daron aric hagen

When asked, I now encourage young composers to self publish. My sentimental attachment to, and my belief in, the physical object that is a beautifully engraved or hand copied score provided for two decades my justification for willingly relinquishing copyrights to the two publishers with whom I enjoyed long-term exclusive contracts.

Ah, the allure of being 'in print' — the allure of the tome! First, there is the satisfying weight of the object. I heft it in my hand, flip it so that the gold capital letters on the spine face upwards: BENJAMIN BRITTEN: PETER GRIMES. I run my index finger over the elegantly indented, overlaid initials on the front cover, and open the volume. It's a score, of course, not a book, and Britten's name is the largest thing on the first page in a clean, un-seriffed sort of Arial typeface. It sails proudly above the title of the opera. An opera called PETER GRIMES, in a slightly smaller point size. Below that, the imposing appellation, OPUS 33 before still more space, and then, an explanation: AN OPERA IN THREE ACTS AND A PROLOGUE DERIVED FROM THE POEM OF GEORGE CRABBE. Ah! More space; another line: WORDS BY MONTAGU SLATER. A vast field of white flows down to the publishing company's contemporary imprint and address in London at the bottom of the page. On the next page comes the legalese in suitably fine print. And then, on the next, in the composer's handwriting, the dedication, 'For the Koussevitzky Music Foundation dedicated to the memory of Natalie Koussevitzky' followed by his signature and the date: February, 1945. What romance!

Really, the 1963 edition's design is exquisite in every way. The hand engraving is never less than sane, and the artistry of the engraver is always evident in the elegantly broken notational rules and unavoidable collisions that human frailty, fallibility and the music occasionally demand. British practicality seems to emanate from the rather too-round, but affable note heads. It is personal autography at its finest; as exquisite in its own way as what may be the most monumental of all engraving jobs, the Universal 1955 edition of Alban Berg's Wozzeck. This edition is friendlier, has more personality in its crafting than later Boosey and Hawkes projects, such as Gloriana, though the 1966 edition of The Turn of the Screw is exquisite as well. My favorite Britten opera, Billy Budd, the full score of which was not first published for sale and study until 1985, a half century after the opera's premiere, is beautiful, too, but already mechanized and sleek, in appearance somehow corporate.

I don't remember who engraved the vocal score of my Shining Brow but it is an attractive, friendly-looking object. The lyrics and notes have the edgy look that Finale engraving software had back in the early nineties, but the character names and stage directions, at my request, emulated the rounded Arial of the Britten scores. For the cover, Ari Georges, a Taliesin fellow at the time, was kind enough to take a few measures of the score that I supplied him and adapt a design originally made by Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Curtis Besinger that appeared in print for the first time in the 1943 edition of Wright's An Autobiography. Great care was taken by E.C. Schirmer, which paid for the engraving, to ensure that the score was accurate and a joy to hold. I love it still.

Correcting proofs for Carl Fischer's score of my Bandanna a decade later was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life as a composer: English was possibly a third language for the engraver, who was engaged by the house, and each page contained at least a half dozen mistakes. It took three sets of proofs (and a superb editor) to get an accurate accounting of my manuscript, and I was never satisfied with the look of it. There did not seem to me to be any sensitivity on the part of the engraver to my music, or to my style of notation. Consequently, at my own expense, I hired outside designers to create the covers for subsequent Fischer releases of my music, engraved them myself, began the demoralizing process of reluctantly taking on every chore music publishers have traditionally freed their contract composers from doing. Ironically, it was the unfairness of this arrangement, and not a desire to possess my own copyrights, that led ultimately to a cordial parting of ways with Fischer.

Last week eight very heavy, very large boxes of performance materials for nearly fifteen years' worth of my compositions were delivered by a swearing Federal Express driver to our home. They are works whose copyrights have come back into my possession after being controlled for a decade or so by Fischer. Each composition was assigned an envelope. Inside that envelope was the manuscript and set of parts that I furnished. Most look as though they had simply been warehoused. Over the next few months, I'll work my way through the boxes, store whatever rental sets exist of the orchestral works and throw away the hard copies of those works for which I have Sibelius score files — nearly everything. The rest are available on the Burning Sled website for sale either as PDF downloads or as print on demand.

What have I lost, embracing 'boutique publishing' and walking away from Big Music Publishing? Subscription sales to libraries, of course; it has always been gratifying to be able to step into the public library in a new town and to find one of my scores on its shelves. My new works won't be available from (the remaining bricks-and-mortar) music retailers. I lose the the potential for the advocacy of the brilliant, talented gatekeepers who curate and represent the great catalogues, but I know these people socially now, and they would promote my music if they could, but can't, or won't. If I write something terrific, I know they'll take an interest because that's what we all do: take an interest. I do my own engraving, rely on trusted consultants and lawyers for the legal heavy lifting, and have a storefront on the Internet. There may be a deal out there that can inspire me to turn over my copyrights, but I've no romance left in me: it would have to be a pretty good one.

The weighty tome is now a prestige object. Copyright is a weightless, all-powerful thing, and no matter how much 'activity' one's catalogue has, I suspect there's no longer enough 'margin' for a traditional music publisher to justify the cost of having these gorgeous documents engraved at their own expense. I'd be lying if I said that the way the music business has changed doesn't make me a little blue when I flip through some of the ozalid prints of scores that I hand-copied during the eighties and early nineties, still smelling slightly of ammonia and yellowing wherever they'd been exposed to sunlight. Instead of pulling a score of Amelia from the shelf above my desk and running my fingers appreciatively over the score's exquisite hard cover, I tap a few keys and it glows at me from my computer's screen. A good friend, pianist Hugh Sung, runs a business called Air Turn which makes a sort of musical Kindle; it aims to make sheet music obsolete.

Perhaps music will be 'freer' now that the fetishism of first the creation and then the sale and ownership of the physical document has proven to be mediocre business. Flown are the days of the 1963 edition of Peter Grimes and the Paul Revere Award for engraving, as gone as the cool reverie I so loved while roaming the stacks and pulling things from the shelves, entering each score's secret world and learning its song. Gone, mourned, but not forgotten.