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Music in print Henry Bird describes how music publishers can help your group This year, London’s Southbank Centre has been hosting a series of events centred around 20th century music. That a music festival in one of the world’s most respected cultural institutions can be entitled ‘The Rest is Noise’ says a lot about people’s preconceptions of modern classical music. These were the same preconceptions I held myself on graduating from university – that modern music is impenetrable, deliberately difficult and inaccessible. In a word, noise. My degree was in music, although I knew little about music composed beyond the 1960s. I thought classical music was dead, an industry sustained only by the masterworks of the past. That is, until I got my first job at a music publisher, when I discovered the music written by that company’s house composers. This was classical music composed within the last 10 years that wasn’t unintelligible or ugly, but relevant and exciting. Maybe it’s to be expected that new music has a lower profile than older repertoire, considering the fact that it’s performed less frequently. In a recent survey of Making Music members, 10% of instrumental groups described their core repertoire as ‘contemporary classical’; responses from vocal groups were lower, at 7.8%. Of course, a group whose core repertoire is 19th century music may programme some works by living composers, but we can still assume from these two statistics that the majority of music performed by our members was composed more than 70 years ago.
12 HIGHNOTES Autumn 2013
But why don’t we programme more copyright music? It could be that it is often more difficult to perform and, as commercial recordings aren’t always available, not as easy to rehearse. If there is no commercial recording, a piece is also less likely to be known by audiences, making tickets harder to sell. Crucially, copyright music can also be more expensive to source. Indeed, in the same survey, 23% of vocal groups and 55% of instrumental groups said they rarely hire or purchase any music in copyright because of the cost. In order to understand why copyright music is expensive, it’s first necessary to understand how classical music publishers work. Simon Wright of Oxford University Press describes music publishers as ‘the conduit between the creative musical writer (the composer or the songwriter) and the end user (the performer or the listener).’ In other words, they’re responsible for distributing and promoting the work of the company’s composers and then, by managing their royalties and fees, ensuring these composers are properly remunerated. Once a classical publisher has signed a new composer, it will invest heavily in promoting that composer by securing commissions, generating performances and commercial recordings, and undertaking advertising and public relations. On top of this are costs for editing, printing
Above: A performance of Ahoy by Alexander L’Estrange, published by Faber Music Cover image: Stephanie Pineda performing Alexander L’Estrange’s Zimbe with Ifield Community College Choir and the Concordia Singers Photo: Martin Oxley