President Bush recently signed into law the "PRO-IP" bill, an act for "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property." The purpose of the bill is to enhance remedies for violations of intellectual property laws.

The law creates a copyright protection office in the executive branch of government and provides for more extreme penalties for pirates. The level of the penalties is a secondary issue; the most important thing about this law is the creation of a proper authority for protecting intellectual property—and the fact that this law makes a much-needed moral statement.

Antagonism to the PRO-IP Act has focused in part on the fact that it was backed by "big content," including the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association, thus portraying the issue as a war between pressure groups, with large corporations as the ones who happen to have won. But this misses the principle of the matter, that the creator of a piece of intellectual property owns the product of his work.

If a baker bakes a loaf of bread, he therefore owns it, and anyone who wishes to acquire the bread must do so by meeting the baker's terms. The baker may set any price he wishes for it—even a high price if he so chooses. It is also within his rights to give it away for free, which he might do for promotional purposes. But in all cases, it is the baker who sets the terms for acquiring his creation. No one has the right to acquire the bread in disregard of the baker's wishes.

The same is true of music, movies, software. The fact that it is easier to copy these things does not eliminate the creator's sovereignty over his own product. The price of his work, even if it is $0, is his to set.

A major root of the opposition to copyright is the altruist morality—the premise that self-interest is evil and that sacrificial service to others is the moral ideal. This premise makes people antagonistic toward selfish rights. And it gives them a rationalization for piracy: according to the premise of sacrifice, it is morally good for creators to give things away for the benefit of others—and if sacrifice is the imperative, the question of complying with a creator's terms doesn't even enter one's mind.

Think for instance of the way in which the press vilified the RIAA when it brought lawsuits against file-sharers, and threw a pity-party for the defendants. The "greedy," self-interested, profit-seeking businessmen were regarded as inherently suspicious even though they were defending the rights of music creators whom they lawfully represent, while some destitute single mother in middle America (who was not "greedy"?) was portrayed as a helpless victim, with no mention made of the fact that she engaged in theft.

What is needed is a stern reminder that the Constitution protects not the Robin Hood type of theft, but the right of the individual to pursue his own happiness by means of his own work.

In order to grasp the concept "property rights"—the idea of ownership, which is a matter of moral justice—one must function conceptually. The same toaster has a different moral and legal status in the hands of a man who paid for it, versus the hands of a thief as he runs away. Possession is not everything, since the thief possesses it wrongly. Rights are not a matter of the physical position of the object, but of ownership—of moral status.

In the case of intellectual property, the need for conceptual thought is particularly acute. An author's right to his novel, a composer's right to his composition, a filmmaker’s right to his movie—these rights are more abstract still. If you buy a copy of Joe Smith's novel, you own that copy. But Joe Smith owns the particular sequence of words that are printed in that novel. So you have the right to use your copy as you wish, but you do not have the right to create a new copy of that sequence of words.

Suppose you own a copy of the novel "The Grapes of Wrath" and also an audio-book version on CD. You own both of those physical objects, and can give the book to your mother and the CD to your brother if you wish. The author, on the other hand, owns what is common to both of those. He owns the particular sequence of words embodied in the book and the audio-book. The forms of these two things are different: one form you look at, the other you hear. But both of them are instances of the same piece of intellectual property, the same novel, "The Grapes of Wrath."

Copyright is a matter not of what a monkey sees looking at a page full of words, but of what a human mind sees. Unlike a monkey, a man is able to grasp the particular meaning expressed in particular language.

So a creator's right is not per se to the particular physical instance, but to the creative content that is embodied in these objects. And the only practical way for a creator to control and profit from his work is for him to hold by right the power to decide when, where, how and under what conditions new physical instances of his creation may be made and distributed. That is the meaning of the right to copy.

These facts and distinctions have no reality for, and are completely unconvincing to, a person who does not think. Unfortunately, that category includes a very large number of Americans today. The anti-thought mentality comes about as a combination of personal lethargy and evasion, and an educational system that stultifies the mind.

A large portion of the guilt for the piracy problem lies with the American educational system. This is not primarily a matter of the content of education, but the method. For decades the dominant approach to teaching in America has been Progressive Education, which holds emotion and socialization as primary, and facts and logic as secondary—or even denounces facts and logic as repressive. Americans have been taught to be driven by emotion and to cast off thinking as a restrictive straightjacket. That is where the hippies came from.

Combine that with a lot of personal immorality—meaning refusal to think—and the result is a widespread practice of operating by whim. The practice of controlling one's own choices and behavior by reference to moral principle is completely alien to the hippie mentality. This mentality's automatized method—as a result of his own shortsighted laziness and as a result of years of schooling that encouraged shortsighted laziness—is to see something, desire it, grab it. It is the same method as that of a spoiled child or a pre-civilized savage.

It costs the creator nothing, these types argue, to copy one piece of software or music. What harm does it do? First of all, the very question evades the existence of anything other than that which immediately stares into the pirate's passive face: in a few mouse clicks he is able to have the content he wants. He is at best ignorant of the actual costs involved in creating the content. What about the cost of the musician's years of training, the income he forewent in order to spend the time developing his skills and creating his music, the cost of music paper, his instrument, the recording expenses? And let's not forget the cost of marketing, without which the pirate could hardly know about the content he so nonchalantly expects to take for free.

What harm does it do, at root? Man lives by the productive work of his mind. He creates and he trades his product. Trade is by mutual voluntary agreement. A unilateral taking is the opposite of a fair trade. The pirate deprives the creator not only of the relatively small amount of money to be paid for the product. He deprives the creator of his very means of living, his ability to control, trade and profit from the work of his mind. That is a crime legally, morally, and on the deepest philosophical level, metaphysically. It is a matter of the creator's ability to maintain his own existence.

What the pirate fails to grasp is that to take or "share" copyrighted content in disregard of the creator's wishes is to kill the creator's capacity to live.

The pirate's desire for the content makes him act to destroy its source.

The PRO-IP Act is one much-needed remedy. As Tom Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stated: "By becoming law, the PRO-IP Act sends the message to [intellectual property] criminals everywhere that the U.S. will go the extra mile to protect American innovation." It is a welcome law and a welcome message.

During the proposal of the PRO-IP Act and continuing after it passed into law, commentators have been referring to the new head of the copyright department under the president as a copyright "czar." This is an improper and prejudicial term.

It is true that the given name, Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER), is hardly useful. It is not surprising that people have had to fish for their own term.

But the term "czar" obviously implies a totalitarian overlord--when in fact the purpose of the position is to protect the rights of content creators. It is a very insidious reversal.

This is once again a result of the altruist morality--the view that selfish rights are evil and that working to help others is morally good. Because of altruism, people's sympathies lie with pirates, not with creators.

Notice that no one is calling Paulson or Bernanke an economic "czar"--even though, with their sweeping new powers, that is what they are. Here, the totalitarian implication would be completely right and justified. But why doesn't anybody want to call them dictators?

Thinkers today have it all backwards. They smear the protector of rights and treat rights-trampling overlords with deferential respect. Why? People's political concepts are all screwed up because their moral concepts are all screwed up. Americans need to learn that individual rights in the George Washington Thomas Jefferson definition are good, while "rights" in the FDR/Marx definition are wrong. The fundamental basis for straightening this out must be an acceptance that to work for one's own benefit is morally good. That is what makes rights right.

An article about pianist Elizabeth Avery, and our new album Serenade--Music for Saxophone & Piano, just appeared in the Watertown Daily Times, her hometown newspaper.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20081104/CURR07/311046921/-1/curr/North+Country+People

Tonight I attended Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's lecture at Fordham University. She is a judge who heard the famous Napster case, and told us (an audience of the Copyright Society) about that case and related ones. Near the end of her talk she gave a very broad new suggestion about how to handle copyright law going forward.

I found her description of the cases involving file sharing to be very interesting and informative. I also can see her point that up to now, the law's handling of copyright has been slow and piecemeal. However I find her suggestion for how to solve this problem--the creation of an "association"which is a "partnership of public and private" to administer copyright--to be half-baked.

I object to any institution that blurs the line between actions of government, which are backed by the threat of punishment by force, and actions of private individuals, which are not. That is an essential distinction and should not be obfuscated.

Where you do see that line blurred and unrecognized? Under socialism.

One of the problems in this country is the ongoing abrogation of the constitutional structure of the balance of powers, with checks and balances to safeguard individual liberty and limit the government. I think a quasi-government agency handling copyright would be a disaster. It would operate, like the alphabet agencies, outside of the proper authority of congress to make law and the courts to apply and check the law.

So I am against the creation of the institution she suggests.

Our new CD Serenade--Music for Saxophone & Piano is listed in the New Releases category at Music & Vision Daily, complete with an audio sample.

http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2008/10/serenade-music-for-saxophone-and-piano-info.htm

That means their review should be up soon.

I'm pleased to report that someone on the "sax on the web" discussion forum has provided the perfect antidote to my complaints below in "Review of a Review" about a split between "planning" and "emoting" in music. This post-er, named "jazfyrski" gives the specs on our album and writes:

"The same duo recorded many of these pieces in a "live" CD at Steinway Hall. This CD, recorded sans audience, loses none of the excitement of the earlier CD. M. Zachary Johnson's music is immediately intriguing and refreshing if only because it is so unabashedly tonal and romantic. But accessible, in this case, doesn't mean simplistic; the harmonies and rhythms show careful craftsmanship. The "old" is new again!"

Here's the link.

Some of you may know that I am writing a book called The Head and Heart in Music. It's a rejection of the alleged choice in music between calculated, rational intelligence, and mindless, freewheeling, uncontrolled raw emotion. I uphold what I call “the marriage in music of intelligence and passion.” A review of our new album, Serenade, came out yesterday; it is fascinatingly wrong, and right on topic for my book. The reviewer does state that "When M Zachary Johnson composed Serenade it is evident that he never lost sight of his musical vision." But his overall opinion is encapsulated in the sentence: “This album’s flaws may lie in its pursuit of perfection.” I must say, if some people hate my music for the same reason they hate Martha Stewart—for being “too perfect”—I gladly accept the compliment.

In a different review at Music and Vision Daily, Anna Franco had written that "the instruments take on an especially lyrical, singing quality, igniting the rarely-tapped Romantic potential of the saxophone-piano combination which Johnson has mastered." But this guy continues: “With everything so carefully planned and mapped out for the musicians, there is little room for them to let loose and expose the human side of the music.” This is the point that is philosophically interesting. I think this writer is a hippie who can't conceive of an actual union of intelligence and passion, because what he really wants is out of control emotion. If the music is highly structured, so he seems to think, then it simply must be rigid and cold. Right? No. 

You can read this guy’s obliquely styled review here (and, for god’s sake, judge the music for yourself!):

http://www.muzikreviews.com/reviews.php?ID=278

Thankfully, there are dissenting opinions. First, you may notice that the album is, at the moment, sold out on CDBaby.

Second--another piece of good news that's not directly about this album--I’ve been awarded an ASCAPlus Award for 2008, the second year in a row. "The ASCAPLUS Awards Program is for writer members of any genre whose performances are primarily in venues not surveyed; and/or writer members whose catalogs have prestige value for which they would not otherwise be compensated."

Also, saxophonist Brian Horner’s hometown newspaper did a story on him with the starting line “On The Bright Side.”
http://www.thedailystar.com/local/local_story_284040032.html

If you have thoughts on whether Serenade debuts music that is "rigid" or romantic, I'd encourage you to express them in the reviews at www.CDBaby.com/horneravery -- or on the guestbook of my website at www.mzacharyjohnson.com/forum

It seems from the traffic patterns on my website that people are actually interested in reading my blog. It's a pleasant surprise, so now I'll make more use of the blog--starting with a little report on the yesterday's concert, the first performance of the MZJ Ensemble.

We were at the Liederkranz Society on NYC's upper east side, a beautiful venue and just the right size for us. Our group had really come together in the dress rehearsal--I was very pleased with that. We got a bit of a shock when we warmed up in the ballroom for the concert, because the hardwood floor made the sound very loud and live for the musicians--and paradoxically this made it harder for players to hear each other. But things went very well, musically and when I asked people from the audience, they didn't seem to have noticed. The music, I was glad to hear, came across.

We played the opening theme and first two variations of "Portrait of a Woman" and the audience had a lively interest in the inspiration for the piece (so much for my hopes of getting out of discussing that ). Naturally, everyone wanted to know who the inspiration was, whether the variations were intended to say something about the woman (my response: women are multifaceted), etc. Shy plus talking composer = problem.

Someone asked how I came up with the piece, and I gave an analogy that I've found helpful, which is that it's like a ball of pizza dough dropping down (in your mind) and then you have to squish it out, spread it out, knead it, and lay it out to make a pizza. I think the epistemological point there was lost when somebody chimed in with "So, she's Italian." Hardy har har. And yes, she is.

We played the first of my Two Military Pieces. My ultimate conclusion after thinking this over is that this first one, the Memorial (a lament for a fallen soldier) just doesn't work by itself. It has an unresolved ending and is very down--which changes entirely when you hear it with the Victory March afterward. We'll play them both next time, I just have to find us a drummer.

Javier Oviedo did a great job as the soloist on Adagio for Saxophone & Winds--this was definitely the most substantial and complex piece on the program. But I'm happy to say that people loved his playing and the feedback I got indicated that the audience was glad to have the explanation I gave and the "taking apart" of the music with examples played by the musicians.

The last piece was an arrangement of Schubert's "Ave Maria." I chose the piece because I think it's a beautiful melody and because I thought the song would give a sunnier, more emotionally positive ending to the concert. Chris Brellochs played a great soprano sax solo; so did Benje Daneman on trumpet.

I did have the concert video recorded, so we'll see if we can't find some good examples to put up on Youtube so people can see what the concerts are like--and come to the next ones!

A few weeks ago I received an email via MySpace from a music teacher in the UK who has a student playing Scherzo; he asked me for some comments about the interpretation of the piece. Here's what I wrote:

Regarding how Scherzo should be played, it's tricky to communicate with just words. The essence of the piece is fire and intensity. Sometimes that is a smoldering soft, controlled kind of intensity and sometimes it is an overt vigor. For instance the crescendo leading into the last measure makes a transition between very soft and all-out forceful. On whether to "throw caution to the wind," my answer depends on what we mean by that phrase. If you mean don't hold back and play cautiously, then yes, throw caution to the wind. If it means modify the tempo too much or play too fast, I don't think that will work in giving the right effect. The precision of the rhythm is part of the effect of the piece--that accurate darting motion of the melody is curial. So the tempo should be steady. Also the piece shouldn't be too rushed so it doesn't seem like it's in fast-forward--then it wouldn't make as much sense. On the other hand, too slow would de-activate the driving motion.

With many of my other pieces, I have a lot more back story, but Scherzo was sort of "just there" for me--it came more or less inspirationally. I wrote it very quickly compared to some of my other work, so it required less pondering. I do like its "Hungarian" or "gypsy" feel--so it can definitely be likened to pieces like Brahms's Hungarian Dances, e.g.:

http://youtube. com/watch?v=IG05yLlt_FA

Re-posted from April 13, 2007

I recently received an email from a music student in Australia doing a project on careers in the arts, asking me about my profession. She wanted to know some examples of prerequisites of being a professional composer, and some examples of the activities that a composer engages in. I thought you might be interested in my response, which I include below:

"I would say the most important prerequisites (in no particular order) are 1) fluency in being able to write down, to notate, sounds from hearing -- basically a lot of experience taking music dictation because when one goes to write a piece, one has to be able to have a clear mental grasp of the musical materials, an ability to "move notes around" in the mind, and put
them down on paper in the correct way. This means having a developed auditory discrimination and ability to identify musical sounds; 2) an active mind, so that you are always generating musical ideas and evaluating them, thinking about how to improve them or use a particular theme in a musical development; 3) something to say -- a strong, uniquely personal vision of consciousness, the mind, and emotions -- which is the motive behind the whole project of being an artist, which is what makes one original (not just an imitator) and which is the basis for one's artistic integrity. Every great artist has a distinct voice and a unique style; this is absolutely essential to the career.

"In the field of practical activities, a composer nowadays has to do a lot more than just compose. Of course there is a lot of time spent trying out musical ideas, improving them, making sketches, writing out a full version of a piece, and perfecting it. One has to make sure there is enough time for that. But there are also a lot of jobs a composer (usually) has to do today which he didn't have to do in the past. These include doing the layout and formatting of the music and making parts, arranging performances and recordings with all their financial, logistical and legal complexities, and doing promotional work (especially if one goes the route of being self-published). Other activities more directly related to the music itself include attending rehearsals and giving the musicians feedback on interpretation."

Re-posted from Feb. 14, 2007

     I just returned from the 2007 Governor's Honor Band Festival at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where I served as Composer in Residence. It was a fantastic and tumultuous weekend.
     I attended rehearsals of the Austin Peay State University Wind Ensemble and coached them on the preparation of my new *Scherzo-Concerto*, which they premiered with Brian Horner on solo saxophone on Friday the 10th in the Concert Hall of the School of Music. Mr. Horner played with excellent tone and flair, and the Wind Ensemble backed him up with a good, energetic rendering of this rhythmically difficult piece. The audience was a good size and the piece was well-received. Many commented on its "tango" flavor—its
dark, sultry quality.
     I also attended rehearsals of the Symphonic Honor Band, the older of the two honor bands, and coached them on the preparation of the work I had composed expressly for them: *Two Military Pieces*. The first piece is a Memorial, a lament for a fallen soldier, and expresses the grief and emptiness of loss. The second is a Victory March, and expresses the energetic optimism and self-confidence that lead to heroic victory in battle.
The ensemble's rendition of the pieces took shape well over the course of the festival and the premiere took place on Saturday the 12th. The Concert Hall of the School of Music, which seats 600, was packed. The performance was not flawless, but the effect of each piece did successfully come across, and the audience received the music with
warm applause.
     A number of the student musicians came up to me afterward to say how much they enjoyed the pieces and to ask me to sign their sheet music. Some asked for advice about becoming a composer. So I was very pleased to know that the experience was a positive one for the students.