On 5 Dec 2006 at 18:55, John Howell wrote: > At 5:02 PM -0500 12/5/06, David W. Fenton wrote: > >On 5 Dec 2006 at 10:47, Mark D Lew wrote: > > > >> What I want to know is whether Haydn would have written his pieces > >> if he had a secure copyright for, say, 28 years from publication, > >> as opposed to 70 years after his death. I think he would. If > >> that's sufficient to persuade him to write and publish, then why > >> offer him 100 more bonus years? > > > >Haydn had *no* comyright protection in the modern sense. He had > >nothing more than a right to keep the quartets a secret until he sold > >them to the first publisher. After that, he collected no fees on them > >at all. > > Which was the case throughout most of music history. But remember > also that throughout most of music history, no composer wrote for > publication. They composed what was needed for their employment, for > their students, what was asked for (or ordered) by their patrons, and > so on.
Well, here I have to disagree. I think that was actually Johannes's point, that Haydn wrote most of his string quartets for publication, not for his patrons or personal use. > Does anyone actually believe that Petrucci paid Josquin or > Marco Cara royalties for their sales? I'm trying to recall whether > there actually were any true freelance composers before Haydn's 10 > years in Vienna, and Mozart's later 10 years, and i can't think of > any. (Maybe because they starved to death!) As much as some > composers traveled around, they traveled from appointment to > appointment, not just from city to city. Mozart is pretty much the earliest to have attempted it that I know of. Haydn is the first to have partially pulled it off, and Beethoven the first to manage it all the way, so far as I'm aware. > It's hard for those of us involved in classical music to realize or > admit, but NONE of that music was written for posterity. Well, I'm not so sure that's true at all. > It was > written for immediate use by musicians usually well known to the > composer, in performances supported by the court or church that > employed them. And there was a continuing demand for new music. I think the string quartet as a genre is something of an exception to this general rule, and likely where Johannes is coming from on his main point (he will correct me if I'm wrong on this surmise). For what purpose did Mozart compose the Haydn quartets? If not for posterity, it certainly wasn't for a particular patron, but it was for publication, to establish himself as a contender on a serious genre, the string quartet. > That's the real reason they kept composing. We certainly can't > compare that with 20th century academic composers. The closer > comparison would be with popular songwriters. And in the absence of > copyright, ALL music was public domain as soon as it became available > "in fixed form"!! I'm not sure that was what Johannes was doing. I think he was making a point about a specific genre and a specific composer. I believe he rather overstated his case, but I think he's right that a lot of string quartets were written for publication (not always just to make money). -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
