(06-15-2015, 06:44 PM)My Alter Ego Wrote: While the "battle" of plagiarism/giving/not giving credit to arrangements/songs wages on over on The Voice Season 8 thread, I thought I'd come over here to discuss an observation that I made rather recently.

And that observation is that the show stopper in Les Mis, "Bring Him Home," supposedly written specifically for Colm Wilkinson, has major similarities to the "Humming Song" from Madame Butterfly.

Humming Song



Bring Him Home


I guess Mr. Puccini must not have any family around that can go after Claude-Michel Schönberg, composer of the Les Mis music.

(06-16-2015, 10:04 AM)Tom22 Wrote: I believe that all the "classical" music is in the public domain.

(06-16-2015, 10:40 AM)Tusk Wrote:

(06-16-2015, 10:04 AM)Tom22 Wrote: I believe that all the "classical" music is in the public domain.

Actually not true, not all. I had to make some instructional videos for our company and thought the same thing.

I chose a classical song, Tchaikovsky, I think, and was chagrined to find that meant YouTube could place one of their annoying ads on the video, which of course wouldn't do for a 'business video'

Quote:

Copyrights in Public Domain music and Classical music

Why are companies such as ourselves (Lynne Publishing / Shockwave-Sound.Com) claiming copyrights in classical recordings, tracks by Mozart and the likes? Isn't this music in the Public Domain? Why can't I just take this music and use it in my film, or on my website, without having to pay anybody for a right to do that?

On the face of it, it seems odd. After all, there is a law that says music composed by a composer who has been dead for 75 years becomes Public Domain. That's why, for example, in 2008, compositions by George Gershwin became Public Domain -- in other words, they belong to the people. To everyone and no one. And of course, people like Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky have all been dead much longer than 75 years, so their compositions have been in the Public Domain for a long time already.

But even so, take a piece of Mozart music from a CD and use it on your YouTube video, on your website or in your film, without first buying a license for commercial exploitation of that music -- and you risk, at best, having YouTube strip the audio track off your video, or at worst, having legal action taken against you by a company that claims copyright in that recording.

The clue is in that word: The recording. For here we come to the crux of the matter. There are in fact two copyrights that exist in every music recording. One is the right in the Composition, and the other is the right in the Recording. When we are talking about classical music rights, we are talking about the rights that exist in that recording and arrangement. The arrangement basically means someone's "interpretation" of the composition.

(06-16-2015, 06:00 PM)Tusk Wrote: What was annoying was I used music from YouTube's 'royalty free' library

Quote:I believe that all the "classical" music is in the public domain.

Quote:I've been thinking about that as perhaps one of the safest ways around patent infringement.. just copy what is already in the public domain and maybe you can't be sued... of course you can't sue others for using your melodies then.

Quote:You'd have a better case if you'd made bona fide different arrangement. Actual recordings by artists are still their property in terms of being played though. Anyone can play and record and sell the old works but people can't sell them playing the works without their permission.

Quote:Anyway, I've been thinking of that as I've begun to mess around making some rudimentary computer games as part of a career switch I"m doing.

I'm learning computer programming and while I don't anticipate going into the game industry they're going to be good exercise for learning the javascript language in the next couple weeks

I'm not sure If I'll try to break out my old saxophone or try to do a Haley hand trumpet or whistle the tunes but I want to add some "royalty free" sounds and ...well I might try to make them myself.

Its funny I can hum dozens of passages from different symphonies and concertos but I don't know any of their names or even remember the composers in most cases.

My pitch singing or humming etc is terrible so I'm not really sure I should do the humming along either. (I think it's mostly a matter of hearing myself while vocalizing.. I don't think my ear for pitch was as bad when playing my saxophone)

Quote:-- aside .. I love the score to Les Mis ... it could be the "standing on the shoulders" of prior artists helped Claude-Michel Schönberg make it moving(of course it plays into my preferences for music that is a bit political and about faith in self/destiny coupled with expressions of defiance)

Quote:I'm far more for the progress of art and technology than for the "property" rights of ideas ... as I've expressed elsewhere...

(04-05-2016, 06:53 AM)My Alter Ego Wrote: More Khatia Buniatishvili, this time the Piano Concerto No. 2 by S. Rachmaninov. And, yes, if that main theme reminds you of All By Myself (Eric Carmen), that's because Carmen "borrowed" it from Rachminoff. (He did so with Never Gonna Fall in Love Again as well.)

Quote:MAE >> I know you've expressed something on the lines that there isn't too much leeway in how a performer "interprets" classical music but...

.. khatia really sounds different to me... not as different on this one that Javis and her on the Mahler but still.