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.