Originally posted by jean
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The Day of Resurrection comes to mind, but there are others too. -
As once pointed out on here by the late and still much lamented Chris Newman, the tune is a direct crib of a melody heard in the last movement of the Brahms 4th Symphony.
OK, it may not be deliberate plagiarism but it sounds so uncanny you seriously begin to wonder...
Just on 34' 00'' in here:
"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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Igor was very keen to get as much in royalties as possible!Originally posted by Flay View Post
That said, I just don't understand how this saga came about. 2016's the 70th anniversay of Mildred Hill's death but I think that they still use the 50 year rule in US, unlike quite a few other countries. I have, for example, found that Sorabji's early published works are regarded as public domain in US whereas in many other jurisdictions they remain in copyright until 31 December 2058; in US, if something was published before 1923 (or 1925 - I cannot now recall which) it's regarded as being in the public domain, so I don't even know how WC could have obtained those rights in the first place.
In any event, I imagine that only a tiny fraction of performances of HB throughout the world generate royalties, rightly or wrongly; it's not unlike the situation in which Microsoft's intellectual property income, large as it is, is only a single figure % of what it would be if no one stole their stuff by making illicit copies thereof.Comment
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Well, yes - considering that during his lifetime, a performance of the Firebird, or Petrushka or Le Sacre in which he was not conducting would earn money for everybody from the publishers, the performers and the management of the Hall right down to the people serving the interval refreshments - EXCEPT the composer himself. Without his stance, Igor's circumstances in the United States would have been as pecuniarily straitened as Bartok's or Schoenberg's. He still had problems - not only with Happy Birthday, but also the Star Spangled Banner, and (from the other side) the popular "arrangement" (read "rip-off") of "Summer Moon", which put not a cent in the composer's pocket. (Melchior, to his eternal disgrace, was more lucky.)Originally posted by ahinton View Post
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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I think I read somewhere that the copyright was going to be in force for some time. And, as I said in my first post, royalties have apparently ammounted to about 2 million dollars a year.Originally posted by ahinton View PostComment
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Indeed; I just don't understand how this came about in the first place.Originally posted by Flosshilde View PostComment
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Well, yes, of couse the situation was once far worse than it was to become. Strauss was instrumental in the setting up of GEMA, for example - and I know all too well how important royalty receipts are! What I really meant was that Igor eventually came to be quite exercised over royalty income even when his own had become quite substantial but that the worst example of this kind of attitude tends to tarnish the Estates of composers such as his and those of Strauss and Krenek, for example, which can sometimes be obstructive in varying degrees and at times run counter to what the composers themselves would likely have countenanced.Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
The late Albi Rosenthal, the antiquarian book and music specialist, never met Schoenberg (as he had styled himself when in US) but his father, who did and was once a near neighbour of his, told him of an occasion on which a very agitated Arnold called him to ask if he could come around to see him right away and that, when he did so, he brandished his latest royalty statement for $4.34, comlaining bitterly that this was "for a whole year"; it seems that it did not occur either to Schoenberg or Herr Rosenthal senior that this could have been interpreted as a kind of one-upmanship on the former's erstwhile pupil...
As to Summer Moon, that ought to have put quite a few cents in Igor's pocket for reasons other than the usual, methinks!...Comment
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Dangerous to meddle in copyright matters without a full understanding, but according to the IPKat blog:Originally posted by ahinton View Post
There was then a series of assignments and agreements covering various copyrights, from the Hill sisters to Clayton F. Summy, from whom Warner-Chappell derived their rights. Again it was unclear to the judge whether the Happy Birthday lyrics were ever assigned to Summy, it being more likely that they had assigned copyright in the melody and in a piano arrangement. Another major uncertainty was whether the copyright registration, on which Warner-Chappel have been relying for many years, in fact was a registration covering the lyrics, the judge holding that it was only evidence of a registration for a piano arrangement of the melody
A guess, from the actual judgement (which is a very easy and fascinating read)
doc. no. 244 file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/gov.uscourts.cacd.564772.244.0.pdf
is that Warner were relying on a 1935 registration which may have a life of 95 years - but this is just a guess and may be wrong.Last edited by Quarky; 26-09-15, 07:52.Comment
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