The fight for "Public Domain"

Early on in my career I had no problem copying music at will. There was a certain disconnect between the people who created this music, the "big" music publishers and me. Perhaps I had that same feeling about recorded artists, record companies and consumers. The older I've become the less that holds true, in large part due to meeting some of my favorite artists/composers and getting to know more about the system.

I now have a lot of respect for what people create and the idea that they deserve to be paid for what they do. The margin of "profit" for music publishers and composers is razor thin and although the costs add up, the price per piece of music is rather nominal (around $2 per choral octavo per person). I was recently told that for a composer to make a "living" they need to have about 50 pieces currently in print. That may not seem like that much but when we are talking that some of the best composers in history had perhaps four times that number of pieces over a 30 year career it looks a bit different. If you were quite industrious and were able to crank out 10 publishable pieces a year, you'd have to keep that up for five years before you could quit your "day job". Incredible.

All that being said, I do think that once a piece enters the public domain it should stay there. I don't think there is any reason a composer or writers great great grand child should be receiving money for a work created 100 years ago. The tricky part comes when you try to obtain the printed music. A new edition or a more recent plate (for printing) can have a separate copyright which I believe needs to be respected. There are two primary ways around this; to enter the original composition into your own music notation software and publish that on the internet, or to scan the original edition (now in the public domain) and publish that on the internet. The former method is found on the CPDL or the Choral Public Domain Library, a wiki site and the former is found at the IMSLP or the International Music Score Library Project

The highest honor for a choir in the United States is to be invited (via application process) to perform for the national convention of the American Choral Directors Association. This is the best of the best and is usually dominated by choirs in academic settings, particularly college. In the program notes for each piece the composer, publisher and catalog number are cited, like an endorsement of the musical selection.I attended the convention this year in Chicago and it was my third time at an ACDA event; two national and one regional.  This was the first time that I had ever seen program notes which admitted use of scores from the CPDL. To me that seems remarkable that directors would admit to using these scores which are none to be less than scholarly and full of errors but I guess times have changed.

Don't get me wrong though, I think this is one of the best things that could happen for students of music and in a way democratizes access to some of the finest literature. As digital archives improve and user based libraries expand the musical and indeed cultural fabric becomes more rich. I believe that everyone should have access to the worlds best art but I also believe in the artists right to benefit from their creations.

Restoring Copyright to Public Domain Works - Adam Liptak - NYTimes.com