The Artsy Honker

"A text in Latin shall be used", I read, of a choral composition competition.

It turns out they are a bit more picky than that:

Only texts by the following Latin Authors will be accepted: Ovidio (Publius Ovidius Naso), Orazio (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Virgilio (Publius Vergilius Maro), Catullo (Gaius Valerius Catullus), Marziale (Marcus Valerius Martialis), Lucrezio (Titus Lucretius Carus).

Being more a Christian sacred composer than anything else, and lacking a Classics background, I'm utterly unfamiliar with most of these. I understand Catullus is rather rude.

I suspect the pronunciation varies considerably from church Latin, too, though probably not so much that I can't set it well.

I feel a bit like this is a veiled attempt to filter out people who aren't posh enough, or haven't had the "right" educational background. I dislike those kinds of barriers to participation.

So: does anyone have any suggestions for me from those authors? Any passages you'd particularly like to hear me set to music?

I've had some problems with people not really understanding that, if they use my CC by-SA music, they do actually have to allow recordings. It's a delicate topic, but the basic problem is that they see "free" and assume that it means "free, and we can make all the usual assumptions about the performance rights of the singers" when what I mean is "free, but only if you restrict the performance rights of the singers for the good of ease of spreading of the work". There are good reasons for some choirs wanting to respect the performance rights of their singers, so I want to make it clear that a) no, I mean it, you gotta let people record this stuff if you're using it for free and b) if you can't or don't want to do that, you can talk to me and I'll decide whether other terms are acceptable. (What it will boil down to is whether they're paying the singers already, in most cases.)

So I'm thinking a revised footer on the music itself, saying something like:

This music is licensed under CC by-SA v 4.0 (or wevs), which means that you can download it, sing it and record it for free, but conditions apply: you must allow others to freely share the results of your work. For further details see [page on my website]. For a .pdf of this work e-mail [me].



Then, in reasonably forbidding letters in the inside cover:

This work is licensed under [etc]. This means that YOU MAY: share this music online, photocopy it, perform it, or make arrangements or recordings -- so long as you make it clear who composed the music and words. All of this is free, and needs no explicit permission from the composer.

However, YOU MUST: allow absolutely anyone to make a recording of your performance, allow others to photocopy your arrangements of this music, and so on. YOU MUST NOT release recordings with DRM or make any attempt to hamper access to this music or any derivatives of it.

If your choir requires control of recordings, for example because of contractual agreements with your singers, please contact the composer [at my e-mail address] to discuss other terms which permit this.

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This is already with some editing advice from when I wrote about this before in a locked post, but other suggestions are welcome here.