I’m here in beautiful Berkeley, Ca. I’ve been having a good time hanging out with the various riff-raff, assorted hippies, left-wing nuts, college students (remember those days?), the record stores (remember those days?), the head shops (remem…… ok, never mind), and of course the Berkeley Symphony. But one thing has raised its ugly head and I must denounce it. The Scourge has returned……
For the record, everyone at the Berkeley Symphony has been terrific. The staff has been very helpful and the orchestra is quite friendly (shocked! shocked!), and nothing I write below is at all a reflection on them. But we’ve run into a problem. As part of this concert we’re doing a French triptych – a Waltz by Germaine Tailleferre, an orchestration of a Debussy piano prelude, and a short work by Lili Boulanger. That’s where the problem lies.
In a string sectional we were going through the Boulanger. I looked down at one point and asked for louder pizzicatos out of the 2nd violins. Let’s go back and do it again. So we did and I still didn’t hear the pizzicatos. So I stopped and asked again for it to be louder. Blank looks from the violins. Now, since I’m a professional conductor I am quite used to blank stares from orchestras. None-the-less we go back and do the passage again. No pizzicatos to be heard. WTF? I ask them to play the passage alone. What I heard had absolutely no relationship to what I had in the score. They’re playing some on the string passage and I’ve got nothing like that in the score. Yes, the Publishers, that scourge of the industry, have struck again.
There is nothing more frustrating than spending 1/2 of a rehearsal correcting misprints in parts and score when you could be making music. Making music is the goal, after all, and what we are all in the business to do. But having to stop and say “no, that’s a C sharp” every 3 seconds just drives us all mad. The problem is that for much of the copyrighted music out there (just about everything of the last, what, nearly 75 years is it?) there is only one publisher, and because they have a monopoly on the music they have precious little incentive to make sure everything in the score and parts is correct. In some instances it would be very difficult for them, but in most I would argue it isn’t. In stronger words – these publishers are peddling a defective product and getting away with it.
There was an instance a couple of seasons ago when I became so irate due to wasted rehearsal time that I called up the publisher and got all the way to a Vice President. “Why are you sending us music that has so many wrong things in it?” His response was that his company was doing us a service in providing the music and it was up to us to make sure it’s all correct. Huh??? Can you imagine a car company doing that? “Yes, we know you ordered the Chevrolet Gamaklin 4 wheel drive 4 door sunroofed Hybrid SUV but just because we sent you a two door gas guzzling piece of junk is no reason to complain? It’s a car! Fix it yourself!”
The problem is that larger orchestras like my friends at the Chicago Symphony have a whole roster of librarians who can spend time, energy, and money correcting every part in triplicate. There is quite the section on the Music Orchestra Librarians Association (MOLA) listserve dedicated to errata in scores/parts. But what about smaller orchestras? There are a lot of orchestras I know who are lucky to have one full-time librarian. God help you if you run into the situation where the parts are a mess. Said librarian will now spend a ridiculous amount of time correcting the parts which some publisher has charged the orchestra out the wazoo for. For some reason the French publishers are especially good at this. This is not an efficient use of time, and it’s especially inefficient if you get to rehearsal and have to do it yourself. That’s not why we are here.
At the very least these publishers should provide updated errata lists on all their music. It’s the very least they can do if they are going to profit from renting/selling music. I expect this to happen exactly when the temperature in Hell falls below 32 degrees farenheit.
Thanks! This is an excellent and very direct argument for term limits in copyright (not just pieces but editions). Boulanger’s been dead for, what, 90 years? And the bad edition you’re working with is probably of that vintage too.
I completely agree that the source of the problem is the monopoly held by the publisher on a given piece.
Ideally there would be a central, public forum (more public than the MOLA list) where such problems could be reported and corrected for posterity, with PDFs of the correct parts. But of course that would be challenged by the publishers too. Profit trumps information sharing.
This is a great topic Bill and one I hope will garner responses from those inside the field of publishers.
It is sad that publishers hide behind the monopoly which is copyright and don’t feel that selling or renting a product carries an implied warranty of usability.
In any other industry, especially those with much larger clientele or in an industry where there is actual competition for the products which are essentially the same, such lack of concern on the part of a company would result in that company being gone from the scene in no time.
Kala’s suggestion that there be a public clearing house listing all such errata lists is a good one, but something in the copyright laws which provides for punishment (fines?) against companies which market defective goods would do more to help prevent such things in the future.
The car analogy in Bill’s column is a good one, but quite often the problems with music are less like “so we shipped you something different — live with it and alter it yourself” and more like “We have no responsibility for the fact that we neglected to bolt the other end of the seatbelts to the frame.” Some errata are large and fairly easy to spot. But there are a lot (most?) of errata which are so subtle and hidden that we may be aware that something may not feel or sound quite right but with copyright laws there’s no other source to check that section against.
It’s a travesty for which the only recourse we musicians have is refuse to perform such music — the problem is that we don’t see the problems until we’ve already signed the rental contract or bought the music and the money has already changed hands.
A public list of publishers who have attitudes of “we don’t have to care, we’re the phone company” like Lily Tomlin portrayed all those years ago on Laugh-In, would be a terrific thing and then we could all know which publishers to boycott. Eventually the composers whose music those publishers represent would begin to wonder why nobody is performing their music and would investigate further.
We also have to remember that while we have no other source from which to procure any specific copyrighted work, we DO have a vast library of other works from which to select our publishing, much of it being self-published these days by composers who are as fed up with the lousy attitudes of music publishers as we performers are.
I think this also argues for the existence of, say, regional music libraries, supported by orchestras in that region, which could buy scores and parts, hire a full-time librarian staff, etc.
I think I can top your story, Bill. In 1997, when I was artistic administrator of an orchestra in New York, we did the New York premiere of a short work by a major American composer — no names, please — for our “50th Anniversary Gala Concert.” We thought it went great but afterwards the composer asked our conductor: “How come you didn’t play the last 4 bars?” It turns out that the publisher — no names, please — had printed the piece missing the last 4 bars!