Dear Jon, a propos arrangements, you might be interested to look at the recent court case between Hyperion Records (UK) and Dr Sawkins concerning the ownership of musical copyright of a performing edition of Lalande, whose music is out of copyright. The UK Law lords agreed with Dr Sawkins, on appeal, that work involved in creating an arrangement can be sufficient to consider it an 'original' piece of work. Hyperion's URL is www.Hyperion.co.uk but the full transcript of the judgement is also available. regards Charles
-----Original Message----- From: Jon Murphy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 21 July 2005 16:14 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Roman Turovsky Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Byrd RT, I both agree and disagree, which makes me indecisive on the face of it. Nothing is original, and everything is. I just bought the Bunting book facsimile (1840) that transcribes, and arranges for piano forte, the harp music of Ireland - "in order to preserve it". I have some of the same pieces from 1625 as lute tab from other originals. What is an arrangement, and what is a song? For once I am in agreement with you. Scarlatti and Bach did original work in reworking (arranging) earlier works. But if I take the Bunting piano arrangements and return them to harp am I original? I don't think so, but it is a puzzlement. I think we need new words, actually not new words but a different sense of the old words in context. I really enjoy playing the Sarmantica XVI that you lured me to by speaking of parallel fifths (not many in there, but it got me there) as well as other Sarmanticas. So now let us have a test of words, and this isn't directed only to you, it is to the list. I think we agree on arrangements as originals. I take the tab notation of Sarmantica XVI and put it into staff notation for harp (or piano, or whatever). I have transcibed it for another medium, but I've done nothing original. Now I take the voices in the lute piece and separate them a bit, using the fact that the harpist can play more voices than the lutenist can, I'm still not original, but I am arranging the same piece for a different instrument. Yet the arrangement doesn't qualify as an original. Now I include the lute piece into an orchestral score as a theme across the instruments - now I'm original. What is original and what is derivative in music is a difficult decision. I once had a project to put A.E. Housman to music, but only wrote one melody (for Moonlit Sheep). I came up with a unique chord progression that made my melody perfect, then found the same chord progression in the Theme from Exodus (the movie) which was written later. There are only so many ways you can use notes in a melody, and only so many chord progressions - but there are an infinite number of ways to make a song. Therein lies the problem, and the solution. If the sense of the music is the same then it is a transcription (or translation). If the sense is similar, but enhanced with additional instruments then it is an arrangement. If the sense changes then it is original. On the lute the inversions of chords aren't easily available, unless one has the fingers of "rubberman". But on the harp the inversions are easy. So if I change the inversion of the chord the other guy wrote for the piece am I arranging, or just making easy fingering for the same piece. I don't know, and I don't really want to know. Best, Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
