22 November 2010

Jauchzet: Bach's Organ Music Free Online

A few months ago, Musopen ran a fundraiser on Kickstarter:

Musopen is a non-profit dedicated to providing copyright free music content: music recordings, sheet music and a music textbook. This project will use your donations to purchase and release music to the public domain. Right now, if you were to buy a CD of Beethoven's 9th symphony, you would not be legally allowed to do anything but listen to it. You wouldn't be able to share it, upload it, or use it as a soundtrack to your indie film- yet Beethoven has been dead for 183 years and his music is no longer copyrighted. There is a lifetime of music out there, legally in the public domain, but it has yet to be recorded and released to the public.

This is such an eminently sensible idea: releasing music into the public domain that all can use as they wish. I don't think this other project is public domain (anyone know?), but it's still a nice gesture:

Free downloads of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, recorded by Dr. James Kibbie on original baroque organs in Germany, are offered on this site.

Here's where the money's coming from:

This project is sponsored by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance with generous support from Dr. Barbara Furin Sloat in honor of J. Barry Sloat. Additional support has been provided by the Office of Vice-President for Research, the University of Michigan.

It's another model that would be good to see utilised elsewhere, ideally with the results being put into the public domain. (Via @ulyssestone, @alexrossmusic)

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3 comments:

spc said...

Cool, but all this is in AAC and MP3 format, so much for sharing culture. Recommended software is Itunes...
For comparison, check this out:
http://www.rozhlas.cz/d-dur/download_eng/_zprava/brandenburg-concertos-free-downloads--366308
Bach. Flac and Mp3. Much better.
Or this :
http://www.europarchive.org/item.php?id=st-70456_BeG&PHPSESSID=2aae9221737e7e010b341bb6a3c37fd2
Pagliacci. Plethora of formats. Can do.

Bach overflow:
http://www.europarchive.org/results.php?PHPSESSID=2aae9221737e7e010b341bb6a3c37fd2&PHPSESSID=2aae9221737e7e010b341bb6a3c37fd2&query=Bach&additional=&PHPSESSID=2aae9221737e7e010b341bb6a3c37fd2&x=0&y=0

Rigoletto:
http://www.europarchive.org/item.php?id=lp-01022_BeG&PHPSESSID=2aae9221737e7e010b341bb6a3c37fd2
Any format you like, almost.

Glyn Moody said...

@specnaz - thanks for the links, lots of good stuff there.

Yes, I know the formats are horrible, but I was pointing to it as a direction more than as a destination...

Glyn Moody said...

@Music Online: good to see no DRM....