At 3:09 PM -0600 8/26/07, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
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.
But you still wouldn't have, and couldn't have, without permission,
the text, so the logic of what your suggest escapes me. What would
be the point?
John
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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