joegratz.net

Ann Bartow at Sivacracy.net points to the Unheard Beethoven project, an extremely cool, two-man quest to make available MIDI files of all of the hundreds of Beethoven’s works that have never been recorded.

I’ve been familiar with the project for a while, since it’s run in part by Mark Zimmer, who coached the quiz bowl team I was on while studying at UW-Madison. (Among UW quizbowlers, Zimmer is known affectionately as “Death”, for somewhat obscure reasons. He is awesome.) I hadn’t recalled that Death placed a rather cool copyright license on the Beethoven files:

While the Unheard Beethoven website is dedicated to the dissemination of Beethoven’s work as widely as possible, the content of this site and all MIDI files contained on this site are copyrighted by Mark S. Zimmer and/or Willem (aka xickx). Fair use of these MIDI files is encouraged; we ask, however, that in connection with any such use that the arranger of that particular MIDI file be credited and the URL of the Unheard Beethoven website be listed. Bulk download and copying and/or distribution of the MIDI files on this site is strictly prohibited. No more than 25 MIDI files may be downloaded or copied in any one day by one entity without the permission(s) of the copyright holder(s).

Seems reasonable. Whether a note-for-note MIDI copy of a Beethoven work is copyrightable is a debatable question (though I understand that much of what Zimmer and his coterie have done has required substantial interpretive originality).

Hey Death — thought about a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license for those files?