specialist bookbinder, photocopied and then reassembled by the said bookbinder. We then had to paginate some of the master-copy scores. After the literary writings had been collected and copied, they had to be indexed. All of this cost not only thousands of hours of work over several years but also tens of thousands of pounds in fees, equipment, filing and storage facility, etc. Add to these costs the interest on that financial outlay and you will hopefully be in a better position to see why distributing free of charge is out of the question. Were we even to consider doing this, we would have to outlay yet more funds for equipment and invest yet more time in scanning all of this material. Furthermore, the "free of charge to the user" element is in any case questionable. Most people print their .pdf files on A4 size paper (or the near equivalent thereto in US); this is OK for new typeset editions of Sorabji for study purposes but not for performance purposes but it is of little use for any purpose in the cases of those works which so far exist only in ms. form (and there remain quite a few such). This means that, in many cases, the end user would need an A3 (or US near equivalent) printer and paper of the same size; these are considerably more expensive everywhere than their A4 or equivalent counterparts. We do not know your location, but it should be borne in mind that paper and equipment costs in US are in general much less than half those in UK where we are based, which is why some people in US (especially in recent times when the relationship between the US$ and GB£ has not been in the former's favour) occasionally blanch at our advertised prices. This is why we are at pains to point out that, whilst .pdf file distribution is itself very inexpensive, as you rightly observe, the material would not even have been available to scan had we not initially invested the funds that we did. Had we set up The Sorabji Archive as we did and then offered everything for free, we would very likely have gone out of business even before the scan facility became available and then no one would have been able to obtain any of his music at all; we do not imagine that you would welcome such a scenario.

3.  Hopefully someone is working on a clean edition of the work (Powell sounds like a good candidate to partake in the effort).  Once that is done, I would be surprised if the free disemination of the "working copy" would not act as a marketing anchor for the good edition.  After all, who would not prefer to replace their clumsy printed out copy o fthe working copy with the neat and clean and easy to read paperback edition of it?  (A note here: less is more, use typeset like Henle's, with the big notes and lots of space so the music is not cramed like in an old Breitkopf book).
Again, you have not read all that has already been written here. Sadly no one is yet doing this and, whilst anyone who knows Mr Powell's splendid work would agree that he would indeed be a "good candidate", he has other things to do; he has a pianistic career to develop and he is also a composer and musicologist. He has indeed already made several fine editions of shorter Sorabji works. The point at issue here is that Mr Powell's own copy of the OC score - in which he has made many emendations and also re-input quite a few pages using less staves per system than in the publication - whilst not absolutely perfect in every detail, has enabled him to prepare and give by far the most textually accurate performances of the work to date. There are other Sorabji editors - Alexander Abercrombie and Simon Abrahams, to mention the most seasoned and experienced ones - who would likewise be eminently qualified to do accomplish this task, yet they prefer to edit Sorabji scores which have previously existed only in ms. form; this is clearly a sensible choice for the time being.

I am quite sure that we can already leave it to the experienced Sorabji editors to preent the fruits of their labours in a form that looks excellent.

When you contend that you
"would be surprised if the free disemination of the "working copy" would not act as a marketing anchor for the good edition"
and you ask
"who would not prefer to replace their clumsy printed out copy o fthe working copy with the neat and clean and easy to read paperback edition of it?"
you raise a valid point; however, our experience over almost two decades suggests that it does not in fact stand up to reality. We find - unsurprisingly - that once a new edition of a Sorabji scres becomes available, very few people wish thereafter to purchase copies of its ms.; however, we also find that, when people have purchased copies of mss. while they are available only in that form, they rarely come back to us to purchase new editions fo those works when they become available. This could change in time, one may suppose - and we admit to having refrained from putting your idea to the test per se - but historical precedent has certainly implied so far that your idea would rarely if ever work in the way you believe it might.

Think of it as Internet Explorer.  It is given for free for a reason.
Oh, is it, now?! On its own, is it? Not as part of anything else? Well, forgive me for saying so, but I do perceive that there is in any event a slight discrepancy between what Mr Gates can afford to "give away" and what The Sorabji Archive can; I'll leave it to you to try to work out what that may be...

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Sorry again, everyone! I'll get the hang of how properly to use this multiple quotation facility eventually (I hope)...

Best,

Alistair

[iumonito]

Very thoughtful, as usual.  Thanks.

I do single out the OC, because I find it to be a flagship of Sorabji's work (which you naturally know much better than I do).

No offense intended to Mr. Powell.  We all are entitled to our opinion and it is his prerogative to wait, or not record it at all.  My understanding is that his performance is the very best ever as it is, and I think it would be a shame if it was not captured.  Hopefully there are at least recordings or a video of his public performances, so at least they are preserved.

I can't imagine you get a lot of revenue from selling copies of the OC (hopefully I am wrong).  You may be able to get more in voluntary donations from people who download the pdf.  I am glad to hear you guys bounce ideas about how to diseminate and promote this music.  Thank you for your dedication.

Lighhearted cheers,
H