Crowdfunding Campaign Seeks a Libre Recording of a Newly-Completed Bach Work (kickstarter.com)

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Robert Douglass's Kickstarter campaigns have resulted in free fan-funded open source recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations and the 48 pieces in his Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. "Even Richard Stallman found these recordings, and he promptly wrote an email encouraging us to drop the word 'Open' in favor of 'Free' or 'Libre'," Douglas tells BoingBoing (adding "when RMS writes you telling you to change the name of your music project, you change the name of your music project.")

Now Douglass is crowdfunding a libre recording of Bach's last masterpiece, 20 fugues developed from a single theme called "the Art of the Fugue". "He wanted to culminate in a final fugue that literally spells his name, B-A-C-H, in musical notation," remembers Douglass, but "unfortunately, Bach died before completing that work, and it has remained a musical mystery (and tragedy) for hundreds of years." Fortunately Kimiko Ishizaka completed the work in 2016, "based on the music that Bach left us... This new composition will also be released under a Creative Commons license as part of the new OpenScore.cc project... Kimiko is eminently grateful to her fans and supporters of free culture for allowing her to focus all of her energies on growing the public domain and bringing the music of J.S. Bach to a far broader audience than ever imagined."
They're also rewarding supporters with tickets to two live performances -- one at Carnegie Hall in New York City and one in Hamburg's new Elbphilharmonie.

Comments

Er... I don't think so

[Harold Halloway]

Douglas tells BoingBoing (adding "when RMS writes you telling you to change the name of your music project, you change the name of your music project.")

Really? I think quite a lot of musicians would tell him RMS to take a hike.

public domian recodings will flood in any case

[sittingnut]

as copyright periods run out, in next few decades, recordings of music from earlier part of 20th century (and increasingly great quality) will flood the audience.
even more than new libre recordings, i think there should be a project to catalog and publish such music to public.

Re:public domian recodings will flood in any case

[RDW]

as copyright periods run out, in next few decades, recordings of music from earlier part of 20th century (and increasingly great quality) will flood the audience.
even more than new libre recordings, i think there should be a project to catalog and publish such music to public.

Quite a few bargain-price European labels are doing a good job of releasing out-of copyright historical recordings. Here in the UK, we were up to 1963 before copyright was extended from 50 years to 70, but not retroactively, so the 1947-63 period is still public domain. This covers most of the classic mono era and takes us intro the period when stereo was becoming mainstream. Glenn Gould's excellent (mono) Goldberg Variations from 1955, and probably his incomplete Art of Fugue on the organ recorded in 1962, should be out of copyright. It would be nice to see a central resource for making these recordings freely available, though there's apparently some legal ambiguity about whether you can re-distribute somebody else's digital re-master or have to rip from a contemporary disc (which is a challenging task from crackly 78s, where overenthusiastic noise reduction can kill the atmosphere). On the other hand, modern artists who want to make a living releasing Free recordings should be supported and encouraged.

Re:H?

[the_other_chewey]

In music, the BACH motif is the motif, a succession of notes important or characteristic to a piece, B flat, A, C, B natural. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note B natural is written as H and the B flat as B, it forms Johann Sebastian Bach's family name.

That's what the article says, but I don't understand it. The only hand-written music on that Wikipedia web page shows B A C H written as four notes on a treble clef staff, not written as four letters. (This is on the right edge of the web page, half-way down.) So I don't know what they mean by saying that B natural is written as H, and B flat is written as B.

The explanation above is correct, but very unclearly worded.

In German nomenclature, the notes of the c major scale are read as:
C-D-E-F-G-A-H(-C)
There is a note called "B": The one a half tone under H.

So this is indeed read "B-A-C-H" in German
(where it would of course also be considered to be written as such...).