Copyright & Public Performance - church licences, PS

And while I’m on the subject.

Older hymn books use the convention of a double bar marking in the music to indicate line endings in the text, and that is designed to help choir persons navigate between the words and the music, which are sometimes widely separated. Now it often happens that a line ending occurs in the middle of a bar of music, so this helpful marking isn’t a real bar line at all, and as such it isn’t catered for by notation software. Sorry to be technical, but it has to be added as a graphic, and that takes time and care and prior consideration of the needs of singers.

It is a measure of the contempt that the editors of modern hymnals have for traditional church choirs that they don’t bother with such detail – indeed the editors of Complete Anglican Hymns Old And New go so far as to suggest that if choirs can’t cope with their music settings they should sing in unison.

Isn’t it time for a backlash against the twin forces of textual and musical rewritings, renewed copyrights and the implicit threat of legal action unless expensive licences are taken out?

With very few exceptions the best hymns and musical settings are long out of copyright, and (as Cathy of the Cathy Thinks blog linked below has suggested) with word processors and notation software easily available there is no reason why a church can’t create its own service sheets or even complete hymnals. with the advantage of getting back to original words, not the questionable rewritings that are now ubiquitous.

Against the cost of creating such local resources we can offset the cost of reproduction licences, and I note that in 2011 my church reprinted, under licence, the words of only two hymns. The cost of the licence that allowed us to do it?  Inclusive of VAT - £162.46.