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Speculation and conjecture has been the pastime at work lately.  As soon as a committee was formed to review possible changes to the station, everyone on the second floor knew it was bad news.

WUFT-FM is a great public radio station.  It is an NPR affiliate, and, of course, the NPR programs we air–Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and so on–are fine programs that we all enjoy.  But, when WUFT was founded over twenty-five years ago, classical music also figured prominently in the mission of the station.  And that mission has been successful for all these years because the public has been very supportive.

Obviously, public radio support is measured in pledge dollars, and, from a cost/benefit perspective, classical music is probably the best format.  While nationally-syndicated news and public affairs programming is very expensive (over $1,000 per broadcast hour), classical music is a relative bargain.  The cost-effectiveness of classical music is such that, at WUFT, the pledges for classical make up for the deficits the more expensive news programs generate.  That is not a bad thing, though.  Rather, it is a mutually beneficial way to bring variety to the listening audience.

The first sign of trouble appeared during the membership campaign last April.  A letter appeared in the Gainesville Sun–an unsolicited letter not tied to any previous article or op-ed–that complained about the classical music.  It was a letter which ought to have elicited nothing but laughs and derision, since it complained that our format was devoted to “dead, white, slave-traders”.  I don’t know a single classical music composer that ever owned a slave, much less traded slaves.  A letter from a crackpot doesn’t have much power to change anything.  But on its heels appeared an op-ed by a somewhat well-known local photographer, which posited that our format was stale and that Gainesville listeners were missing out on a host of other NPR programs. This op-ed initially had an effect that was the opposite of what may have been intended.  The day after its publication, WUFT had a great pledge day for classical music, and the Sun eventually published a series of letters in support of classical music.

Then, after the seas calmed, word came that a committee was considering possible changes to WUFT’s format.  A proposal to expand local news coverage and increase student involvement seemed perfectly sensible.  And, perhaps that would be the extent of the change.  But the minutes of the committee’s meetings suggested that bigger changes were on the table.  On the second floor, it was clear that this wouldn’t end well.  No one on the staff involved in music programming, including the station manager, was appointed to the committee.  This led some to believe that a decision had already been made, and that the committee was merely window dressing.  The rumors reached the public, and more letters appeared in the Gainesville Sun, including a scathing op-ed by UF music professor Raymond Chobaz, which alluded to UF president Bernie Machen’s involvement in the elimination of classical music programming from the radio station at his previous employer, the University of Utah.

This afternoon the official word came out:  WUFT will go all-talk.  No more classical music after August 3, 2009.  Supposedly, the second HD stream will be devoted to classical music full-time. But it is unclear whether it will be locally programmed or come from a generic national satellite source.  It is also unclear what jobs will be eliminated.  And what will become of the other arts institutions in North Central Florida, which have enjoyed a warm relationship with WUFT, is also unclear.

I don’t speak for my coworkers, and I don’t speak for WUFT.  But, as you all know, I certainly speak for my self.  And for me, this is heartbreaking.

The recording I most desire in this world is a twenty-one CD set called the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Edition.  It was released by Deutsche Grammophon in commemoration of the baritone’s 75th birthday some years back.  I didn’t buy it at the time because, a) it was expensive, and, b) I thought I’d get the chance later on.  It went out of print, of course, and I’ve been scouring eBay ever since.  One was finally listed last week, and I watched with keen interest, intending to bid at the last minute.  I use a website that will place a bid automatically in the last seconds of the auction.  I set my bid this afternoon, went out to dinner tonight, and came home expecting to see that I won, or at worst, was outbid.

I am devistated to see that I wasn’t outbid.  Rather, there was an error with my user name or password, and the program didn’t bid for me.  The item ended at under $50.  I would surely have won.  I can now expect to wait years before seeing this item again.

My school schedule has prevented me from hosting the Give Away and Request Program for more than a year.  But Agnes is away this week, and I don’t have class on Friday afternoons this summer, so I did it.  The requests are generally consistent (Holst’s Planets, Saint-Säens’s Organ Symphony), and today the CD we gave away was better than average: Leon Fleisher playing Mozart.  Today, I made up my own trivia question.  Test yourself:

In a famous 1763 portrait, a six-year-old Mozart is shown posing with a gift given to him by Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa.  What was the gift? (more…)

On Fresh Air yesterday, Terry Gross interviewed Lawrence Lessing, a law professor who argues that the changes wrought by the internet require changes in copyright law.  One of the examples he cited of copyright restrictions being overly strict involved a YouTube video of a small child dancing in her own, filmed by her mother for her grandmother to see.  In the background you could hear a song by Prince, which is, presumably, what the girl was dancing to.  YouTube was instructed by the record label to remove the video.  (I know some labels and artists are much stricter about these things, and I know Prince is one of the most strict.)  Lessing made the point that this mother committed a crime by posting this video under current law, but asked if this really should be criminal. That is a particularly good example for him to use, because if you consider how much copyrighted music surrounds us each day, it is very easy to run afoul of the law when videotaping in public.  Imagine that you’re having a fine time hanging out on a game day here in beautiful Gainesville, Florida, and you shoot some video of you and your pals throwing a football around while the food is on the grill and the girlfriends are chatting amongst themselves.  I can almost guarantee that somebody in the camper next to you is going to be playing their radio, and that audio bleeding into your video means that you’re guilty of copyright infringement by posting it online.

We live in the age of file sharing.  Anyone who had a computer in the spring and summer of 2000 (which I dubbed the Summer of Napster), will recall what a big deal file sharing became.  I distinctly remember the sense of urgency many felt when the lawsuits against Napster threatened to shut the service down.  Everyone stayed home by their computers that night in a frantic orgy of downloading before it was too late.  I also remember saying at the time that the world would never go back.  The genie was out of the bottle, so to speak, and once people saw the benefit of having unlimited access to every song they ever loved for free, there would always be a service or program to satisfy that demand.  Napster did eventually end, but the long Summer of Napster continues.

I say all this to make a point about copyright which relates to yesterday’s Fresh Air.  Some argue that, since file sharing is so common, and copyright holders are “losing” so much money (I use quotes because I think that these artists are “losing” sales they never would have made in the first place: i.e., “people” will download Avril Lavigne for nothing, but they wouldn’t pay for it {I use quotes around “people” because I don’t think real humans could like Avril Lavigne}), that we should change the way royalties are collected.  Lawrence Lessing referred to a system in which file sharing is legal, downloads are tracked, and royalties are paid to copyright holders based on the number of downloads.  These fees might be collected from ISPs according to one proposal.  My problem with that system is that it requires people who do not download songs, or download only a few, to pay for the hobby of those who download hundreds or thousands of songs.

Perhaps the best point that Lawrence Lessing made related to the meaning and intent of copyright itself.  If you are like me, you probably assumed that copyright exists to guarantee that the intellectual property of creative individuals remains valuable through protection from theft.  Apparently this is not what the founding fathers intended.  For them, copyright was designed to ensure continued creativity by offering temporary protection from theft of intellectual property.  As Lessing pointed out in the interview, George Gershwin or Robert Frost write music and poetry with the understanding that their creations belong to them.  But since neither man is alive, the copyright that still exists on their works is no longer encouraging creativity at all.  Lessing points out that the constitution expressly forbids perpetual copyright, but Congress’ continued passage of legislation designed to extend copyrights amounts to an endless copyright.

Most of the music I listen to is in the public domain.  Some of it never was copyrighted to begin with.  Anybody could have passed off Bach’s music as his own, even in Bach’s time, and there wasn’t much that could be done.  That’s obviously a bad system given today’s technology.  Still, lack of copyright protection certainly didn’t slow Bach down.  There are well over a thousand pieces in the Schmieder catalog.  But almost everything created in the last hundred years is still in copyright, and considering the value that corporations place on their intellectual property (Mickey Mouse was created in 1928), it’s doubtful that copyright will ever be anything but permanent again.

Once you hear Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony you never forget it.  It is an absolutely overwhelming experience.  It requires well over a hundred players, plus a huge chorus and a soprano and contralto, and lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes.  It is no surprise whatever that Gilbert Kaplan would have become so passionate about it.

Kaplan is a wealthy businessman who has devoted his life to Mahler’s Second Symphony.  Kaplan isn’t a trained musician, nor does he claim to be, but from time to time he conducts the work with various orchestras.  He’s even made two recordings of the piece.  I have his first, released on MCA in 1988 with the LSO.  Kaplan’s conducting is clearly not in the same league as Klemperer or Walter, but, judging from the recording, it isn’t horrible by any means.

But to read an article published last week, the New York Philharmonic players would disagree.  One of the Philharmonic’s violinists said of Kaplan, “I think he’s a charlatan.  At best his conducting is incompetent. At worst it’s laughable”.  Ouch.

How is it, then, that music critics and record reviewers like myself haven’t come to the same conclusion as the New York Philharmonic players?  The answer is the players themselves.  First class, modern orchestras like the NYPO play at such a high level that they can compensate for inferior conducting.  Let’s say a conductor’s technique is lacking, and he doesn’t show the beat.  The players power through.  Counting Mahler isn’t like counting Stravinsky, so the players can keep together themselves, and if they pay attention to the concertmaster and their section leaders, they can simply ignore a bad conductor. The audience might be unaware, especially if they can’t see what the conductor is doing.  It’s not ideal, and it is not likely to be revelatory, but that’s how it is.

What makes Kaplan’s MCA set so impressive is the care that went into the documentation he put together.  There are two booklets: one is full of notes and the sung text; the other includes an assortment of letters written by Mahler related to his Symphony No. 2.  It’s a lavish package I wouldn’t want to be without.  Kaplan’s recording may not be the first I turn to when I want to hear the Resurrection, but I cannot help but feeling the NYPO players are being a little dramatic.  Plus, Kaplan has done a great deal to advance this incomparable music.  He owns the manuscript copy of the work, and while I never like the idea of great works of art being in private hands, I am certain he treasures it.

Here’s a short sample from Kaplan’s LSO recording: