Article: http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/a-real-mess/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQJlXAwROc
With the growing preponderance of social media and critics’ eagle eyes in almost every creative and communications discipline, it has become extremely difficult to plagiarize anything… and not get caught. This poses a big problem today only because, I guess, there are many more small minds than ever, and competition drives everyone to excel everybody else in order to get more bonus points and lead a more contented life.
What a far cry from the days of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms – or those of Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce – when the pursuit of true gentle-manliness, the concept of honor, made plagiarism unthinkable. Not so today, if we are to believe music writer and blogger Rob Deemer in his recent article called “A Real Mess.” The rather lengthy piece talks about the orchestral piece titled “Sidereus” of Osvaldo Golijov. Apparently, some 35 orchestras commissioned Golijov to create a 10-minute work of the famous orchestra administrator Henry Fogel. They paid Golijov a fee of anywhere from $1,500 to $4,000. Multiply that by 35, and that’s a tidy sum.
But what can one say about the piece? Deemer says that two friends – music critic Tom Manoff and trumpeter Brian McWorther – went to Oregon to listen to the Eugene Symphony’s performance of a Haydn trumpet concerto. As I had mentioned in a previous paper, a small (read “not lengthy”) musical work normally serves as a concert’s curtain raiser. And that is how they happened to hear the “Sidereus” of Golichov. It was the evening’s curtain raiser. By coincidence the two pals had recently been recording and editing another piece called “Barbeich” by Michael Ward-Bergeman. Guess what, coincidentally, Michael is a long-time friend of Osvaldo.
Well, to the trained ears of Manoff and McWorther, “Sidereus” sounded like “Barbeich” which had, of course, been written earlier. On this basis, the two guys suspected “Sidereus” of being a plagiarism of “Barbeich.” But not content with this, they re-auditioned Golichov’s body of work and came to the conclusion that most of it is just as plagiaristic because, although some of these pieces were collaborations, Golichov did not say so. In other words, he did not give credit where credit was due.
Personally, this case does not interest me enough to discuss any further. There is still a lot of classical music out there for me to train my ears with and enjoy at the same time. I’m not just referring to the composers like Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Mahler… but to the different versions of their works by different conductors and orchestras in various record labels. I find Karajan’s Beethoven cycle sounding quite different from that of Leonard Bernstein, for instance. I don’t know which is better; I like both.
What to do then about the idea that “Sidereus” imitated “Barbeich?” I listened to both pieces. Thanks to the wonder of technology, I heard “Sidereus” with my left ear’s headphone and “Barbeich” with the right. I actually found both pieces somewhat appealing in that they reminded me of the musical soundtracks of classic movies like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Dr. Zhivago.” The truth is, “Sidereus” had a somewhat bigger appeal to me because it sounded more orchestral than “Barbeich” which is essentially an accordion opus. Accordions remind me of street performers somehow; frankly, I still have to develop an ear for them. But do I agree with the theory that Golichov plagiarized Bergeman? To this I say: beauty is in the ear of the listener.