To Publish or Not to Publish

Personally, I think the music publishing world, like the recording industry, is doomed in its' current form. I've heard that Boosey is shitting bricks about Bartok entering public domain. And so many publishers don't even engrave orch. scores, and just put out hand copied composers "autograph" scores. No big problem for those of us using computers, but not all composers do. In many cases, the only value they add is the ability to connect with performers, which is, though, no small thing. For a lot of performers, the fact that a work is published is importantd. They think that just because a piece is being handled by a publisher, it has been "vetted" and is better than self-published work.

The 21st century solution may already be here. I recently saw an ad for an electronic music stand that has a screen. So instead of paper sheets you look at a scrolling score. I know one musician who has used them and he said they worked pretty well.

Upside is fewer worries about page turns. Downside is you don't get to pencil in notes.

But ultimately a score will be available for download directly to the musician's stand, and the fee automatically deposited to the composer's bank account.

Composing nirvana.

Nice try, Paul...if you think orchestras are going to pay $2900-$5900 per stand, you might want to think again. (See www.estand.com - they look great, but unless you're someone like Harry Connick Jr. who uses them with his big band, there's just too many problems inherent in the idea.)

When Earle Brown was teaching our graduate composition seminar at CalArts around 1980, he wanted to use some of his scores. His publisher said he would have to buy them, so we looked at other scores.

When the E.A.R. Unit played Feldman's For Philip Guston, the publisher wanted to charge us $600 rental for one performance. Okay, it's four hours. But it's also a trio, and the score is a xerox of the manuscript. Feldman xeroxed his personal copy for us to use.

When Lucky Mosko was conducting a major work published by Peters (I don't recall the exact piece), he wanted to buy the score so he could mark it up sufficiently for his use. They were extremely reluctant to sell him a copy, but finally relented. The copy he paid $90. for was a xerox, with one page double exposed and another one upside down.

Rand Steiger commented "That's why I publish with Leisure Planet" (my self-publishing enterprise, which also handles a few other composers).

When I met Per Norgard's publisher at a concert recently and began a rant about the high prices of scores, she answered right back with a complaint about the high costs of production.