Moscow launches program to convert sound recordings into music scores

David K. Nelson says:

Well perhaps somewhere in the US there are young people sitting in coffee shops scheming to find ways to turn audio recordings into musical scores and willing to sell their souls to those who can make it happen for them …. but not at the coffee shops I wander into. Tik Tok has little to fear but fear itself.

But actually, it makes sense for the Russians to give this sort of technology a priority. It was a Russian (Leonid Kogan) who laboriously listened over and over to Heifetz’s recording (reportedly given to him by Oistrakh) of the Bizet/Waxman “Carmen Fantasy” so that a solo part could be created. I have a vague recollection that Joseph Silverstein might have done the same thing.

And it was a Russian/or Soviet, who laboriously listened over and over to Arthur Grumiaux’s 1950s recording of the Paganini Violin Concerto so that he could re-create the long-lost orchestra parts which at that time were tightly controlled by the manuscript’s owner. (If memory serves you had to use the conducting services of the collector’s son if you wanted to perform or record the piece, and that is who you hear conducting on the Grumiaux recording.) Once this version of the score existed it was offered to Yehudi Menuhin who in turn suggested it be offered to Ruggiero Ricci. If nothing else it seems to have ended the strangle-hold on having to use the collector’s son to conduct.

So there is a history of something like an actual need, or at least an actual use, for this technology in Russia. I’m also under the impression that a similar parallel-universe score exists for An American in Paris which is played by orchestras seeking to avoid paying an extra fee to the Gershwin estate.