Virtual Music Scores, Copyright and the Promotion of a Marginalized Technology

Abstract

Virtual music scores are produced from highly manipulable instructions about the location and other attributes of digitally rendered musical symbols and sounds. These instructions, compiled in one of the hundreds of codes developed for the graphical representation of music, direct the arrangement of pixels into a sequence of characters of symbolic music notation. They typically also comprise MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) instructions that enable sound producing machinery to recreate cfonsistently, across audio platforms, an audible rendition of the visual score.

Over seventy percent of professional quality music scores are now produced using virtual score technology yet very few of these are distributed in any format other than printed scores. This is regrettable because virtual scores offer musicians remarkable new creative freedoms and efficiencies. They are also, however, more susceptible to unauthorized copying than are hardcopy scores; hence publishers are reluctant to distribute their scores in this format.

Publishers of editions of public domain musical works - that comprise most of the Classical music canon - are particularly chary of distribution of virtual scores. This is because their copyright interest in these editions tends to be attenuated, extending only to original information that editors may have added, but not to the considerable “sweat of the brow” they may have invested in producing scores that reflect the original author’s intentions.

This article suggests that to ensure a future for music scores publishers of public domain and copyrightable music scores alike might find that the best means to capitalize upon their publications - while also promoting more widespread adoption of virtual score technology - are contractual restrictions and access and copy controls managed by aggregators of virtual music scores.

Keywords: copyright, music, publication, digital technologies