| John Chambers wrote:
|
| > ...it's on page 37. Here it is...
|
| Without intending to be aggressive or confrontational, I'm curious
| about your stance on this, John. It's a modern tune composed by a
| someone who has been dead well short of 70 years; it can be found in a
| currently available printed collection. Do you feel that it's OK to
| publish it?
Hmmm ... Good question. I'd think there are possibly two answers in
this case, which may or may not be similar. From what I know of Tom,
having only met him a couple of times at musical events and not being
anything more than a casual acquaintance, I'd say it's pretty obvious
that he would have approved. It was always clear that he was mainly
motivated by a desire to get as many people involved with the music
as possible.
Thus, in Ringing Strings he says about the tunes "I hope that
fiddlers find something interesting in some of them, and if they get
as much enjoyment from playing the tunes as I have had from composing
them then I will be very happy." Then he adds "Tune up, let's play
and dance." This does seem to be consistent with everything else he
ever said or wrote.
On the other hand, since Tom is gone, his works are now presumably in
the hand of various others who may or may not have this generous sort
of attitude. In particular, publishers often take a less than open
view of people sharing the contents of their publications. There are
many cases of publishers taking a radically different attitude than
their authors. So maybe it would be worthwhile to inquire about who
now owns Tom's tunes, and whether they view the tunes as a source of
income or as Tom's gift to the world.
A bit of checking on the net didn't quickly turn up information about
who now owns the tunes or publications. As near as I can tell, Hand
me Doon the Fiddle is out of print. Ringing Strings is for sale by a
few outlets, and is probably in print, but it's not in the catalog of
the Shetland Times, the publisher of my copy. They do list a book
called "The Tom Anderson Collection" which I'm tempted to order even
without seeing what's in it. I wonder who might have it? Or maybe I
should just order it from the Shetland Times.
One curiosity is that I found a number of references to the Shetland
Musical Heritage Trust, including a comment that they're the current
publishers of Tom's music, but their web site doesn't seem to mention
him anywhere.
I also tried to locate some of the names in Ringing Strings, such as
Robert Innes and Ian Holland, without much luck. Robert was at the
University of Stirling, but they don't list him anywhere, so I
suppose he's moved on.
Anyway, I've sent off a few email messages about Tom's books and
tunes, and maybe I'll get some responses. I've thought for some time
that I'd like to see his tunes, both his compositions and his
collections of trad tunes, online. The latter we could just do, of
course, but we'd want to get permission for the former.
Now that the world's archives are rapidly moving online, a good way
to memorialize Tom's contributions to the music of Shetland and
Scotland would be to make a Tom Anderson site. If his conservators
agree ...
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