
                Mutopia project - manifesto

                        HWN and JCN

Contents

     1: Why
2: What
3: Status

This  is  some random ranting about the Mutopia project, aka
"Music To the People," the ultimate goal  which  I  want  to
accomplish using LilyPond and mudela.

1: Why

Music  publishers  make  lots  of money out of selling sheet
music which is in the public domain (the  composers  died  a
long  time ago). It is usually prohibited to xerox the sheet
music.  Publishers have two arguments to justify  this  pol-
icy: the high prices are there to guarantee diversity (keep-
ing lots of it in stock is expensive), and to encourage  new
work being composed.

This  is bad. Storing a Mudela file takes almost no space at
all, and if sheet music could be had for free, then it would
be  much  easier  obtain less famous music.  These composers
have died long ago, and not  having  their  music  available
only  discourages  people  from  experimenting with it.  You
deserve to get public domain music for free (zero cents)

2: What

For literature, the project Gutenberg has an archive of pub-
lic  domain  literary  works. For music, this does not exist
yet.

We also need an archive of public domain sheet  music;  this
is what we call The Mutopia Project.

3: Status

This  project  is still in its infancy:  we have very little
amount of music available.  The music is partly downloadable
from  the  website.   All  of  it  is included in the source
archive of LilyPond.

o    J.S. Bach, Das Wohltemperierte Clavier I: C major  Pre-
     lude  & Fugue, C minor fugue.  Solo cello suites: suite
     II.  Six small preludes: some preludes.

o    W. A. Mozart,  Horn concerto 3, solo part + cadenza.

o    F. Schubert, Standchen (Serenade) "Leise  flehen  meine
     Lieder"

o    Tarquinio Merula, La Gallina a 2 violini

o    Paul Lacome d'Estalenx, La Feria, Los Toros (oboe 1)
