Posted on 10-10-2002
Click
to Download Scores by New American Composers
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI, NYT 9 Oct02 (Photo shows Richard Kessler,
director of
the American Music Center)
In March 1939 Aaron Copland convened a meeting of activist New
York
composers at his studio on West 63rd Street in Manhattan to
discuss
challenges facing American music and strategize. Like his colleagues
at
that gathering (Otto Luening, Harrison Kerr, Marion Bauer, Quincy
Porter
and Howard Hanson), Copland believed that after decades of struggle,
American music was finally overcoming the widespread assumption
that
composers of concert music by definition must be European. Publishers
and
recording companies had at long last begun to take on American
composers.
Still, composers had trouble bringing their music to wider attention,
or
getting scores, recordings and information to one another.
What came out of that meeting was the founding of the American
Music
Center, an organization to aid in the distribution of music
and serve as an
information clearinghouse. When the center opened an office
on West 42nd
Street later that year, it quickly became a command post and
drop-in site.
In 1990 the center moved to airy offices on West 26th Street.
In the last
few years the kind of networking the center was founded for
has been
shifting to its Web site (amc.net), which includes an online
magazine
called New Music Box.
This afternoon the American Music Center takes a bold leap into
the
Internet future when it formally introduces New Music Jukebox
(newmusicjukebox.org) in a briefing at Avery Fisher Hall. This
free site
promises to be a powerful Web portal for contemporary American
music and
the composers who create it, as well as performers, professionals
in the
larger field and the musically curious. New Music Jukebox offers
a 24-hour
"virtual" listening room with streaming and downloadable sound
files, as
well as extensive composer biographies, works lists, publishers,
performance data and other information, all cross-referenced.
If things go
well, browsing through New Music Jukebox may give today's online
users some
sense of what it was like to hang out at the center's bustling,
ramshackle
office some 60 years ago, to talk shop and trade scores with
other people
in the field.
But legal thickets could slow down the process. Besides using
sound files
from commercial recordings, which are protected by copyright,
New Music
Jukebox will also include scores online, either excerpted or
complete,
which users will be able to view and in many cases print out
or download
for free. To date, printed scores have been strictly protected;
photocopying them is illegal. In order to include scores online,
the
American Music Center has been engaged in case-by-case negotiations
with
composers, publishers and record producers. Their success could
represent a
breakthrough in copyright law.
With the rising costs of printing and with fewer houses taking
on fewer
composers, the system of distributing and promoting new works
has
languished. Composers have increasingly turned to self-publishing.
The
Internet offers an alternative way to distribute scores, yet
there are
legal complications, as Richard Kessler, 43, the center's executive
director since 1997, acknowledges. "At its core, New Music Jukebox
is based
on the idea that everyone is struggling with in the music field,
namely,
that technology provides access to information and music in
ways we have
never experienced before," Mr. Kessler said in a recent interview.
"But
that great potential is being wrestled to the ground by
intellectual-property-rights issues." Comparable wrestling matches
are
going on in all fields that involve the exchange of creative
work and
information, notably pop music, which was made clear by the
legal ruckus
provoked free file-sharing Web sites.
Mr. Kessler, an accomplished trombonist and a firebrand on behalf
of
contemporary American music, and his colleagues at the center
have proven
better at bringing about cooperation between publishers, recording
companies and composers. Paradoxically, because the field of
contemporary
classical music involves vastly fewer people, products and dollars,
they
had an advantage of sorts. Still, their success may serve as
a model to
other fields of how to bridge conflicting interests. In every
case
involving the inclusion of a score on Jukebox, Mr. Kessler said,
"the
copyright holder determines how people will access it." A particular
composer or publisher might only want the score listed as a
bibliographical
entry with information on how to obtain it, as well as listings
of past
performances and reviews. Some scores will be available only
in excerpted
form, as an inducement for later purchase. But other scores,
especially
shorter works, will be available complete. For larger chamber
works,
interested users must still rent individual parts to perform
them, and pay
appropriate fees to Ascap and B.M.I. (Broadcast Music Inc.),
the
organizations that regulate the performances and broadcast of
music.
Still, isn't New Music Jukebox inviting trouble by posting manuscripts
on
the Web? "We're not that worried," Mr. Kessler said. In many
cases scores
are posted in nonperformable formats. For example, a chamber
work for eight
instruments might appear only in a miniature-size full score.
To perform
the work, individual parts would still have to be rented. Some
scores, a
solo piano work, for example, could be downloaded in usable
formats. But
Mr. Kessler said: "Are musicians who are going to the trouble
of performing
these works in concert likely to avoid the royalty process?
We don't think
so." Besides, as all parties to the negotiations acknowledge,
no one in
classical music makes much money from the sales of printed scores.
Even a
score by a living master like Elliott Carter, who is published
by Boosey &
Hawkes, rarely exceeds $50 and might sell only a couple of hundred
of
copies a year, a significant sales figure in this field.
As Jennifer Bilfield, the general manager of Boosey & Hawkes,
explained
recently, a printed score should be seen more as "a testimony
to a
publisher's and composer's mutual commitment to a work." It
is like a
composition's "calling card," she added.
A publishing house spends the bulk of its time on the complex
task of
making music available by promoting a work, maintaining rental
parts, and
fostering performances over the long term. In this effort a
service like
New Music Jukebox could actually be a help, which is why Boosey
& Hawkes
has been cooperative, despite the potential conflicts. "It's
at the
discretion of the composer and the publisher to decide how much
or how
little to participate," Ms. Bilfield said, while everyone continues
to
grapple step by step with "the more gnarly elements of the matter."
There are 142 composers taking part in New Music Jukebox, with
237 sound
files and 242 score files. In a year's time, the program is
expected to
offer a round-the-clock Web radio station and an online marketplace
that
will connect users to potentially thousands of composers and
their works.
Thousands? "Absolutely," Mr. Kessler said. "Of the American
Music Center's
2,500 official members, some 2,000 are composers." And, he added,
Ascap
estimates that there might be as many as 40,000 American composers
working
in the concert music field.
His hope is that a wide variety of users will rely on the center's
services, particularly New Music Jukebox. A concertgoer could
find out more
about a composer online and even see a score or listen to a
sound file. A
filmmaker looking for a composer could review potential collaborators.
A
flutist who learns that a work for flute and marimba was given
its premiere
but doesn't know who wrote it or where it was performed, could
find it
online using the search terms "flute" or "marimba."
Over the years the center has introduced many programs to support
the
publication and recording of music, including pragmatic workshops
on topics
like "Every Composer's Business" and "Self-Produced CD's." The
center has a
staff of 14 and a budget of $4.8 million derived from fund-raising,
foundation awards, and fees for administering grant programs
for other
agencies.
Earlier this year the center transferred its historic collection
of more
than 60,000 scores and recordings of works by American composers
(including
a vast quantity of unpublished scores and private recordings)
to the New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center,
which can do
a better job of maintaining them while still assuring access.
Moving the collection was a tacit acknowledgment that the center's
essential work can no longer be confined to its office. Whether
the New
Music Jukebox site accomplishes its goals and grows exponentially
the way
its planners hope will depend on whether officials at the center
can
continue to wrestle with the legal complications and forge compromises
with
publishers and recording companies. Their counterparts in other
fields will
likely be paying attention.
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