Search - The Rose Ensemble :: And Glory Shone Around: Early American Carols

Too many borrowings from other folks' recordings

Joel Cohen | Amesbury, MA USA | 02/07/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It's an open secret, I guess, that "early music" groups, dealing in repertoires where many aspects of performance were never written down, tend to listen to each others' concerts and recordings, and to adapt ideas, sometimes with an appropriate "thank you," but must often in a semi-surreptitious manner. These borrowings/imitations, among other practices tends to give the whole field a closed-in, self-referential cast. But whatever.



In this case, however, the borrowings are so frequent and detailed, and the general lack of acknowledgement so blatant, that an indignant comment is in order.



This well produced and capably performed program, by the Rose Ensemble, is nonetheless blemished. It "lifts" a number of works from an earlier recording by The Boston Camerata, "An American Christmas." The duplication goes way beyond performing the same pieces that the Camerata chose to do. After all, the music is public domain, and anyone can perform a 150 year old song without owing royalties to a composer.



The cribbings in this case go much farther than duplication of repertoire. What has been lifted from the Boston Camerata performances are basic concepts and arrangements, including matters such as vocal colors, voicings, added instrumentation, repeats and instrumental tags, and even additional lyrics not present in the original source.



For instance: the little Shaker song, "Pretty Home," contains one lyric and two short phrases. The Boston Camerata performance begins with a footstomping beat, and sets up a call-and-response pattern between a deep-voiced female soloist and a group of femaile ripienists.



The Rose Ensemble's performance does the same thing.



The Camerata performance ADDS additional lyrics, composed by music director Joel Cohen, in order to flesh out the performance and give it extra length.



The Rose Ensemble's copies and sings these lyrics. Their soloist even imitates the Camerata's Deborah Rentz-Moore's ornamentation in one of these new strophes.



The Camerata creates a coda for the song by repeating the last phrase, in crescendo, several times.



The Rose Ensemble copies and performs this coda.



Let many groups perform "Pretty Home," it's a terrific piece! But if one is to borrow another group's arrangement/concept, the basic rules of fair play require a prior permission, an acknowledgement in the CD booklet (this element is in fact provided for "Pretty Home," but not for the other works cited below), and (if the arrangement is copyrighted) an appropriate royalty.



Besides "Pretty Home." the following tracks on the Rose Ensemble CD contain unacknowledged borrowings from the Boston Camerata's "An American Christmas":



"Still Water," "Bozrah," "Star in the East," and "Jesus the Light of the World."



Hopefully, a review like this can start a discussion regarding these kinds of practices. They are not confined to the Rose Ensemble, nor to the early American repertoire -- the field of medieval music, for instance, is especially rife with this kind of thing. But we might as well begin close to home, as it were.



The Rose Ensemble has an appealing, youthful profile, and a nice entreprenurial spirit. But it needs to be more rigorous in its scholarship, to engage more vigorously in original research rather than imitation, and to be more forthcoming and honest about its sources and influences.

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