Yes, it could get messy. But theory and practice must go hand in hand. Besides, you make it sound as if democracy was created by the privileged classes to make those without privilege feel better -- not that it isn't de facto that way, but insofar as it is, that's not real democracy, just so we're clear.

It is indeed attractive. Indeed we, for our part, have more than once wondered if it were not in our interests to take holy orders as a means of bypassing the problem so acutely noted by Member Dish, and so acutely and painfully experienced by ourselves on a daily basis, namely the difficulty of doing intellectual work when one's time is not one's own.

We do approve! Was the kindness returned in the form of free apple pie with custard from an unexpected benefactor, we wonder? Or was the Member's childhood appetite sated rather by a a cunning if in the circumstances surely forgivable expedient such as the pear-tree trick described above?

(Incidentally, might we assure Member Dish that our earlier remark was in no wise intended - nor even, dare we say it, 'constituted' - as a making light of his pear-shaped covetousness. Far from it. We simply wished to assure the Member Lawson that some responses take longer to formulate than others, but that no judgment of value is to be inferred therefrom.)

Just as a brief filler until I do get time to compose a proper reply to Ian: I don't have a problem with his phrase 'for its [the music's] own sake', which could be taken in context as an accurate rendition of one side of the distinction I was drawing attention to in Adorno between 'cultural entities [which are] commodities through and through' and those 'governed ... by their own specific content and harmonious formation'.

I actually don't think Adorno's phrase about 'their own specific content and harmonious formation' is entirely meaningless, but I think unpacking both (a) the meaning he wants it to have and (b) the problems associated with his conception of the autonomous artwork would get us some way to answering Ian's questions.

More later.

T.I.N.

Thank you very much for taking my contribution seriously.

Unfortunately I’m away now for 24 hours so I will not be able to respond until then. However, I look forward to reading your response on my return.

I would certainly not be in favour of the abolition of intellectual property rights (which extend, of course, far beyond just music), but then maybe that's just my personal view in the present climate based upon the fact that it's already very hard to make any kind of living as a composer and that the scrapping of copyright would inevitably make it even harder. That said, I do agree (not that anyone's yet mentioned this) that, where music is concerned, the great swathes of anomalies between different countries' laws on these matters still leave much to be desired.

When a publisher sells a score, part of the price it sets is to cover the intellectual property rights of the composer. Many more composers self-publish nowadays; it is impossible to determine what, if any, part of the price at which a composer who sells his own work does or does not cover his/her intellectual property rights.

Intellectual property rights are indeed a "commodity" and can be sold or bequeathed (although they are far more often bequeathed than sold). A few years ago, when the 70-years-after-death rule came in, some composers' works which had already entered the public domain went back into copyright as a direct result.

If copyright were scrapped, composers would have to depend on commissions and on selling their own scores without including any copyright element; in such a climate, one might well end up hearing hear less rather than more new music, simply because less of it might get written.

In the case of a composer whose work is unperformed or infrequently performed during his/her lifetime, there would be less financial incentive for anyone to take responsibility for it following the composer's death. Some people here will have already guessed where I'm coming from in so saying and, for the avoidance of doubt, I hasten to add that I did not assume responsibility for the music of Sorabji in order to rake in a fortune therefrom (even I'm not as daft as that!) but, in the absence of any possibility of royalty income (thin on the ground though it is), The Sorabji Archive would have had to go cap in hand to people who might just donate money in order to help set it up and keep it afloat; a largely empty cap may well have resulted.

So, to the extent that intellectual property law does pertain in its various forms and guises in most nations, one could say that all copyright music is in some sense "pre-commodified" even before it is ever publicly performed and "commodified" thereafter; that is, I think, a rather different take of the commodification of music than has been discussed here, but is perhaps nevertheless no less valid.

Turning to the "popularity" question, whilst I suspect most of here are agreed that few if any composers of Western "classical" music write it for the sake of making (or hoping to make) a quick buck by giving the greatest number of people "what they want", there is also the question of changing fashions in music, new discoveries and so on; there is plenty of music heard far more often nowadays than once it was and, in some such cases, the composer might live to find certain of his/her works far more "popular" than he/she might have expected at the time of writing on during the then foreseeable future (Górecki's Third Symphony being a particularly significant case in point), so one could say in such instances that certain works have become more "commodified" since they were written yet that the composer him/herself has nevertheless had no impact upon such changes.

Best,

Alistair

But how much money do Messrs Dish, Hinton, Barrett and Sorabji actually make as a direct result of the application of their intellectual property rights? I can answer for one member of this quartet and say: not much at all. If there were no such thing as copyright, would dozens of publishers really be lining up to sell unauthorised scores by composers such as these? Not really.

If there were no copyright, your name wouldn't have to appear on any performance of your music, and while that may not put you out of a stream of cash, it may put you out of a certain maintenance of your good reputation, which you rely upon to continue producing your work. Intellectual property rights are a mere token gesture, I grant ye, but one that I place a lot of value upon beyond cold hard cash.

And no, to this day I have only lost money getting my music performed, on the whole, despite the generosity of seemingly everyone involved.

That only follows if you accept the 'marketplace is a form of democracy' argument. Sales and the requisite income are generated by many means, not least extensive marketing - if the latter didn't make a difference, why would companies (including CD companies) spend millions of pounds on it? Practically no-one involved in contemporary 'classical' music (or in the more individual and quirky varieties of popular musics) has anything like that sort of marketing budget.