Author: Dutchy
Date: 2009-01-12 17:21
Well, addressing the issue of potential copyright infringement...in jazz, it's expected that the performer will embellish and improvise, and nobody gets upset that the composer's copyright was infringed--you don't expect Duke Ellington to be performed every single time just as he wrote it, you expect the performer to make himself free with it, artistically speaking.
And in pop music--which, let's face it, this piece is--every performer who covers a song always adds his own "take" on it. You can line up virtually any two covers of any pop standard from the last 80 years or so, and hear two different songs. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, all those other "crooners", always added notes here and there in the course of their interpretation, and nobody pointed their fingers at any copyright infringement. Rosemary Clooney, people like that, you sit there with the sheet music, following along, and they're singing notes that aren't there.
Also, as regards posting it on Youtube, I believe the "fair use" guidelines cover it. There's a handy Fair Use checklist here. I believe it's covered under "Research" and "Scholarship" ("What would this piece sound like with ornamentation?") and "Transformative or productive use (changes the work for new utility)", and under "User owns lawfully acquired or purchased copy of original work" and "No significant effect on the market or potential market for copyrighted work", "No similar product marketed by the copyright holder", and "Lack of licensing mechanism".
Really, I'd like to see him do it. And posting it on Youtube is the most sensible, accessible way for us to hear it. There are all kinds of mashups of music posted on Youtube, most of them in even more flagrant copyright violation than something like this. It's not taking the bread out of the mouth of Morricone; it's not profiting from it. It's actually using his work to explore musically, which I think is perfectly fine, on a level of those people who record music scored for one instrument with a different one--Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary, anyone? 
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