Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Complete Mozart Works Now Free

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Dec 13, 2006 10:13 PM
from the eine-kleine-internet-nachtmusik dept.
Media Music
An anonymous reader writes "Mozart's year-long 250th birthday party is ending on a high note with the musical scores of his complete works available for the first time free on the Internet. Although most classical music is obviously too old to be under copyright, the rights to specific editions of pieces are owned by the publishers. Now, the International Mozart Foundation has acquired the right to publish the prestigious New Mozart Edition of every Mozart work on the internet. The response has been so overwhelming that the Foundation has been forced to increase their server capacity."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Complete Mozart Works Now Free 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Mozardot (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pig Hogger (10379) <pig...hogger@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:14PM (#17231888) Homepage Journal
    Are you sure it isn't the Slashdot effect???

  • Slashdot effect.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Beuno (740018) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {anitnegra}> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:17PM (#17231910) Homepage
    The response has been so overwhelming that the Foundation has been forced to increase their server capacity.


    And now they're going to have to increase them again...
  • Can you download the music files also? If so, where are the links?

  • Completed Mozart Now Works For Free? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:20PM (#17231950)
    They finally finished reassembling him, eh? And he creates new works without charging a penny, eh?? EXCELLENT!

    I now command the recently re-animated corpse of Mozart to pen me a symphony, with no expectation of compensation! POST-HASTE!

  • other options (Score:5, Informative)

    by bcrowell (177657) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:32PM (#17232030) Homepage
    Before anyone gets too excited -- there are plenty of public-domain editions of Mozart. This is just one particular edition that's going to be available online for free. There's actually a huge amount of PD sheed music available at Mutopia [mutopiaproject.org]. The nice thing about the Mutopia stuff is that it's in a format that's editable using free software (Lilypond). For instance, I've taken some Mozart horn duets and arranged them so my daughter and I can play them on violin and viola. Because it's in Lilypond format, it's easy to transpose, arrange, whatever. If all you want is digital scans of PD editions, there are various sites that will let you download scans for free [dmoz.org]. One thing that seems a little goofy about the NMA thing is that they make you agree to use this web site only for personal study and not to make copies except for my personal use under "Fair Use" principles of Copyright law as defined in this license agreement. Uh ... fair use is an exception to copyright. Hell, I can copy a Britney Spears CD and call it fair use.

  • that's not really "free" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by idlake (850372) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:32PM (#17232036)
    What they have put up is hardly "free"; it requires you to agree to a license agreement that limits you to "personal use" under "fair use" principles. Well, geez, you already could copy the music under those principles before.

    Companies like Barereiter have been playing tricks with copyright for a long time, for example, by slightly modifying sheet music every few years with meaningless (and often, erroneous) "interpretations".

    This is not how music should be treated 200 years after a composer's death, in particular in the day and age of the Internet. There is no reason why Mozart's entire body of work shouldn't be digitized and freely available with no restrictions on use at all, in a form like Project Gutenberg.

    • That's not really "free"... On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RockyMountain (12635) on Thursday December 14 2006, @12:56AM (#17232932) Homepage
      This is not how music should be treated 200 years after a composer's death, in particular in the day and age of the Internet.

      I agree. And I'd like as much as the next person to see the complete Mozart truly free, "as in speech". But that does not negate the fact that this is a very significant event. I agree that it isn't free as in "free speech", only as in "free beer".
      But before today, it was free in neither sense.

      This is still a HUGE step in the right direction. As a violinist, for all practical purposes, I have the complete Mozart available to me. Even if I can't perform from these scores in public (I don't know if that's the case, just guessing), at least I can _get_ these scores. I can practice them. I can study them. I can even memorize them. And for the tiny percentage that I even want to perform in public, my orchestera will still have to pay up to rent the scores, as they've always done.

      Well, geez, you already could copy the music under those principles before.

      You'd first have to get your hands on them.

      Sure, you can argue that my rights under copyright haven't changed, versus previously-available versions. I could, under "fair use", xerox a printed edition that I'd purchassed, and use it in the same way that I can now use a download from this site. True in theory, but I'd still have to pony up literally hundreds of dollars for a half-decent edition of a complete score for a major work such as a symphony. In practice, it was prohibitively expensive to get your hands on this stuff before today, and impossible in a lot of cases. Now, it's a mouse click away.

      And before you remind me of Mutopia and others, just take a browse through them. Mutopia, for example, has about 60 hits for Mozart. Even if we assume each one is a complete score to a unique opus in original instrumentation, with all parts included -- a highly optimistic assumption! -- that's still less than 10% of Mozart's works.

      This is a _big_ deal.

      Think about how this impacts a musician's opportunities to learn music. Right now, if I hear a piece that I like, there's essentially no way to just take a look at the score, play with it for a few hours. Decide whether it's right for me and whether to go ahead and purchase the score. Before I can see a single measure, I have to make a major financial commitment. True, if the piece is the solo of a very popular concerto or work for solo instrument, there _might_ be an arangement in the local music store, that's authentic enough to get a taste of it. But, if it's, say, a violin part for a symphony, or some such, you are totally out of luck. Short of springing hundreds of dollars, you can't even get to look at it. But now, if it's a Mozart piece, you CAN take a look. This is great.

      Postscript: I agree with the parent posting, by the way. It is a shame that public domain doesn't exist (for all practical purposes), even for 250 year-old compositions. I just want to point out that this announcement is still wonderful news for all Mozart-loving musicians.

      • Re:that's not really "free" (Score:5, Informative)

        by jfengel (409917) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:01PM (#17232258) Homepage Journal
        The copyright is expired on the works, but not on this particular edition of the works, which is a particularly well-researched one.

        Think of an edition as being like a translation from another language. You could, if you want, transcribe the music yourself from Mozart's original documents, if you had them. (They're in various libraries and collections throughout the world; a friend of mine worked with some at the Library of Congress.) In fact, there are often several originals, some incomplete and some conflicting with each other.

        It's a lot of work, like doing a translation, and like a translation, the resulting document is itself a new work with a new original copyright date.

  • See? Copyright has its limits (Score:5, Funny)

    by Weaselmancer (533834) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:32PM (#17232038)

    I'm sure Mozart is finally wealthy enough to where having his music in the public domain won't hurt him.

    Wait? He's been dead for 215 years? Oh. Nevermind.

  • Concering copyright of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:47PM (#17232156)
    Many people here seem, as expected, look more on the copyright side of the issue. The fact is, getting such an edition together is *not* easy by any stretch. That particular edition itself (Neue Mozart-Ausgabe) took 36 years (finished in 1991) to complete. Consider the amount of money that has to be paid to musicologists to do research for the 35 years. Obviously Barenreiter doesn't want to give it away for free. So the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum *bought* the rights of online publication from Barenreiter, and of course even then there will be limits to what you can do with it. Obviously you cannot use these scans to publish and sell your own version of it. I consider Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum very very generous, and I thank them for it.

    Also, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe is NOT public domain in any sense of the word, because of the editing. As professional musicians know, editing is *not* something you suddenly decide to do, or something where you change a few notes and that's that. It is a long process where you research all evidence (including conflicting ones), and try to build an edition that the composer himself would have approved of. And for most editions (and all of the Barenreiter ones) a critical report comes with each piece; and it documents the path of research and the evidence used.

    If you want truly public domain Mozart scores, try the Alte Mozart-Ausgabe (the old complete edition), which is completely in the public domain, with partial scans if it circulating around the net. Though, if you checked on wikipedia, you'll realize how big a difference there is between the Alte and Neue Mozart-Ausgabes.

    • Re:Give the RIAA time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by westlake (615356) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:44PM (#17232554)
      and they will find a way for one of their members to place it under Copyright so anyone using Mozart's music could and would face lawsuits.

      This edition is copyrighted.

      Mozart in the original would be of use only to an academic --- How do you read his notation? What instruments was he writing for? --- and so on.

      Students are being given "fair use" rights to study modern "translations" of Mozart.

      Musicians are not being given rights to public performance of the scores. There is a difference and it is a difference that matters.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.