presbyter wrote:nazard wrote:I suggest that the church needs to stop messing about with the composers, and buy the copyrights to some good mass settings outright, and make those freely available, perhaps on a web site.
If you held the purse-strings, how much would you offer, nazard?
At the moment fees for composers get fixed by some opaque mechanism between the composers and the publishers. My guess is that the not so well known composers send a copy of their products to publishers with a "What will you pay for this note" and accept what is offered, while the top ones get to negotiate a decent deal with publishers. The Bishops would have to enter this game.
Nick Baty wrote:And how would you define "good"?
You wouldn't like my definition of good. I have marked up my music collection in light pencil marks (I change my opinions easily and often) from five "fimi" to five "stellae", according to a set of criteria which are a mystery to me. In this case it is the Bishops or their committee which has to decide. This thread has reported them rejecting material on the grounds of lack of guitar chords, excessive repetition and insufficient thematic cohesion. They seem to have fixed their criteria already.
My point is that this is just another case of trying to manage without providing any resources. That is a sure way of upsetting your subordinates.
While we are on the subject of musical quality, my nieces and nephews assure me that someone who writes rotten music is called a "decomposer".
