Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
I have heard on the rumor mill, that a certain Bach scholar is pretty much in charge to the Bach library that was discovered in the Ukraine, and is VERY restrictive about who sees what. Which if true, I find rather sad and odd considering the music was unavailable for so long.
I wonder how much longer this practice can be sustained on scholarly grounds. While a courtesy extension of the rights to first edition and performance to the scholar who discovers a work is in order, there have now been several examples in other fields of raw data being made widely available (i.e. placed online) leading to a timely, thorough, healthy, and public investigation, with access to more and more diverse expertise. This is particularly useful in questions of authenticity or provenance. A well-known example is the set of alleged G.W. Bush military documents; the initial investigators were convinced by the accuracy of the contents of the documents, while subsequent analysis — much of it online — lead to serious questions about the physical materials. A very valuable counter-example is the long delay in publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, unfortunate both for the scholarly discord, indeed paranoia, which has resulted and for the lack of public access to documents important to the history of religions shared by a huge number of people.
In the case of public domain works by well-known composers, if the works are of any artistic merit, it is very hard to argue for any delay or restriction in publication of source materials, and an argument against more open access to the raw data should be equally difficult. I could well imagine that if the scanned Ukrainian library were place online, the musicological community would be immediately enriched by the liveliness and thoroughness of the public discussion, and the musical community in general need not suffer any arbitrary delay in access to works belonging to a common heritage. Such a delay only adds insult to the injury that has kept such works hidden.
Daniel Wolf _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
