On Mar 15, 2006, at 12:41 PM, Phil Daley wrote:
At 3/15/2006 12:21 PM, Jonathan Smith wrote:
This has always annoyed me.
There is a train of thought that the arranger, in making an
arrangement of a specific work, is doing the composer a big favour by
increasing the performance of the composer's work - especially when
it is for a different medium and then gets recorded or published. But
the arranger is not entitled to any royalty unless the work is out of
copyright.
And how many arrangers are out there?
Good ones? Not as many as one would think.
If you complain about the "legalities" of your arrangement, it seems,
to me, to be simple to get a different arranger.
Perhaps I am missing something?
Hey, one can complain all one likes! If the composer wants to find
someone else, he will, but maybe he will have trouble getting someone
of the calibre necessary to work for low conditions. There is no use in
accepting being screwed. I had addressed this in a previous message a
couple of days ago.
I arrange stuff all the time for the groups that I direct. Probably
illegal arrangements ;-)
Technically, yes, illegal. But in reality (and I have been told this by
several publishers who want me to stop bothering them about peanuts)
they don't care if you are making arrangements for your own use, even
for a recording (permission to arrange is implied when the statutory
mechanical recording licence is paid.) They only will want to get
involved if you are selling or renting the arrangements, or if they are
being performed in a large concert hall, like a symphony pops concert.
Some also don't want your arrangement to take business away from their
existing arrangements (the Gershwin's estate, for example, will NOT
allow any orchestra arrangements of Porgy and Bess other than the
Robert Russell Bennett one.)
We perform them in church, obviously no monetary situation.
Perhaps someone could even tell me if this is legal:
1. I take a Bach chorale and arrange it for a bell choir.
Nope. Bach is public domain. Arrange him all you like. Don't use
someone else's copyrighted arrangement, though, use an original source.
2. I take an SATB choral piece and arrange it for TTBB.
Depends. If the choral piece is under copyright, then technically you
need permission. They probably will not give it if they already have a
TTBB arrangement available, but probably will not care if they DON'T
have a TTBB version available. They might not even care regardless, as
long as you are not taking money out of their pockets.
If the piece is public domain then you are clear (basically, anything
published before 1923 is public domain, along with some other works,
see here for details
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm
Christopher
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