Missouri Classical Music News

WN: In the book, you talk about copyright law being out of balance. Can you explain that?

Boyle:There are several ways this has happened. For one thing, copyright now lasts longer than it ever has before, so anyone who's telling the history of American culture after 1923 is using stuff that's copyrighted. That's a long time ago. A lot of people who were working in the past were working under certain rules, knowing that work would soon be in the public domain. Well, we're unfortunately unique as a generation completely cut off from the past 80 years because of the continual extension of copyright terms.

The second thing is that there are a lot of claims under copyright that really have nothing to do with copyright law. This is what Larry Lessig calls the "permissions culture," where people ask permission for the use of tiny fragments that end up in the background of their films or music out of fear or under threat of lawsuit.

And the third thing is the technology. In the '50s, it was quite hard to violate copyright. You needed a printing press or a movie studio. Now all of us make copies of things all the time.

A fourth thing that cuts the other way is the fear-and-loathing syndrome. There's a whole generation of filmmakers and digital creators whose only experience of copyright is as a hassle, as an obstruction, as a cease-and-desist letter preventing them from making or distributing their work. They see copyright as a pointless labyrinth they have to make their way through to make their art.

The classical record business has not become a nonprofit operation --most of the independents make a profit although it may not be the kind of profit or return on investment financial investors might be interested in. For us independents being in the classical record business is a lifestyle, that allows us to live reasonably or very well depending upon how good we are at what we're doing. And there are different business models -- most of the independent full price labels actually make money through sales of CDs and, in some cases, DVDs. Naxos being a budget-priced label has to rely on other sources of income to make a profit -- licensing, downloads/streaming, subscriptions. . . .

[One reason] I'm optimistic about classical music -- it is doing much better on the Internet than in the record shops and in the concert halls. On iTunes, classical music accounts for 12% of revenue as compared to only 3% in the record shops [although the percentage is slightly higher in other big markets ]. This means, there are many people out there who don't go to shops to buy their classical music or to concert halls to listen but who nevertheless enjoy classical music and are willing to pay for this enjoyment.

Everyone should know about MUSO, "the music magazine that rewrites the score," to quote its own line about itself. Or, more simply, "the magazine for the younger, more open-minded generation of classical music fans." It's smart, lively, and most of all, it looks and reads like a real magazine, not like a dowdy classical music ingroup publication, tarted up to look contemporary.

The man who was widely and justly considered the greatest of them all died today at the age of eighty-three. There's no way to sum up in brief what Ligeti's music meant; it was an awesome cross-section of the benighted twentieth century, whose worst horrors he knew first hand.

György Ligeti, considered by many classical musicians to be the greatest living composer, died Monday in Vienna. He was 83.

The Hungarian-Jewish composer fled Nazis, Communists and avant-garde dogmatists to forge a style that revolutionized modern music. . . .

"He taught us how to listen to sound, not just as music necessarily so much as just plain sound," said Paul Rudy, professor of composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. "His orchestral repertoire is not performed much, but it's really groundbreaking in how it treats the orchestra. Kubrick made the world aware of him, but the rest of us knew about him already." . . .

His music had a huge impact on subsequent composers, who emulated his style and techniques, said UMKC composer James Mobberley.

"That, more than anything else, puts him at the very top among the composers of his generation."

• Ligeti's web page.
  
• A number of MP3 samples of Ligeti's music.
  
• New York Times obituary
  
• Washington Post obituary
  
• A Ligeti roundup by Alex Ross

Everything starts during WW II when Rhodes dissolves his pedagogic enterprise to join the Army Air Corps. By circumstance he finds himself between classifications, has nothing to do and is asked to provide therapy for wounded soldiers. Piano students lying in bed!?!? The obvious solution must be a bed piano (obvious to Harold, that is)!

Hydraulic aluminum pipes from the wings of the B-17 bombers seemed to have a good tone when cut to xylophone length. Picture yourself a toy piano, sized like a small suitcase, with 2.5 octaves of regular-size keys. It is a big success, and thousands are made. Rhodes is even awarded the Medal of Honor for his therapeutic achievements after the war, and in Air Corps Manual No. 29 in the army archives, you find the Rhodes Method described.

John William "Blind" Boone was born May 17, 1864, in Miami, Mo., the mixed-race son of Rachael Boone, who had once been a slave for the family of Daniel Boone, thus her surname.

At age 6 months, Boone suffered from a high fever, and his eyes were removed to relieve his condition, a practice of the time. His eyelids were sewed shut. . . .

He grew into one of the nation's most popular pianists and one of the giants of what would become ragtime music. He came to Columbia in 1879, and our city became his home until his death on Oct. 4, 1927.

In 1891, Boone, who literally destroyed pianos with the force of his playing, had a piano built for him out of oak - not ebony - that was 9 feet long and weighed more than 1,900 pounds, at least 500 pounds heavier than normal grand pianos. It traveled with him around the world for three decades.

In April pianist Tatiana Tessman won the $10,000 first prize at the 11th annual Missouri Southern International Piano Competition in Joplin.

The 26-year-old Russian native and Moscow State Conservatory graduate studies with Stanislav Ioudenitch at Park University. She’ll make her Carnegie Recital Hall debut in New York on Oct. 9.

In the Joplin contest’s junior division, Mi-Eun Kim took the $1,500 third prize. Kim, 16, is a Blue Valley North High senior.