Open Well-Tempered Clavier: a Kickstarter Campaign For Open Source Bach 70
rDouglass writes "The Open Goldberg Variations team has launched a new project to make an open source, public domain version of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. The work is significant because of its enormous influence on musicians and composers throughout history. A new studio recording, a new digital MuseScore score (with support for MusicXML and MIDI), as well as all source materials (multitrack WAV, lossless FLAC) will be provided as libre and gratis downloads. New to the project are publisher GRIN Verlag, as well as record label PARMA Recordings. GRIN and PARMA will produce and distribute the physical score and double CD, even though the digital versions are to be widely available and in the public domain. Their enthusiasm for the project runs counter to the general publishing and music industry's fear of digital file sharing, and shows growing momentum for finding new models to make free music commercially sustainable."
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Le sigh.
Open source and public domain are not mutual, nor is one needed for the other. Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it (under most licenses, EG Creative Commons), while open source means anyone can try and make it better. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.
Re:Open source? (Score:4, Informative)
For $500 you might get a proficient high schooled player – but not a professional musician. Then factor in rehearsal time.
Which gets back to the “making it better” and the Creative Commons license – specially the “No Derivative Works” section. They want attribution. They don’t want people dropping out a section and replacing it with another. I think both requests are resonable.
Remember, we are talking about classic works here. You may not be able to hear the difference between on performer verse another but those who are passionate can.
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For $500 you might get a proficient high schooled player – but not a professional musician.
Sure I can, easily. And they'd give me a blow-job for good measure.
You really underestimate the sorry state of musician employment.
Re:Open source? (Score:5, Informative)
The artist, Kimiko Ishizaka, is easily at-or-above par with Juilliard students. The producer, Anne-Marie Sylvestre, is A-OK at what she does. The studio and staff are top-notch. The instrument will be kick-ass. Etc.
And, there's a track record for this project -- the Goldberg Variations recordings [opengoldbe...ations.org] they've already done are fine.
Maybe you have an axe to grind with Drupal [drupal.org] geeks [robshouse.net]? ;-)
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Don't confuse the composition with the performance, or a particular edition of printed music. Bach's work is public domain, but a particular printed edition, or a recorded performance, are new works covered by copyright law. Open-Source derives its power from copyright law.
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Except that it's not always completely obvious what the composer intended. Sometimes there's the manuscript, often there isn't. Then it might have been copied by someone. The copy might have corrections - sometimes in the composers hand, sometimes not, sometimes it isn't known. Even the manuscript might have corrections that might or might not be the composers own.
A good editor will look at all the diff
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if it's really public domain you can do whatever you please with it. sell it as well.
problem with making new public domain music - and just free to play anywhere music - is that you have to find musicians who have not signed up for some local copyright monopoly organization.. it's kinda fucked up if you think about it.
Re:Open source? (Score:4, Informative)
Le sigh.
Open source and public domain are not mutual, nor is one needed for the other. Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it
No. Public domain means that it's in the public domain [stanford.edu]: that means nobody owns it, and anybody can do whatever they like with it.
(under most licenses, EG Creative Commons),
If you have to agree to a license to use it, it's not public domain.
while open source means anyone can try and make it better. You can have one without the other, and vice versa.
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Public domain means anyone can have it for free as long as they don't try and sell it.
No. CC license != public domain. Public domain is not a license. There is nothing at all stopping you from collecting the works of HP Lovecraft, publishing them, and selling them. The published product itself is protected, but the stories are not.
A couple of items. First, you should be aware of the CC0 [creativecommons.org] license, which is a way for a creator to explicitly place a work into the public domain, or to disclaim as many rights as legally possible. It asserts that the creator had all legal and moral rights to the work, and that the creator explicitly gives these rights to the public, to the greatest extent possible under law. Second, you're absolutely right about being able to sell stuff which is in the public domain (although finding a buyer can sometimes
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Re:Open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And YouTube will tag your video as having pirated sound even if the music is Creative Commons. I've had this happen - they didn't silence the video or take it down, but they did remove the ability to download the video. Using their counterclaim form didn't get this changed either.
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Using their counterclaim form didn't get this changed either.
Does YouTube tell you who make the illegal claim or are they protecting/hiding them? I'd assume transparency, so they would not be an accessory, so if you have the info of the people making the false claim take steps [mikeyounglaw.com] to protect yourself and the community from these kinds of bandits.
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Groundbreaking music (Score:2)
The 4-CD set by Andras Schiff was the first recording I ever had to save and scrimp for, when I was still back in high school, and it's been worth every penny. I had heard one track and was told the rest was great, and it is. I'm a drummer, but listening to this recording a couple hundred times is probably responsible for any melodic and harmonic sense I may have developed at that time. I haven't heard the version referenced in TFA, but it's hard to make this music sound bad. Highly recommended in principle
Re:Groundbreaking music (Score:4, Interesting)
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My personal favorite is Bob van Asperen's recording on Virgin. Exuberant!
Re:OK. I can do this for $50. (Score:4, Insightful)
Starving Music Student here. I trained as a performer. IU. Got graduate school funding at Cinci, Cleveland, Julliard, and Eastman. Basically the best music schools in the nation. I chose academics rather than performance, however, because of arthritis that would cripple me by age 50. But, if you were looking for a good representative of a very compentent collegiate musician, that's me. (I've also won an audition for professional 52 week symphony orchestras, but didn't take the gig because I went into academia instead -- and those are jobs with hundreds of applicants per vacency, and that's only because thousands of wannabes don't even bother sending a tape to actually win an audition)
I wouldn't dream of making a recording of key pieces in the repertory of my instrument. (Viola/Violin) Nobody would want to hear it. I sure wouldn't do something like the WTK (If I were a pianist) or the Cello Suites/Violin Sonatas and Partitas. Sure, I've performed them all more than once, and can teach them all, but I wouldn't dare put a microphone in front of me. And, I wouldn't dio it for 500 bucks. I wouldn't even take that for just one of the suites/sonatas/partitas. (It takes a long time to prepare something to that level, even though I know them quite intimately) I don't even leave my house to play at a gig for less than 150 bucks. That's a crappy wedding or a funeral. If you want me to go to a rehearsal, it's at least a hundred more. (Still cheaper than most tradesmen though)
You have obviously not rented a recording studio. Even a crappy one is expensive. Try gettting access to a really great piano for free too. Even if we have your utopia of cheapo student playing in a recital hall at their university with a crappy microphone, the student workers recording the WTK getting work/study wages, with the many hours that this would take, would cost more than 500 bucks.
TL;DR -- Starving Music Student=not good enough for people with an ear. Recording studios are expensive. It's impressive how cheaply they can do this already!
Get off my lawn.
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Re: OK. I can do this for $50. (Score:2)
What's your take on The Piano Guys?
It seems they aren't afraid to explore classical (sic) music in a more modern rendering. I'm running into more and more people who enjoy. Quite surprised how they are making some of the "greats" get more exposure.
Well tempered intentions (Score:5, Informative)
There also exists public domain recording by musopen.org [musopen.org], which will probably pale in comparison, but nonetheless it's great that these efforts exist.
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Robert Douglass has been working and co-operating with Musopen.org who are also doing something similar for Chopin. This is Kickstarter number 3 for Mr Douglass and Ms. Ishizaka - well worth anyone's support as it will produce a superb outcome.
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Aack! Not on a piano again! (Score:5, Interesting)
A piano is a tremendously wonderful instrument for piano music. But this (Well-Tempered Clavier) is not piano music! You can make a decent-sounding performance of clavier music on the piano, just like you can transcribe a vocal for violin, but you lose a lot of the specific things the composer --- especially a master of the instrument like Bach --- put into the work. Basically, all intricate and fast-moving detail in a piece gets mushed up and lost on the piano, which is designed for a smoother, more "blended" sound than the clearly articulated single notes of pre-piano predecessors. Please, if you want an open cultural reference to Bach's keyboard music, play it on appropriate kinds of keyboard!
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Re:Aack! Not on a piano again! (Score:5, Informative)
It's true Bach didn't perform on a piano, though to be pedantic, the word clavier doesn't denote a specific kind of instrument. It's just a traditional name for keyboard instruments, and sometimes the piano is considered in the family. Bach himself apparently performed on both the harpsichord and clavichord, though his work is most associated with the harpsichord.
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Bach did perform on the piano, just not as a primary instrument:
At first [Silbermann's] experiments were - well - experimental! It is known that JS Bach tried one and commented critically by pointing out serious defects - heavy touch and weakness of the higher notes. Later instruments however, Bach was able to praise, and it is on record that when in 1747 Bach visited Frederick the Great at Potsdam he played upon Silbermann pianofortes, of which the king possessed a number, possibly fifteen. All pianofortes
Re:Aack! Not on a piano again! (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget a lot of "piano" music we associate with Beethoven and back was written on the harpsichord and organ. The piano didn't exist.
I'll assume you meant "Bach" -- Beethoven certainly played and composed for the piano
(See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortepiano [wikipedia.org]).
As far as the suitability of playing Bach on a piano (or any other instrument) ... this controversy has been around for awhile. Striving for "historic authenticity" in performance is a relatively recent phenomenon, representing trends in Musicology and research into the construction of period instruments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_informed_performance [wikipedia.org])
Nobody probably thought much of someone releasing a recording of something like the WTC played on piano 50 years ago, but in today's artistic climate, it's regarded as being a bit tasteless, as Bach certainly wrote his contrapuntal keyboard works for the keyboards of his day (be they harpsichord, clavier, or organ).
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A compromise may be to use a "piano-forte", which is the word sometimes used to describe wooden-framed or early pianos. Some of the earlier pianos sounded half like a harpsichord and half like a modern piano because they were built out of harpsichord parts and designs.
You don't get quite the tinny sound of a harpsichord, yet have the familiarity of the piano sound. A clavichord is another alternative, but the sound rubs some the wrong way
Re:Aack! Not on a piano again! (Score:4, Interesting)
Much of the "tinny sounding" reputation for harpsichords was due to poorly made harpsichord reproductions from the 1930's-'50s, before good scholarship on re-inventing the art of harpsichord building had been collected, so "harpsichords" were rigged together from iron-frame, metal-stringed piano parts. A variety of more modern reproduction instruments, and restored originals, indicates that members of the harpsichord family don't generally have the clanky, tinny sound associated with mid-20th-century harpsichord music (during the initial revival of interest in older musical forms). The clavier family was often closely associated with the lute --- a very "delicate" and nuanced instrument --- during its heyday.
I think having the "limitation" of pre-piano movements (little/no control over volume from key velocity) is important to performing Bach's keyboard music "authentically" (for a "cultural reference" production), since alternate ways around that are built into the composition/performance of pieces (nuances lost on a piano), which allow proper performances to actually be quite dynamic. One can find plenty of clavier-family instruments with a more pleasing tone to modern ears than more "aggressive" examples of harpsichords, especially not "tinny sounding" poor reproduction instruments.
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Could you by chance find a Youtube vid or MP3 sample somewhere to illustrate the authentic sound?
Re:Aack! Not on a piano again! (Score:4, Insightful)
In agreement with Atmchicago, I have to disagree with you here. He wrote them for the clavichord, and that instrument has a specific sound. There are people who record on the clavichord, but as a performance instrument it's quite lacking in volume and is only appropriate for small rooms. Also, the clavichord wasn't really Bach's ideal instrument, as it gave the performer no ability to play soft and loud. Bach's writings were clear about his frustrations with this limitation, which is the main reason the Piano took off like it did.
The key to playing Bach on the piano (as well as Mozart and lots of other pre-Romantic composers) is to use the sustain pedal sparingly if at all, to maintain the clean sound. Glenn Gould was a master at performing music with a clean sound, and there are many other pianists who do this quite well, such as Angela Hewitt.
If you listen to Gould's 1981 recording of the Bach's Goldberg variations [youtube.com], he achieved (with a Yamaha piano rather than his usual Steinway) a very distinct bell-like and clean tone, very dry without a hint of the lushness and sentimentality of the "traditional" Romantic sound the modern piano was designed for. Gould was one of the best at getting this sound, but he's definitely not the only one.
Re:Aack! Not on a piano again! (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that Bach's compositions reflect "frustrations with the limitations" of the instrument is probably the best argument for performing them on that instrument: built into the structure of the pieces are all the best-effort inventions to push the boundary of those limitations (which tend to get lost, or simply rendered irrelevant, in piano performances). Bach may have preferred to write and perform on a piano-forte, but he knew what instrument he was primarily writing for.
The limitations of pre-piano keyboard instruments for large-scale performance halls don't seem to be a big problem if you're focusing on making a recording (rather than giving a big live performance). With modern recording technology, we really live in a golden age for more intimate chamber music --- you no longer have to be wealthy enough to hire a private orchestra to enjoy "small-scale" productions in the comfort of your own home on a pair of headphones or speakers. The emphasis on making instruments big and loud enough to fill a concert hall (much of the drive behind the development of the piano) is less important if most of your listeners will be via a digital recording anyway.
I have nothing particularly against piano performances of these pieces; they can be quite enjoyable and musically well-done. Gould's work is well done, as is Ishizaka's previously released set of the Goldberg Variations. My objection here is that, if you present something as intended to be a "reference" edition for hearing and understanding Bach, that ought to include presenting the specific instrumental limitations that Bach was working with/around (rather than erasing Bach's efforts for what he "might have done" in a world where the piano became popular a few decades earlier).
This will destroy the industry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This will destroy the industry (Score:4, Funny)
He hasn't put out any new work in many years. Nor have other greats such as Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Liszt.
This is definitive proof that piracy has killed the output of these famous, world-renowned composers and performers!
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A dude on the street corner sold me Beethoven's new 11th symphony for 50 cents.
Nobody believes in God anymore (Score:1)
But we all believe in Bach !
Werner had the right idea. (Score:5, Informative)
Companies like Peters that do sell good accurate scores of Bach are so behind the times they literally cannot see the forest because the trees are still being cut down. It is entirely possible for them to distribute decent editions for sale in e-pub and the technology to put scores on e-ink could be made usable with essentially e-reader technology that is score sized instead of pocket book. I would gladly pay for a decent music e-ink reader that would work on my music stand. The information age is slogging along and eventually the real potential of digital music notation will happen. But unfortunately we still have those who have their heads up their assets in the music publishing industry.
Werner was a stickler for accurate notation and much of what is there on the historic digital archive, especially the Bach section, is very accurate. Unfortunately since his death others have corrupted what he started and some of the archive is not good or even accurate notation, however most of the Bach is excellent and done by people who understand the importance of accuracy in music notation. Many of the scores adhere to original source where ever possible. Which can be very difficult as in the time of the great champions of Bach's music during the late classical era much of Bach's sheet music had fallen into oblivion.
For instance a friend of Felix Mendelssohn actually found music scores by Bach being used by a butcher to wrap meats! So the digitizing for all time of all our great heritage of written music is as important as project Gutenberg. Werner understood this as many others do and either the existing music publishing houses will get on board or they will be a footnote in the history of written music.
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Yes - and the score that we're going to make goes to 11 in comparison. Because it's digital, meaning "source code", not just a printed PDF. Check this out - it's important for the understanding of what we're doing:
The real "source" is the printed score in most cases, especially for those who actually read, study and write music. Irresponsible and at times illiterate keyboard players creating MIDI "source code" is not the answer to the preservation of our heritage of printed music. To archive "digital music" in the form of MIDI or editable format is a blind alley quite literally. Originals must be preserved by responsible organizations!
For instance the historic first edition publications that are in collections need
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We're not "irresponsible and at times illiterate keyboard players". I have 3 higher degrees in music, and I'm just the one overseeing the project. Furthermore, nobody said we're archiving music in MIDI. The "responsible" organizations that will archive these works include IMSLP, Musopen, Wikimedia Commons, Archive.org, and Freemusicarchive. PS we're not using MIDI from a keyboard.
Very glad to hear that this effort is more than just another digitally dysfunctional music notation idea. Yes I am using MuseScore already. The input methods in the software are highly logical I have paginated studies to work as pdf that are readable on e-ink devices. I do see a very realistic possibility of using larger e-ink devices on a music stand instead of paper in the near future. This is why a common format such as PDF is so important! What might finally free up the digital distribution of scores is
The problem here,,, (Score:3)
is that audiences are not interested in an academic reference recording of Bach but in the richly varied interpretations of artists each with their own gifts --- using arrangements of their own choice, instruments of their own choice, in a venue of their own choice.
It is like trying to capture Shakespeare in a bottle.
Uncork the thing and what you will get is a performance wholly typical of the acting style and staging of the year the play was recorded.
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is that audiences are not interested in an academic reference recording of Bach but in the richly varied interpretations of artists each with their own gifts --- using arrangements of their own choice, instruments of their own choice, in a venue of their own choice.
It is like trying to capture Shakespeare in a bottle.
If you watch Glen Gould going over Peters editions at Columbia Records during recording sessions you would fully understand the importance of scholarly work to preserve musical scores. Without decent editions of sheet music for musicians to interpret in the first place there would be no great recordings. Many great Jazz musicians use Bach's music for melodic and harmonic inspiration, as have many composers over the centuries. Jaco Pastorius [youtube.com] whom many consider the greatest improvising bassist of all time, wo
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Or variations upon a ground bass in dactyls. I have already written several over the years just to see how long one can avoid using harmonic repe
I'm a contrarian (Score:1)
Where do I get a cantankerous clavier?