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Open Well-Tempered Clavier: a Kickstarter Campaign For Open Source Bach
rDouglass writes "The Open Goldberg Variations team has launched a new project to make an open source, public domain version of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. The work is significant because of its enormous influence on musicians and composers throughout history. A new studio recording, a new digital MuseScore score (with support for MusicXML and MIDI), as well as all source materials (multitrack WAV, lossless FLAC) will be provided as libre and gratis downloads. New to the project are publisher GRIN Verlag, as well as record label PARMA Recordings. GRIN and PARMA will produce and distribute the physical score and double CD, even though the digital versions are to be widely available and in the public domain. Their enthusiasm for the project runs counter to the general publishing and music industry's fear of digital file sharing, and shows growing momentum for finding new models to make free music commercially sustainable."
The 4-CD set by Andras Schiff was the first recording I ever had to save and scrimp for, when I was still back in high school, and it's been worth every penny. I had heard one track and was told the rest was great, and it is. I'm a drummer, but listening to this recording a couple hundred times is probably responsible for any melodic and harmonic sense I may have developed at that time. I haven't heard the version referenced in TFA, but it's hard to make this music sound bad. Highly recommended in principle.
It's open source because the recording comes with the sheet music in an open digital format. Compare it the source of a picture, which is light. The source of classical music is the musical score.
There's also the issue of ContentID (like on Youtube). Even open source and fully public domain, you'll get the likes of the "Music Publishing Rights Society" to claim and monetize from, or even worse, take down your video.
There also exists public domain recording by musopen.org, which will probably pale in comparison, but nonetheless it's great that these efforts exist.
A piano is a tremendously wonderful instrument for piano music. But this (Well-Tempered Clavier) is not piano music! You can make a decent-sounding performance of clavier music on the piano, just like you can transcribe a vocal for violin, but you lose a lot of the specific things the composer --- especially a master of the instrument like Bach --- put into the work. Basically, all intricate and fast-moving detail in a piece gets mushed up and lost on the piano, which is designed for a smoother, more "blended" sound than the clearly articulated single notes of pre-piano predecessors. Please, if you want an open cultural reference to Bach's keyboard music, play it on appropriate kinds of keyboard!
if it's really public domain you can do whatever you please with it. sell it as well.
problem with making new public domain music - and just free to play anywhere music - is that you have to find musicians who have not signed up for some local copyright monopoly organization.. it's kinda fucked up if you think about it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Le sigh.
Open source and public domain are not mutual, nor is one needed for the other. Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it
No. Public domain means that it's in the public domain: that means nobody owns it, and anybody can do whatever they like with it.
(under most licenses, EG Creative Commons),
If you have to agree to a license to use it, it's not public domain.
while open source means anyone can try and make it better. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
For $500 you might get a proficient high schooled player – but not a professional musician. Then factor in rehearsal time.
Which gets back to the “making it better” and the Creative Commons license – specially the “No Derivative Works” section. They want attribution. They don’t want people dropping out a section and replacing it with another. I think both requests are resonable.
Remember, we are talking about classic works here. You may not be able to hear the difference between on performer verse another but those who are passionate can.
Starving Music Student here. I trained as a performer. IU. Got graduate school funding at Cinci, Cleveland, Julliard, and Eastman. Basically the best music schools in the nation. I chose academics rather than performance, however, because of arthritis that would cripple me by age 50. But, if you were looking for a good representative of a very compentent collegiate musician, that's me. (I've also won an audition for professional 52 week symphony orchestras, but didn't take the gig because I went into academia instead -- and those are jobs with hundreds of applicants per vacency, and that's only because thousands of wannabes don't even bother sending a tape to actually win an audition)
I wouldn't dream of making a recording of key pieces in the repertory of my instrument. (Viola/Violin) Nobody would want to hear it. I sure wouldn't do something like the WTK (If I were a pianist) or the Cello Suites/Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Sure, I've performed them all more than once, and can teach them all, but I wouldn't dare put a microphone in front of me. And, I wouldn't dio it for 500 bucks. I wouldn't even take that for just one of the suites/sonatas/partitas. (It takes a long time to prepare something to that level, even though I know them quite intimately) I don't even leave my house to play at a gig for less than 150 bucks. That's a crappy wedding or a funeral. If you want me to go to a rehearsal, it's at least a hundred more. (Still cheaper than most tradesmen though)
You have obviously not rented a recording studio. Even a crappy one is expensive. Try gettting access to a really great piano for free too. Even if we have your utopia of cheapo student playing in a recital hall at their university with a crappy microphone, the student workers recording the WTK getting work/study wages, with the many hours that this would take, would cost more than 500 bucks.
TL;DR -- Starving Music Student=not good enough for people with an ear. Recording studios are expensive. It's impressive how cheaply they can do this already!
Get off my lawn.
Why would this J. S. Bach guy write any more music if people are just going to steal it?
Companies like Peters that do sell good accurate scores of Bach are so behind the times they literally cannot see the forest because the trees are still being cut down. It is entirely possible for them to distribute decent editions for sale in e-pub and the technology to put scores on e-ink could be made usable with essentially e-reader technology that is score sized instead of pocket book. I would gladly pay for a decent music e-ink reader that would work on my music stand. The information age is slogging along and eventually the real potential of digital music notation will happen. But unfortunately we still have those who have their heads up their assets in the music publishing industry.
Werner was a stickler for accurate notation and much of what is there on the historic digital archive, especially the Bach section, is very accurate. Unfortunately since his death others have corrupted what he started and some of the archive is not good or even accurate notation, however most of the Bach is excellent and done by people who understand the importance of accuracy in music notation. Many of the scores adhere to original source where ever possible. Which can be very difficult as in the time of the great champions of Bach's music during the late classical era much of Bach's sheet music had fallen into oblivion.
For instance a friend of Felix Mendelssohn actually found music scores by Bach being used by a butcher to wrap meats! So the digitizing for all time of all our great heritage of written music is as important as project Gutenberg. Werner understood this as many others do and either the existing music publishing houses will get on board or they will be a footnote in the history of written music.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
is that audiences are not interested in an academic reference recording of Bach but in the richly varied interpretations of artists each with their own gifts --- using arrangements of their own choice, instruments of their own choice, in a venue of their own choice.
It is like trying to capture Shakespeare in a bottle.
Uncork the thing and what you will get is a performance wholly typical of the acting style and staging of the year the play was recorded.
The artist, Kimiko Ishizaka, is easily at-or-above par with Juilliard students. The producer, Anne-Marie Sylvestre, is A-OK at what she does. The studio and staff are top-notch. The instrument will be kick-ass. Etc.
And, there's a track record for this project -- the Goldberg Variations recordings they've already done are fine.
Maybe you have an axe to grind with Drupal geeks? ;-)
education is no substitute for intelligence