[HANASHIR:14909] Re: The Future of Music

[I. Oppenheim <i.oppenheim...>]

On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Jeff Klepper wrote:

> This is not a debate about whether artists should be
> compensated for their creations.  It is about a
> broader subject:  who really "owns" the little bits
> of stuff that swirl around us, blended together over
> generations and which serve to create what we call
> "culture".

This matter is already regulated by International
Copyright law. Basically, the original work
comes into the public domain 70 years after the
author has died. However, later reprints and
rearrangements of the original work are covered
by copyright in their own right.

I personally think that the status quo is reasonable
and clear. In what sense would you like to debate it?

> Just think for a moment how different our world would
> be if The Bible was protected by copyright.  Or the
> works of Mozart.

These are in the public domain.

> Or the words and music of Hava Nagila?

These are still copyrighted until 2008!
This is a saddening example of intellectual property
theft. Read the story below:

<<
The man largely responsible for the song's existence in
its present form is Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, and he was
the father of Jewish Musicology.

As a young cantor, he left his native Latvia, worked in
Germany and South Africa, then went to Jerusalem early
in this century to pursue his dream of collecting the
oral traditions of his people and making them available
to the world of music.

In the course of his research he visited a group of
Sadigura Hasidim there, in 1915, and wrote down some of
their Nigunim. This was one of them. It was a wordless
"bim-bom" melody, a mystic chant.

Then came World War I. Idelsohn became a bandmaster in
the Turkish Army.

Three years later he was back in Jerusalem again,
leading a chorus in a victory concert. The Turks were
out, the British were in, there was a Balfour
Declaration, and the yishuv (Jewish community) was
celebrating. He needed a good crowd-pleasing number to
end his concert, and he didn't have one. But he had a
file. So he browsed, and as luck would have it his hand
fell on this Sadigura Nigun.

He arranged it in four parts, put some simple Hebrew
lyrics to it, and performed it. The rest, as you know,
is history, as this became the best-known Jewish song
in the world.

Idelsohn documented this part of the transmigration of
this melody in Volume 9 of his "Thesaurus of Hebrew
Oriental Melodies" page XXIV. I know a little more
about it, because he was my first teacher of music. In
recent years, long after his death, the Government of
Israel finally awarded his family some royalties. Also
after his death, Moshe Nathanson claimed authorship,
since he was a boy in one of Idelsohn's Hebrew classes
at the time I think. But to my knowledge, Israel never
accepted his claim.

Interestingly enough, recordings of Havah Nagilah made
in Europe in the 20's go at a relatively slow pace. The
Hora rhythm was added later, came from a Rumanian
folkdance brought to the yishuv by the Halutzim.

Barry Cohon
http://www.radiohazak.com/Havahist.html
>>

<<
Idelsohn, Abraham (Zevi)
 Britannica Concise

(1882-1938)

Latvian musicologist.

After studies in Germany, he served as a synagogue
cantor (from 1903) before moving to Johannesburg,
Israel, the U.S., and after a stroke in 1934, back to
Johannesburg. His monumental comparative studies of
Jewish music in many parts of the world established
that the tradition had remained relatively unchanged
over time and also suggested connections between Jewish
chant and the origins of Gregorian chant. He composed
the first Hebrew opera, Yiftah (1922), and the song
Hava nagila.
>>


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 i(dot)oppenheim (at) xs4all(dot)nl
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/

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