Daniel Wolf wrote:
I need some collective wisdom from the Finale list about a practical
publishing matter.
The modest publishing cooperative I belong to has recently begun renting
sets of orchestral parts. I'm completely new to this and many of the
trade practices are all very mysterious to me and my conversations with
both publishers and orchestra librarians have been cryptic, at best. I
feel a bit like I've been caught in an eternal cat and mouse game about
who is responsible for what and on what terms. All I wanted to do was
provide a good set of parts at the going rate, but neither a "good set
of parts" nor a "going rate" seems to have a public standard. Pricing,
of course, is kept quite undercover. (One publisher wrote to me that it
would be "illegal" for him to disclose his prices, to which my copyright
attorney of course immediately replied that there was no such law under
any jurisdiction of which he was aware, and that it was simply a trade
practice (what would be illegal, as a restraint in trade, would be a
rate schedule drawn up collectively and secretly by a group of major
publishers); a pair of orchestra librarians replied that they would
love to see tables of rates, although it seems obvious to me that if the
librarians are in communication with one another about this, they ought
to be able to recreate tables themselves and thus assure themselves a
better bargaining position vis a vis the publishers.) But the most
immediate concern is that I just got a set of parts returned from a
major European radio orchestra. They are completely marked-up, with
bowings and much more. Should the orchestra have cleaned them up?
Should I erase all of these marks, or should some of them be kept?
Again, my calls to both publishers and librarians have been less than
helpful.
Yes, the orchestra should have erased all the markings.
However, since many people would use the same bowings, a lot
of people leave them simply so the next people don't have to
reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately it seems that groups who
would use similar bowings seem to leapfrog over groups who
would use different bowings.
As the person controlling the material, only you can decide
if you wish to erase all the marks, or only some of them.
Which ones to leave would require a careful perusal of
whether they make the most musical sense and so would simply
be put back by the next group.
When I was in school we used to rent parts to musicals,
mostly from Tams-Witmark, with dire threats from the music
teachers that we had to erase all our markings before the
parts were handed in or we would be billed extra from
Tams-Witmark. Of course, the first time we looked through
the parts, all the markings the former groups hadn't erased
were still there, so if Tams-Witmark did actually charge the
"unerased parts surcharge" they didn't spend it on having
the parts erased, they simply pocketed it as additional profit.
Librarians can't really get together and come up with tables
of rates because they're never charged the same for the same
piece. So much is based on annual budget size of the
orchestra, size of the concert hall, number of performances,
so it remains as mysterious as airlines' pricing practices
where you may be in a $99 seat while the person next to you
is in a $250 seat for the same flight.
There is no bargaining position for performers when it comes
to renting music -- the copyright monopoly gives the
publishers carte blanche to do what they feel like. The
bargaining position is this "You want to perform this music,
you have to pay us $XXXX."
And the only counter-bargaining position is "Okay, we'll pay
it." Or "We won't pay that, we'll find another musical work
to perform."
And that's what I feel more and more groups should be doing
-- there's a whole world of wonderful music being written
which is just as good as the major-name warhorses which are
locked up with publishers, and performers, when confronted
with exorbitant prices for renting a specific piece should
simply say "No thank you, I'll find something else." If
everybody did that the publishers would have to figure out a
different way of doing business. But far too many
performers want to perform specific works which forces them
to pay whatever the publishers demand. If your orchestra is
hell-bent on performing "Appalachian Spring" there's only
one place to get that music and the publisher is not
restricted by any law from charging whatever it wants. And
you have to pay it if you're going to perform that piece.
--
David H. Bailey
dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com
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