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Open-Source Bach; Copyright-Free Goldbergs
rDouglass writes "An open source music notation software (MuseScore) and an award winning pianist (Kimiko Ishizaka) are raising money to create a new score and a new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. They will release both works to the public domain (copyright-free) using the Creative Commons Zero tool. This bypasses usual copyright protections that are given to each published edition of the score and each individual recording of the piece, and addresses a gap in the availability of free (gratis/libre) versions of the work. MuseScore scores are XML based and are thus like the source code for music. They can also be embedded into websites and linked with YouTube videos, creating rich multimedia experiences. The Kickstarter project has begun recently and $4,000 has been raised."
Why not midi? As a musician, I'll ask you a parallel question: Why not write all documents in flat text? Who needs bold, underline, different fonts, pagination etc?? Midi doesn't make pretty sheet music. It only notates "note on" or "note off" or "patch change." It doesn't even notate which score a note should be on. This means, for example, that piano music would be just about impossible to play from a raw midi dump. An XML based markup, or the TeX based Lilypond allow for pretty, easy to read, scores. On the other hand, Lilypond has a midi import feature, so MIDI IS useful. It just requires some editing to make it human playable.
Also check out Musopen, a large collection of public-domain classical music recordings and sheet music. They take donations and use those donations to hire professional artists to make new recordings of the pieces and then put them into the public domain.