Copyright Craziness
The BBC has an example of the lengths to which some people apparently feel they must go to comply with RIAA insanity: Exam papers had answers on back
Thousands of teenagers are facing uncertainty over their exams after a GCSE music paper was found to have some of the answers on the back.
The paper – taken across England – involved pupils listening to pieces of music and then identifying composers and styles of music.
The music clips are identified by copyright notices on the back of the exam papers, as in:
Question 6: Who wrote this piece [listen to music].
And on the back:
Q6 Sound clip Chaikovski Waltz from Swan Lake from Sony Classical
I really think that inclusion in a test would constitute “fair use”, especially since the entire piece will not be played. It would also have been easier to have had an exam CD created by testing authorities with one of the many local orchestras in Britain that do not have recording contracts but could use some extra funding.
4 comments
Aha! caught you! They didn’t render “Chaikovski” that way; no British-trained or American-trained musician would do so, unless they had also studied elsewhere. Yes, your transliteration is the correct one. No, one does not find it anywhere in music schools in the English-speaking world, as far as I know. Perhaps you may wish to launch a movement to change that. If so, I recommend you launch the first movement of Symphony #6. 😈
I avoid spelling Cui, Kyui, but the Tsar is the Tsar and Pyotr Il’ich has no T in his last name Чайковский. The “German” influence on his music lead to a lot of hard feelings in Russia [well, and the fact he was gay], but he shouldn’t have to put up with the German “T”.
Fair enough, Bryan.
German influence on Chaikovski’s music notwithstanding, German influence on the disciplines of musicology and music theory is overwhelming beyond most people’s awareness; that’s how the ‘T’ got there in the first place. Thirty years ago when I studied music in grad school, the work of German music theorists and music historians was so dominant (yes, pun intended) that music grad students in America were strongly encouraged to study the German language if they didn’t already at least read it.
In Russia it led to physical violence, which is not good for instruments or those who use them.
Pyotr Il’ich was just attempting to earn his crust and the people with money were more amenable to the German forms. He slipped in a lot of Russian themes, but the upper class expected certain things in a certain way.
Most people forget that things can get extremely hidebound, even in the Arts. The tyranny of the “three B’s” lasted a very long time.