Klarinet Archive - Posting 000207.txt from 2001/09

From: "Lacy, Edwin" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [kl] Re: rental parts' misprints
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 22:28:59 -0400

> > Well, you have to understand, the xxxxxxxs of the world put errors in
> > their parts intentionally as part of protecting themselves against as-
> > sertions of copyright infringement,
>
> I hope you're saying this in jest ...

He's definitely not kidding. There is a certain well-known, high-volume
publisher whose advertising at one time stated, "Of course, we would never
intentionally write incorrect notes in our editions," when every orchestral
musician is quite well aware that that is exactly what they do. Perhaps
they intend to try to protect themselves against charges of copyright
violation, and perhaps it might or might not successfully serve that
purpose, but the wrong notes and other errors are obvious. That company had
undergone a change of ownership or management, so perhaps they really did
intend to "clean up their act."

This publisher, which exists in an English-speaking country, sometimes
publishes Russian music where the names of the title, author, and other text
is written in Russian with Cyrillic script. How many publishers in
English-speaking countries would publish works with Cyrillic text? If they
didn't set the type themselves, where did they get the plates from which the
music was printed?

In the music of this publisher, one can observe such interesting features as
rests with attached noteheads, extremely high or low notes with missing
ledger lines, etc. In some but not all cases, what was originally intended
is obvious. However, the variations from the correct versions are so
egregious as to go beyond the realm of unintentional errors.

Ed Lacy
EL2@-----.edu

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