IMSLP Forums

I would like to make an announcement on IMSLP's forum. Since this announcement is related to a commercial venture, I would like in this post to describe in general terms what the announcement will be about about. I ask the powers-that-be at IMSLP whether such an announcement would be appropriate on the forum. If it would be appropriate, in what section of the forum should I post it?

First, however, I should note that there are already on IMSLP links to some commercial ventures -- such as the links to Amazon.com, and the links to Performer's Edition (to purchase copies of works posted on IMSLP.)

My proposal has to do with making available on rental to orchestras and opera companies new sets of typeset parts for PD orchestral works and operas. For these works, no parts are currently available -- either on IMSLP, or from the major music rental companies, or from the original music publishers (many of whom are now out of business with no successors.)

There are numerous orchestral and operatic works on IMSLP with no parts currently available anywhere. It is axiomatic: without clearly legible sets of parts in good condition, these works cannot be performed today -- especially by professional orchestras.

Moreover, in order for orchestras to get ahold of these parts when they need them, the parts much be readily accessible (not hidden away in some foreign archive from which they must be photocopied, reproduced in multiple copies, collated, bound, and shipped.) Such works cannot attempt a comeback into the repertoire of orchestras and opera companies until the parts are made easily available.

There are numerous contributors to IMSLP who do computer typesetting of music with professional programs (such as Sibelius and Finale.) In the last few years, some of these music typesetters have begun to typeset parts for various scores, and post them on IMSLP. Usually, these have been parts for small-scaled works -- such as pieces for string orchestra or Baroque concerto grossi. Or, in some cases, contributors to IMSLP have typeset a previously unpublished score from a manuscript posted on IMSLP -- but they have not posted a set of parts to go with them.

Recently, I founded an internet company called Noteworthy Musical Editions and Orchestral/Band Music Rental Library ( http://zasu.us/noteworthymusic ) In addition to renting out sets of typeset parts for new copyrighted arrangements of orchestral/band works whose originals are in the public domain,) we will soon begin to rent out new typeset parts for orchestral/operatic/band works in the public domain (i.e., not copyrighted arrangements.)

My proposed announcement would be directed to users of IMSLP who might be interested in typesetting sets of parts for works posted on IMSLP, and then making these parts available on rental to performing organizations through Noteworthy Musical Editions. The announcement would describe briefly some of the professional standards required for typeset parts, and the business relationship between music typesetters and Noteworthy Musical Editions. (Aside from the quality guidelines in the online document "IMSLP: Typesetting Guidelines," sets of typeset orchestral parts suitable for use by modern professional orchestras have their own guidelines and standards.)

Lastly, I hope that IMSLP might consider posting links for these new sets of typeset parts, indicating on its webpages for relevant scores: Parts available on rental at Noteworthy Musical Editions. As I have noted elsewhere on the forum, I think links to sources of orchestral parts -- whether they be for sale, for hire or for free -- would be a great service that IMSLP could and should provide.

I will be much interested to read IMSLP's response to this request.

MS

The Department of Redundancy Department would like to announce that posting a new topic in the IMSLP Announcement sub-forum qualifies as an IMSLP Announcement — whether we like it or not!

I would imagine you’ve already intimated this rental/typesetting business to Project Petrucci LLC, or is this the first mention of it entirely? I’m aware of some other businesses that function similarly (often on a requests basis, rather than doing work in the hope that some of it will be useful).

Unless there is some violent objection as the expression of enforcing some forum policy here, then you may fire away — or at worst, provide an alternate address (e-mail or web) where interested parties can follow up with you, if your promotional announcement for the service would run too close to being actual advertising. (I don’t believe it would, but there’s obviously a fine line to be drawn there.)

It is worth noting that a big worldwide music publishing conglomerate headquartered in Milan is beginning to withdraw all manner of PD works as being available for sale — hire only, if you’re lucky — and this will probably continue to be an issue, more than it already is. One of their underhand tactics amounts to withdrawing perfectly serviceable public domain parts and scores for composers dead longer than 70 years, and substituting versions of the works with modern editorialisms that may attract a new copyright (often under the banner of “New _______ Edition”) and then charging hire fees and royalties on the new edition. Bad luck if you want to perform those works and don’t have a well-stocked library with copies of the old material – you can pay through the nose!

Cheers Philip

Many thanks for the quick reply, Philip.

For the record, this post was the first mention anywhere of this new plan for Noteworthy Musical Editions, (i.e. to rent newly typeset parts for PD scores with no parts.)

And no, I wasn't aware of the existence of Project Petrucci LLC -- but I will contact it in the near future.

I was much interested in your sidebar about the future plans of some big worldwide music publishing conglomerate headquartered in Milan -- whose name quite possibly rhymes with Ricordi. That may explain why it is so difficult or even impossible to obtain copies of PD works from Italian archives -- especially the Biblioteca digitale del Conservatorio di Milano. If access to what-may-be the sole surviving copy of a PD score can be shut off to the public, then the original publisher can bring out a new copyrighted edition without fear of competition.

MS

Dear Mark,

See here. (It amounts to notifying Feldmahler and… the cabal of officers of the LLC.) When you’re talking about getting the approval of the IMSLP to collaborate on some sort of joint venture, that’s who you should be addressing. :-)

To be precise, the publishing arm of the group headquartered in Milan (which is the part of the group that bought out Casa R.) has gone into partnership with a big US firm that is controlling the worldwide distribution, rentals, royalties and rights of their empire. I've written about their tactics before (over at CPDL’s forums, incidentally: here): privately, my views are probably unfit for publication…

PML

This sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps some of our editors who've posted items here might be interested in making the performance material available in this way. One question I have (being a contributor to the cabal, etc.) would be: Do the editors of these prospective new editions get to have their scores freely available at IMSLP? The reason I naturally ask has to do with IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library's whole purpose in life: to make music freely available to anyone who wants to download it. Having a link to a readily available set of performance material could be quite useful for someone who downloaded a typeset score for study. I also have some understanding of why rental can probably the most economical method of distribution for a large work like an opera or ballet score that is not part of the standard repertoire done all the time. (Those works are largely printed and available for sale from Kalmus or Lucks). While digital printing has made life much better in many areas of music publishing, sets of parts for large works remain a very expensive thing to properly print.

I note that you (Mark) have a fair number of your own orchestrations of some interesting and unusual repertoire in the online catalog linked above. Would you be willing to make some of these scores available for free download in return for direct links to the page where performance material can be obtained? Philip, as an editor and orchestrator yourself, what are your feelings about making scores available and retaining rental (or sales) options for parts? This is somewhat related to the whole question which has arisen about how we handle composers whose copyrighted works have been made available here. There surely must be a happy medium between giving everything away for free on the one hand (not that there's anything wrong with that) and the type of outright rapine lootery practiced by the proprietors of the Purcell King Arthur edition referenced at the CDPL forum.

Carolus wrote:This sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps some of our editors who've posted items here might be interested in making the performance material available in this way. One question I have (being a contributor to the cabal, etc.) would be: Do the editors of these prospective new editions get to have their scores freely available at IMSLP?

Hi Carolus:

I'll interweave my answers in bold.

Yes.

Noteworthy Musical Editions & Orchestral Music Rental LIbrary is primarily concerned with renting out newly typeset parts for orchestral scores (and soon, orchestral parts for some operas.) NME doesn't sell parts or scores. We would be delighted if performing organizations that rent our parts download the corresponding scores free-of-charge from IMSLP. That's less work for us.

When we rent out parts for a work in the public domain, the performing ensemble pays NME a rental fee. When we rent out parts for a copyrighted arrangement of a work in the public domain (such as my own orchestral arrangements of PD works,) the performing ensemble pays NME a rental fee AND a performance fee.

The owner of a set of parts can set whatever rental fee he/she wants to receive per month of rental. NME doubles that, adds one-way shipping charges, bills the ensemble, collects the fee, ships the parts, and sends the owner his/her share.

The copyright owner of a copyrighted arrangement sets whatever performance fee he/she wants to receive for a professional or an educational performance. NME doubles that, bills the orchestra, and then sends the copyright owner his/her share of both the rental fee and the performance fee. If the copyright owner receives additional income from a performing rights society, such as ASCAP, that does not concern us. NME is not the publisher of these parts. The copyright owner is the arranger, the publisher and the owner of the set of parts.

In order to make this rental library attractive to professional orchestras, I set very high standards for the typesetting and physical preparation of orchestral materials

Carolus wrote:The reason I naturally ask has to do with IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library's whole purpose in life: to make music freely available to anyone who wants to download it. Having a link to a readily available set of performance material could be quite useful for someone who downloaded a typeset score for study. I also have some understanding of why rental can probably the most economical method of distribution for a large work like an opera or ballet score that is not part of the standard repertoire done all the time. (Those works are largely printed and available for sale from Kalmus or Lucks). While digital printing has made life much better in many areas of music publishing, sets of parts for large works remain a very expensive thing to properly print.

Two things that have become obvious to me as IMSLP has grown to hold many tens of thousands of orchestral and operatic scores: (1) orchestral parts for a huge proportion of these works are not currently available from Kalmus, or Lucks or the Fleischer Collection, or the original publishers. Without sets of parts (professionally typeset and in good physical condition,) orchestras cannot perform or record them. And (2,) at the same time, there are now many on IMSLP who do professional quality typsetting, and who would welcome the opportunity to typeset orchestral parts and earn rental fees from their typesetting.

Carolus wrote:I note that you (Mark) have a fair number of your own orchestrations of some interesting and unusual repertoire in the online catalog linked above. Would you be willing to make some of these scores available for free download in return for direct links to the page where performance material can be obtained?

Sure, I would be willing to make scores of some of my copyrighted orchestral arrangements available for free on IMSLP under a limited Creative Commons license. There is very little market for the sale of orchestral scores these days, except perhaps to music libraries. I sell my orchestral scores on http://www.scoreexchange.com (the recent replacement for http://www.sibeliusmusic.com.) However, income for orchestral music, especially for orchestral arrangements of works in the public domain, comes mainly from performance licenses and the rental of parts.

Carolus wrote:Philip, as an editor and orchestrator yourself, what are your feelings about making scores available and retaining rental (or sales) options for parts? This is somewhat related to the whole question which has arisen about how we handle composers whose copyrighted works have been made available here. There surely must be a happy medium between giving everything away for free on the one hand (not that there's anything wrong with that) and the type of outright rapine lootery practiced by the proprietors of the Purcell King Arthur edition referenced at the CDPL forum.

Although the question was addressed to Philip, I would like to note: the rental of parts is a straight-forward business agreement. An orchestra pays for the use of a set of parts, and NME sends to the owner of the set of parts his/her share of the rental fee.

MS

Hi Mark, Carolus,

in brief, I am already withholding parts for a couple of works available in full score at IMSLP. I thus find myself often busy answering queries about orchestral parts (or custom arrangements for vocal works) : since the other party in these conversations usually receives only PDFs, they are wholly responsible for printing usable parts and scores, the quality of which I have little or no control over. I had the pain of one orchestra printing a set of my parts for Mozart’s Great Mass (KV 427/417ª) where the omission of the title pages left the carefully-planned sequence of left-hand/right-hand pages completely in ruins. In short, I could see a number of advantages in Mark’s company holding a performing set of such works if the ensemble giving the work don’t have ready access to high-quality printing, and are familiar with hiring arrangements for orchestral sets.

The presence of the exact same parts on IMSLP does, however, make it trivial for the end-user to print their own, which might mitigate against uptake of the hire sets: some ensembles are able to amortise stationery costs in various ways which makes the printing effectively free, as opposed to a hire fee which would have to be budgeted against a concert.

I’m in agreement that there ought to be a happy medium between free beer and commercial exploitation: I think one reason we have seen little uptake on IMSLP from big-name, “professional” composers is the assumption that a free download from IMSLP means open slather with respect to performance and recording rights (and obviously, greatly reduced revenue from sale of scores).

Carolus, in terms of the “outright rapine lootery”, I am in possession of some information on how the same group are demanding grand rights on another, more recent public domain work which looks rather like a single technicality short of egregious copy-fraud.

Cheers, Philip

@Mark, This seems to be a very attractive and straightforward way to make it possible those willing to risk the time and energy to create a set of parts for an opera or other piece which is simply unavailable (or available only for a ridiculous rental fee plus "grand rights" from a publisher who treats an edition as if it were a new opera by John Adams). If you can set up a page for each such work on your site, it's simple enough for us to make an external link template to instantly transport someone interested in parts for some score on the wiki. We already have such links for readily available scores at both Amazon and Sheet Music Plus. We do receive a commission from purchases made from these links which help to pay the server bills, etc. which naturally are due without fail every month.

@Philip, I am curious what reed the publisher you mentioned is standing upon as an excuse for rapine lootery for a public domain work. There are some publishers with a long and notorious history in this regard, of course, so I expect it will not be a big surprise.

I also agree that this is an interesting idea, and I think one worth pursuing. Since this thread has already quite extensively discussed the issue, I will add just one more thing.

While we would be happy to pursue this project, IMSLP will still (and will always) welcome the submission of parts to the same extent as before, even on pages directly covered by this project. I think this is related to the balance between free and commercial that PML mentioned: even though IMSLP invites the opportunity to provide services that our users may want, IMSLP is also unwavering in its commitment to public access. I believe this is a core guiding principle that IMSLP must never lose sight of.

That said, I do think that this idea is interesting, and would certainly welcome at least a trial.

P.S. What I said above is in response only to the linking (which still holds true). After reading this thread again I'm not entirely sure we should be promoting this actively in the sense of steering IMSLP contributors away from contributing to IMSLP. Maybe we can see if anyone has any more thoughts on the topic before we decide. (This is not to say that no IMSLP contributor should participate.)

Many thanks to Carolus and IMSLP (Feldmahler) for the encourging responses.

Carolus wrote: If you can set up a page for each such work on your site, it's simple enough for us to make an external link template to instantly transport someone interested in parts for some score on the wiki.

It would not be a problem for me to devote a page on my company's website to each set of newly-typeset parts -- just as we do now for all works currently available on rental from Noteworthy Musical Editions. Links on IMSLP to these webpages would be most welcome.

However, I would like to make clear to all concerned: Noteworthy Musical Editions maintains very high editorial standards for newly-typeset parts in its catalog. In order to make our materials attractive for rental by professional orchestras, all parts must be typeset and printed to professional standards -- and that is no easy task.

In many respects, the preparation of sets of parts is a more exacting and difficult task than the preparation of orchestral scores. Simply put: errors in orchestral parts can result in mistakes in performances; and legibility problems in parts can result in wasted rehearsal time for the entire orchestra. I know of orchestras that have removed works from their programs because the parts were sub-standard. Thus, the submission of a set of parts to NME's rental catalog is subject to approval by our Editorial Committee (of which I am only one of three.)

In a week-or-so, I will post on our website NME's Guidelines and Standards for the Preparation and Printing of Orchestral Parts. These recommendations will be considerably more detailed than IMSLP's typesetting guidelines for scores. They will also be somewhat arbitrary. NME may not permit some typesetting practices that are acceptable elsewhere. Anyone (including IMSLP) who might find our recommendations for the preparation of parts to be of interest will be welcome to set up a link.

IMSLP wrote: While we would be happy to pursue this project, IMSLP will still (and will always) welcome the submission of parts to the same extent as before, even on pages directly covered by this project.

NME leaves the decision whether to post a set of orchestral parts on IMSLP, or to submit them to NME for inclusion in its rental catalog, up to the owner of each set of typeset parts. Obviously, many orchestras will not rent sets of parts from NME for a fee if those same parts are available for downloading for free on IMSLP. So, we will be reluctant to accept in our catalog any sets of parts that are already posted on IMSLP. I say 'reluctant,' but not 'categorical,' for the following reasons:

As Philip pointed out, it is often in the printing phase that orchestral parts become problematic for downloaders. Not only is there the constant danger of reversing odd and even pages (as Philip experienced,) orchestral parts must be printed in duplex (on very heavy paper stock to prevent bleed-thru,) at high resolution, and at widths not commonly available on home printers. Downloading scanned parts from IMSLP is the easy part. Printing a full set of parts for symphony orchestra, collating the pages, making covers that hold up large papersizes, attaching bindings that turn easily but do not tear -- all that is much more difficult. Many orchestras do not want to bother with the hassle. (In the case of orchestral parts for an opera, the tasks may become overwhelming.) Orchestral musicians want clean, accurate, large, legible parts with practical pageturns, generous cues, rehearsal letters and/or bar numbers, and sensible groups of bar-rests. That takes great time and effort to prepare.

MS

I would definitely be interested in posting a link to your guidelines from our typesetting guidelines. The more people see what is required for a professional typeset, the better!