Baroque Copyright Laws

This month contains five Fridays and so on Friday Number Five we continue an irregular series of podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences: this time we have music to think about as autumn fades into winter.

The music consists in this episode consists of five different variations on one reasonably well known piece of baroque music. The variations reveal different approaches to the piece from musicians of various backgrounds, interests, and abilities.

The music also raises questions about how far and in what ways musicians may tamper with this music as compared to how far they might tamper with a piece of music by, for example, Gershwin. It raises issues about how the current copyright laws restrain our abilities and prevent contemporary musics from becoming a part of the common culture, in the way that nineteenth century and earlier music has become.

Owen Kelly raises some of these questions prior to examining them in more detail in a forthcoming episode of Genuine Inquiry.