Rental parts are nothing but a means to make life difficult for any conductor who wishes to use them.
This is exactly why I don't publish my works; dealing with publishers and editors and even rentals is something I do not want to be a part of...ever. If people want to buy my works, they simply contact me and I have a set made. They are copyrighted and notarized, so those roads are covered. You should contact Music Theatre International (MTI.com) (a musical rental company) and find out what they charge for a school or professional company. They have a by-month rate for any musical they rent out, which does not include the rights. It's like an insurance company (how many people in the cast, how many seats in your theatre, how many shows are you doing)...and then maybe you can formulate your answer from there. Call them up and ask for their librarian or musicologist; the receptionist people don't like long explanations; they WILL hang up on you (part of the rude population of NYC). Patrick J. M. Sheehan Music Director, Instructor: Woodlawn Arts Academy P. S. Music Host: "The Saturday Night Blues" on 89.5 WNIJ-FM, 9pm - 12am (CST) & WNIJ.org 1-815-973-2317 (m) 1-815-285-4401 (f) patricksheehanmu...@gmail.com -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Wolf [mailto:djw...@online.de] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 5:44 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: [Finale] Somewhat OT: How marked-up can/should rental parts be? 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. Many thanks in advance for your collective advice, Daniel Wolf _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
