January 10, 2018 – Jarrett House North

Just found an Italian archive site that provides a tantalizing glimpse of the first major-orchestra performance of Randall Thompson’s The Testament of Freedom, as recorded by RCA (presumably following close on the BSO premiere of the work in April 1945). (You can view the full catalog record of the recording, in Italian, here.)

And by glimpse, I mean listen—though you can only hear a 30-second preview of each of the six sides of the six-record set (from the 78RPM era). To hear the samples, click the Play button beneath the scan of the record label in the center, then hit the Next button (right triangle) in the header and click Play again. It’s clumsy but it works.

And interestingly, side 5 raises doubt that Harvard’s Glee Club in 1945 was substantially more musically sophisticated than its Virginia counterpart. The opening of the last movement, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time,” is here shouted with uneven pitch and vowel pronunciation (direct link to a downloadable 30-second sample). I hope to be able to compare the recording to the Virginia Glee Club’s 1943 premiere soon.

Ars Technica: Why Mickey Mouse’s 1998 copyright extension probably won’t happen again. The article, which Lawrence Lessig pointed to, is a little skimpy on the research. OK, so the RIAA and MPAA say they’re unlikely to pursue another copyright term extension. I still say we’re likely to see legislation that shows up at the last minute to keep 1923 era works from entering the public domain.

Why? Because it’s happened before, twice, and because I can’t believe the borg-that-is-Disney would voluntarily let go of the opportunity to monopolize the monetization of its collective intellectual property without a fight.

I might be wrong about this, and it’s possible that their ongoing absorption of Lucasfilm, Marvel, and other entertainment properties are a way to diversify so that they can survive losing exclusivity over some of their earliest art. But I’m not holding my breath, until I see Disney swear that they aren’t going to lobby for another round of copyright exclusions.