[Charles Small:]
> Your post reminded me of it, being the "reductio ad absurdem" of the line you
were
>following: if stealing a phrase of 4 notes (three Gs followed by the Eb a third
>below, say...) is infringement of copyright, how about "stealing" a single
note?
I wasn't really advocating the "reductio ad absurdum" argument myself, so
much as using it to illustrate a valid issue: namely, just how extensive does a
quotation have to be to actually count as a quotation?
Clearly quoting an entire melody would be an infringement against either
the law or acceptable artistic standards of how much you can legitimately quote
something; and equally clearly a single note couldn't possibly count. Yet all
degrees in between those extremes are possible. So how do you decide where the
limit is? (I'm talking about unacknowledged and purportedly unintended quotes,
not cases where a quote is used intentionally and presumably with permission.)
Any set number of notes over which it counts as a quote would obviously be
arbitrary - so perhaps you need some criterion other than that to decide it,
which can be based on common sense or logic in some way that intuitively seems
right.
As an artistic matter, having such rules might seem a bit cut and dried -
especially when you consider the fact that composers often borrow whole themes
to base music on, quite openly, without trying to represent the quoted material
as their own work. But from a legal point of view, in connection with copyright
violation, it might be more important to be able to be clear when something is a
quotation and when it is not (assuming that you don't have permission to quote
it, or don't want to explicitly claim you are quoting it). If, while composing
a piece, I thought I was at risk of unintentionally quoting something I wasn't
allowed to, I would feel a bit better if I could at least have some way of
telling whether I was safe or not.
This might arise if a melodic snippet occurred spontaneously to me, and it
seemed rather good - but it came rather too easily, and I had a nagging
suspicion (which I couldn't verify) that just *possibly* I might have
unconsciously copied it from somewhere.
This actually happened to me some years ago: about three bars of melody,
fully harmonized in a tonal but slightly unusual way, seemed to come into my
mind, and I wrote it down with a view to possibly using it some time. But I
couldn't quite rid myself of the idea that maybe it wasn't entirely my idea -
however, try as I might, I couldn't think of anything like my idea. But I
didn't feel like using the idea while I even had any doubt about it.
Many years later, I happened to look at my copy of Sibelius's 4th Symphony
in A minor; and, to my astonishment, I found a theme buried somewhere inside the
first movement that was quite similar to my idea - and I didn't even think I
knew Sibelius's 4th, and certainly hadn't heard it for I don't know how many
years. To be sure, Sibelius's version was in 3/4, whereas mine was in 2/4; and
the keys were different, and mine was actually harmonized rather more
elaborately, with the melody doubled in major 3rds whereas Sibelius's version
wasn't - but the resemblance was unmistakeable, in spite of these differences.
Fortunately I had never used the idea - but I realized that if I had done
so, and especially if I had worked it right through the texture of an extensive
passage of music, I would have been faced with an awkward decision: do I just
let the possible quotation stand - or do I throw away a lot of music which uses
that theme (or derivations or developments of it)? An alternative might be to
keep the passage, but change it in such a way as both to keep the integrity of
my idea as I conceived it, and to make it less similar to Sibelius.
Possibly I would have left it intact, since the similarity lasted only
about 3 bars, and the melodic shape was not identical anyway. I doubt whether
it would have counted legally as a quotation; but artistically it might, and I
didn't want my idea to be perceived as a quotation at all.
But it kind of gave me a shock to realize just how easy it is to
unintentionally steal ideas. And I am a bit purist about this, and never
knowingly quote anything at all in any music I've ever composed.
Regards,
Michael Edwards.
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