Shouldn’t they force him to ADD an audio track?
It took a while, but unfortunately the copyright police are now rampaging all over the YouTube classical music community. I first noticed this while checking up on the status of the embedded videos I used over at GetIntoClassical, and finding that half of them were “unavailable due to terms of use violation”. Basically, If an orchestra or record label finds out that one of their performances is on YouTube without their authorization, it’s gonna get wiped. This is really unfortunate — they are losing a wonderful way to reach a potential audience — but it’s not exactly unexpected either. Sometimes if it is not a video of an orchestra they will just disable the soundtrack.
A hilariously appropriate incident of this was just brought to my attention via the always awesome reddit:
This is a “recording” of John Cage’s 4’33″. If you try to play this video you will see that:
NOTICE: This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG. The audio has been disabled.
Hah! The joke’s on you, Warner Music Group!
Of course, this wasn’t the first time that 4’33″ has been the subject of copyright dispute. You can read about how Mike Batt was sued for infringing on the same copyright here.
Silencio
We were chatting about the joy of transcriptions the other day; how they let you hear aspects of a piece which you previously missed through familiarity or sonic occlusion. Well here’s a transcription which doesn’t quite provide those advantages, but which is curious nonetheless. It’s a version of 4’33” for orchestra:
Things to watch out for: the conductor mopping his brow between movements, the audience holding off on coughing until the intervals, the blond chick on the edge of her seat.
One of my most surprising musical learning moments was when I realized that 4’33″ wasn’t a load of bullshit. It forces people to clarify and consider what their definition of music is, without strictly being a composition itself. It is sort of meta-music. I think it is quite fascinating how much of a conversation (internal or external) you can produce by simply questioning if the piece is music, and if not, why not?
But then I feel all pretentious and artsy-fartsy and have to go play Mario Kart.