Symposium Report

Shifting Ground II was the second such study day organized by the Popular Music Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University, in conjunction with the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at  Brookes, and this time with the involvement of the Music Publishers Association. Where the first such  day, in January 2010, had respected the ‘popular’ of the research unit’s title, now the day opened up to  explore connections between music and publishing in broader historical terms, a decision epitomized by a final round table, which consisted of agreement for the most part between three established journalists  from the rock, jazz, and classical genres: Barney Hoskyns, Alyn Shipton, and Fiona Maddocks,  respectively.  

The day was split into two, the morning session considering the publishing of music, the afternoon  publishing on music, or music journalism. The latter was pervaded by the sense of ‘golden ages’ of  writing now challenged by new technologies, a discussion-point for the round table and the theme of two  papers that could not seem further in terms of repertory. Rob Horrocks and Matt Grimes compared  directly punk fanzines from the 1980s – grubby do-it-yourself magazines with titles like Acts of Defiance – with their web-based equivalents, finding that the web punks were sometimes little other than shop  fronts, while Christopher Dingle took on Norman Lebrecht’s sense of demise in the world of classical  reviewing. Types of writing were a theme in all of these discussions, with Rob Chapman berating the  adjectival colour of writing for The Wire magazine, while Lucy O’Brien considered the modes of writing  appropriate for the biographies of divas as diverse as Dusty Springfield and Lady Gaga.  

The morning was given over to publishing per se, and culminated in an address by Stephen Navin, Chief  Executive of the Music Publishers Association, with Leander Reeves of Brookes’ Publishers as  respondent. A paper from Tim Shephard in the morning focussed on the earliest musical notation and the  impact of music printing in 1498, and set agendas that continued to underlie Navin’s account of the state  of play, the session demonstrating the adage, plus ça change, plus la même chose. However, elsewhere in  the session, digital information proved a recurring theme. Davo van Peursen, of the Music Centre in the  Netherlands, talked about the production of scores as PDF files, and looked to possibilities such as the  distribution of orchestral scores marked by Abbado or Chailly, or the distribution of possible fingerings  for piano sonatas. In a fascinating perspective, Eveline Vernooij considered the problems involved in  producing a reliable edition of a work by Bruno Maderna, for voice and magnetic tape, found in several  versions and produced at RAI studio in Milan. The end result, it would seem, is a gathering of artefacts:  traditional score, video information, tape, as well as other documentary evidence. Thus the session  focussed largely on issues attendant upon the production of musical artefacts, with Andrew Chatora  offering a balance in his close attention to cross-generational attitudes towards illegal downloading.  Stephen Navin found to his delight that the four papers preceding his presentation all pointed to  substantial themes and debates in the publishing world, but he was also able to mention several others,  including the role of the collecting societies, the Digital Economy Act of 2010, and the forthcoming  review of Intellectual Property chaired by Professor Ian Hargreaves.  

A closing round table chaired by Dai Griffiths looked forward to the further development of themes  identified during the day. Publishing proved to be a theme that crossed faculty walls at Brookes and  elsewhere, linked academic research to an important aspect of the music industry, was pervaded by new  technology and its unpredictable consequence, and saw Music again display its cross-disciplinary  potential.