Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
Back in my cute-but-dumb days, I set several "forbidden" texts, and the
compositions are now not publishable or even performable (technically,
anyway). Good pieces, too.
It seems to me that there is a creative way around this, though finding
a publisher might be a challenge. I conceived of this scheme in
reference to strophic texts, inspired by 19th century U.S. hymnals,
where it was quite common to include words with no music, the
accompanist being obliged to supply the music from a tune book, which
contained mostly lyrics, but few words. I note that hymns are almost all
strophic, and that the scheme I describe may not work as well for texts
in other forms.
Now, since copyright prevents is your making a copy of the covered
material without permission, don't include most of the words of the text
of the copyright material in your setting. Rather, you music everything
else that would be in the printed score: notes, performance directions,
tempi, dynamics, &c. Where the lyric would customarily be printed,
include only the punctuation, and perhaps the occasional word or short
phrase from the intended text, as these are explicitly not
copyrightable. You could apparently link your music to the text by
giving it the same title as the text which inspired it, as titles are
not copyrightable in the U.S.
ns
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