David W. Fenton wrote: "If you're in musicology for the money, then I think you've made a
bad, bad mistake."
bad, bad mistake."
I have two friends, one has her Ph.D. pending. Currently she's doing data entry for an insurance agency. Another friend who has his
Ph.D., is frantically looking for an academic position in the United States; and his prospects are very slim.
For my part, I have no desire to make any profit from what I do. What I do, I do for the love of the art. Additionally, I plan on donating any money I may gain to either charity, or to the library that holds the source manuscripts I publish from. I asked about the protections editors should look for in copyright law, because I don't want to be taken advantage of. While my intententions are good, I am old enough to know that other's may not share my personal convictions about music.
On 2/14/06, David W. Fenton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 14 Feb 2006 at 19:40, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
> I am just curious why is it the profit model is ok for publishers, or
> orchestras, or record labels, or video productions, or the record
> chains, that make profits from music that's in the public domain is
> somehow "OK." But when an editor makes his case in court (and wins),
> he's seen as the Antichrist for doing it?
1. I have never objected to contracts agreed to by two parties. If
Hyperion wants to pay Sawkins, that's fine. If they don't, that's
their right, too, within the law, which has not been changed by
Sawkins's lawsuit.
2. the legal reasoning behind the decision is specious. Sawkins
cannot be both a musicological editor and a co-composer of the works,
which is de facto what he asked to be considered. It is bad for legal
precedents to be set on grounds that are nonsensical for the area of
real life on which they impinge.
3, I'm a musicologist. I make editions. I'd love to see them
published. But I don't expect to ever gain any fair compensation for
the time it has taken me to prepare them, because if I were paid that
much, then the publisher could never make any money. But I would
still be thrilled to see my editions published and performed.
Why?
Because they contribute to a community of musicians and scholars.
They provide information that allows the music to live again.
In the open source software world, they have the idea of the "gift
economy," where individuals do a huge amount of work for no
compensation and then share the fruits of that labor with others. I
see my role as an editor in the musical world as similar. My gift is
not performing and my reward is not monetary -- my reward is having
done something that gets the music performed.
If you're in musicology for the money, then I think you've made a
bad, bad mistake.
Sawkins has broken the code of scholarship, in my estimation. He's
transgressed the ground rules of the musical economy. He may have
badly broken the system in doing so -- a valuable record label may go
under entirely because of his actions. Others may have to scale back
their production as a result of Hyperion's failed defense of the
present system.
Somehow, I doubt that Sawkins was ultimately motivated by greed,
though. I think it's much more likely that his motivation was
entirely ego-driven, that he felt he'd done something so incredibly
important and significant that it deserved recognition beyond what he
was getting in the liner notes, the apprecation of the people for
whom he prepared the editions, and the editing fee.
And worst of all, he's a hypocrite for asking to be considered "co-
composer" while doing nothing more than every musicologist does every
day when they prepare editions from flawed sources. The task of the
musicologist in editing is to recover as much of the intended musical
text from the flawed and incomplete sources available. If that is the
goal, it is one that cannot be reconciled with being paid for
"originality" in that process, as the controlling conception is that
of the composer, who is long dead.
Sawkins is being paid for being de Lalande's centuries-removed
secretary.
And all the disastrous results of this for the early music world
aside, that is what most disgusts me -- he's stealing credit for
conceptions that are someone else's.
It's cheating.
And to me as an academic, misrepresenting someone else's work as your
own is perhaps the highest crime.
--
David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/
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--
Kim Patrick Clow
"There's really only two types of music: good and bad." ~ Rossini
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