Creatively Speaking

If the classical recording market is supposedly global, why is a major Yannick Nezet-Seguin recording available seemingly everywhere but here? The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns sent away to Japan for the conductor’s new Rotterdam Philharmonic recording - and wonders why.

This week we mark the birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was born in Russia on May 7, 1840 and died suddenly at age 53. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, the composer -  internationally renowned for his great melodies - was also a master of  technique and form. His body of work includes major works for the ballet, opera, and orchestra, as well as chamber music, concertos, sacred music, piano music, and solo songs.   

Cellist David Finckel has been a member of the Emerson String Quartet for over 30 years. In that time, the ensemble has garnered a reputation as one of the world’s finest chamber ensembles. Now Finckel is leaving the group. But as WRTI’s Jim Cotter reports, it - and he - will endure.

In the early 1900s, royalties from sales of sheet music produced a steady source of income to composers and music publishers. But radio changed all that. WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston sat down with a legal expert to learn how.

It was one thing to sit at a piano in a parlor and play a Stephan Foster tune from sheet music propped up on a music stand.  But a broadcast of music over the airwaves was a different thing entirely!  The advent of radio as a tool for entertainment set the music industry on its heels and brought about new interpretations of copyright law, just as the digital age has done. 

MERIDEE DUDDLESTON: Collecting royalties from sales of sheet music could be controlled. But intellectual property lawyer Gary Rosen says making music available to everyone over the airwaves for free was as disruptive to the music industry as the Internet has been.  Back in the early 1900s, composers saw radio broadcasts as a threat to their creativity and livelihoods - a threat, Rosen emphasizes, that copyright law was designed to prevent.

GARY ROSEN:  Copyright is given, not as a gift to composers, but it’s meant to benefit the public by spurring creativity.

MUSIC: John Philip Sousa's The Washington Post
 
DUDDLESTON:  The music industry and popular composers like John Philip Sousa concluded that a radio broadcast was a public performance of their copyrighted works. They demanded that the radio industry begin to pay royalties. And they banded together to enforce their rights in a way that avoided a logistical nightmare.

ROSEN:  Their solution was to form this performing rights organization in which they pool their copyrights and then licensed them on what’s called a blanket basis.

DUDDLESTON: The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was the first blanket licensing organization.  Rosen says blanket copyright licenses for radio have worked the way they were intended.

ROSEN: And the fact that a mechanism was formed to actually enforce that performance right and create an income stream for composers has had a tremendous impact on the quality and variety of American music – popular, jazz, classical.

Gary A. Rosen is the author of Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein

A Philadelphia-area jazz singer, who interprets songs in many languages, is also drawing attention to environmental issues. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, Phyllis Chapell finds that music is a way to reach people on many levels.

Information about Phyllis Chapell's upcoming live performances in the region.

The short film, AEIOU-Water, is shown Sundays at the Fairmount Water Works.   

Russian choral music developed over centuries - informed by tradition, the state, the church, and eventually other parts of the world. As WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, this month, The Philadelphia Singers contrasts the works of two Russian masters, who created their sacred choral music over a century apart.

The Philadelphia Singers performs selections from Tchaikovsky’s 1878 Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, together with Alfred Schnittke's Choir Concerto, written in 1984-85, at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Center City, Philadelphia on Sunday April 28th. Information here.

Music Lives at the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill, where, as WRTI's Jim Cotter reports, the role of jazz in the history of the United Nations is being celebrated - close to where the UN’s Headquarters might have been.

Take a look at the Promise Of Peace: Violet Oakley's United Nations Portraits at the Woodmere Art Museum.

A United Nations Jazz Jam: Musicians from Around the World, April 26th, 6 to 8 pm at the Woodmere Art Museum. Performers include Yoomi Kwan (Korea, on cello); Rosie Langabeer (New Zealand), on accordion and piano); Atiba (Trinidad, on steel drums); Gloria Galante (Italy, on harp); Qin-Qian (China, on Erhu); Koki Soul (French Canadian, guitar/percussion/vocals); Phyllis Hadad (Brazil, on piano) and Moguane Mahloeoe (South Africa, on percussion).

One of the most recent instrumentalists to be added to the roster of soloists in orchestral performances is the percussionist. As WRTI’s Jim Cotter reports, it’s a role that makes unique demands.

In a program that also features works by Wagner and Tchaikovsky, Colin Currie performs Christopher Rouses' Der gerettete Alberich with The Philadelphia Orchestra here on WRTI on Sunday, April 21 at 2 pm.

Though better known today as a commercial brand, the Rosetta Stone is the artifact that most helped human kind in its understanding of ancient languages. As WRTI's Jim Cotter reports, a local music group is using the term to describe its exploration of great music written in non-native languages. Lyric Fest presents: The Rosetta Stone at the Academy of Vocal Arts on Sunday, May 5th at 3 pm.