Authorship

In its most common use today in the field of music, the term authorship stands for one or more actual individual(s) creating a piece of music—that is, the composer(s) of a musical work (and in the context of songwriting and musical theater, the lyricist(s), too). The idea is that someone creates a work of music autonomously as an authentic expression of the artist with authority regarding the meaning of his/her work, which keeps its identity through all performances, arrangements, variations, improvisations, etc., on its basis. Correspondingly, much scholarly, journalistic, and fan writing about music is focused on the reconstruction of the origins and formation of musical works and the intentions of its creator(s).

This is not the only way to deal with works of music, but at least it is still the common one [Page 112]today, common in the sense film theorist Richard Dyer has explained with regard to all arts:

Bearing this meaning (compared to, for example, Chapter 48 Section 9 (1) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 of the United Kingdom), the term author is used prominently in copyright law as a starting point for granting copyrights. Section 201(a) of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, for example, states the following: “Initial Ownership.—Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are coowners of copyright in the work.” In some legal systems, such as the United States, the position of authorship is fully transferable. In other legal systems, for example in France and in Germany, just the exploitation rights for a musical work are transferable while the author always retains the moral rights, including the right to be indicated as the author in every reproduction or performance of the work.

Copyright law is still a stronghold of the concept of authorship, despite heavy criticism in recent years following the rise of digitalization and computerization of everyday life, with its massive extension of the possibilities to acquire and transform pre-existing music into new musical contexts even with limited musical know-how. But criticism is not new: especially in aesthetics and literary theory, the concept of authorship has been under constant fire for decades. These debates reached the world of music in various ways. One important place of discussions is the field of musical postmodernism and its refocused attention toward musical borrowing, which questions, among others, the idea of authenticity linked so strongly with the concept of authorship. Another area of dispute arose with the arrival of the “new musicology,” which challenged the importance and strength of the concept of authorship in favor of a more cultural and sociological approach toward music production and reception. The field of aesthetic experience also raised a lot of question marks, for example, exemplifying in many ways how little influence an author has on the reception of his/her work.

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