[MLA-L] Charles Seeger quote, re: folk songs = plagiarism.

[Joel Bresler]

Dear friends:

Musicologist Charles Seeger wrote:

"Perhaps the Russians have done the right thing, after all, in abolishing
copyright. It is well known that conscious and unconscious appropriation,
borrowing, adapting, plagiarizing, and plain stealing are variously, and
always have been, part and parcel of the process of artistic creation. The
attempt to make sense out of copyright reaches its limit in folk song. For
here is the illustration par excellence of the law of Plagiarism. The folk
song is, by definition and, as far as we can tell, by reality, entirely a
product of plagiarism."

This statement was in turn quoted by his son Pete Seeger in "The Incompleat
Folksinger", 1992, p. 450. All the references I have seen to the Charles
Seeger quote link back to this or other versions in Pete Seeger's writings.
I am looking for a citation to the original, if anyone can supply it.

Best,

Joel

Joel Bresler
250 E. Emerson Rd.
Lexington, MA 02420
USA

781-862-4104 (Telephone & FAX)
joe...@verizon.net

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[Emily Lehrman]

Dear Joel, and Colleagues:

I don't know the exact source of this Charles Seeger quote (maybe Carol Oja does?), but check out his articles in MODERN MUSIC in the early 1930s. I believe it was discussed, to some extent, at the June 1989 workshop on the Composers Collective sponsored by the People's Music Network/Songs of Freedom & Struggle, featuring Pete Seeger, Elie Siegmeister, Herbert Haufrecht, Mordecai Bauman, Edith Segal, Aldyn McKean, Carol Oja, Eric Gordon, Helene Williams, and me, Leonard Lehrman.

It also reminds me of a story Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991) told, many times, of having cornered Morton Gould and Aaron Copland at an ASCAP meeting in the late 1970s or early 1980s. "When are we three going to stop stealing from each other?" he asked them. Copland turned white, but Gould riposted immediately: "I hope never; it'd be the death of music!"

I told retold the story at a public meeting of ASCAP shortly after his death. Morton Gould, who was presiding, said he didn't remember saying what Elie said he said, "But whatever I did say, I hope it was funny."

Collegially,
Leonard J. Lehrman
Author, Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 2005)
Co-Founder, The Elie Siegmeister Society
Founder, Long Island Composers Archive at Long Island University
writing from the email account of my mother, on the faculty there

[Rick Anderson]

> This statement was in turn quoted by his son Pete Seeger in
> "The Incompleat
> Folksinger", 1992, p. 450.

That's kind of funny, assuming he was quoting his father approvingly --
since Pete does seem to hold the copyright in his own songs, even those
whose lyrics were taken substantially from the public domain (e.g.
"Turn! Turn! Turn!").

I mean no disrespect to Pete Seeger by pointing this out; he has always
been and remains one of my heroes.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
ric...@unr.edu

[Emily Lehrman]

Life is full of contradictions, Rick. And by the way, speaking of heroes of the left, are you ever going to list the Original Cast Records CD sent you of the Abel Meeropol Centennial Concert?
Best wishes - Leonard J. Lehrman

[Paul T. Jackson]

There are a number of stories I could tell of stealing: one, of the song,
"what if they gave a war and nobody came?" Two publishers had different
music but the same lyrics. Turns out it was lifted from Carl Sandburg's
1939 book, "the people say, Yes!"

Many people have copied articles and, in fact, the whole book, Pioneers in
Brass, my uncles book...because they couldn't find the publisher (a printer,
out of business, who printed the self-published book.) I've seen the copies
and the online articles, and people have told me as much. Although the book
is definitely still in copyright, it has now been re-published in a fourth
edition with some additional editing and content not found in all issues of
the same edition. The 1972 3rd edition was continually updated by Mr.
Bridges and the last 25 bound printed copies were sold in 1988 (by his wife,
with my help.)

As a published poet told us recently, the stealing of someone's creation is
a form of greatest flattery.

Paul T. Jackson - Trescott Research
Information Strategies and Library Development
Projects in Organizational Planning & Management
http://www.bookbay.com/PioneersInBrass.htm