Conference Agenda

From White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co. (1908), to Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Inc. (1994), to Williams v. Gaye (2018), court rulings about music and copyright have been foundational in shaping the creation and commodification of music in the 20th and 21st centuries. The intersection of music and law, however, has ramifications well beyond the discourse about popular music and copyright. This panel will present three papers that explore various aspects of music and the law that have broad implications for personhood, labor, and territorial sovereignty.

In the first presentation, Renata Yazzie will begin by discussing the ambiguous applicability of the Copyright Act in Native American communities and within their sovereign jurisdictional boundaries. She will confront the challenges this legislation poses to tribal sovereignty, and ultimately examine how one Diné community modeled collective authorship as an expression of Indigenous sovereignty. This community featured a group of Navajo translators who collectively authored and published the ecumenical Navajo hymnal Jesus Woodlą́ą́jí’ Sin in 1979 under the name, the “Navajo Hymnal Conference.” In the second paper, Matt Stahl dissects an 1852 contract breach case brought at the apex of London’s “opera war” by an impresario against a celebrated soprano. In this decision, Stahl argues, the social relations of Victorian opera played a specific and essential role in the historical formation of labor power as a commodity and of the legal conditions for entrepreneurs and (creative) professionals to engage contractually as buyers and sellers of commodity labor power. In the final presentation for the panel, Ginger Dellenbaugh will explore the notion of authorship and intellectual property law, from the 1710 Statute of Anne up to recent decisions about AI and creativity, in particular as it relates to music pedagogy and practice. As the traditional understanding of authorship is challenged by new models and technologies, what might art and scholarship look like in a post-authorship environment?

In the early 1850s, an "opera war" erupted in London, centering on the rivalry between the managers of two Italian opera companies. Benjamin Lumley, owner of Her Majesty's Theatre, sued prima donna Johanna Wagner in 1852 for agreeing to sing at Frederick Gye's Covent Garden Theatre in violation of her contract. The following year, Lumley sued Gye for "interfering" with Lumley's contractual relationship with Wagner. The English courts’ decisions in these cases would have consequences far beyond the stage, shaping the legality of labor into the twenty-first century.

Drawing on insights from economic sociology, Marxist legal theory and labor law history, together with primary source material, this paper dissects the first of the two decisions, Lumley v. Wagner (1852), in which, for the first time, a court applied Master and Servant law to a professional, threatening to imprison Wagner if she sang for anyone but Lumley. This paper argues that the social relations in Victorian opera played a specific and essential role in the historical formation of labor power as a commodity and of the legal framework for contracts between entrepreneurs and (creative) professionals.

Prior to Lumley v. Wagner, professionals had been the juridical equals of the entrepreneurs who hired them, liable only to money damages for contract breach. Despite the 1875 abolition of Master and Servant law, the Lumley decisions still undergird employers' property rights in contracted workers' capacity to labor and enable penal contract enforcement by injunction (even, in the case of non-compete agreements, after employment termination). A 2019 Economic Policy Institute study shows that 36 to 60 million American workers are subject to non-compete agreements, and #MeToo indicates that non-disclosure agreements constrain many women's speech and conduct.

Reconsidered from perspectives remote to music and media studies, the Lumley cases reveal music and law's historical, reciprocal, constitutive participation in labor power's legality and enforceability.

In 1710, the English government enacted what is acknowledged to be the first comprehensive legislation about copyright. The Statute of Anne (8 Anne c.19), also known as the Copyright Act of 1710, offered a term of 14 years protection to the authors, or authorized publishers, of literary works. This act was foundational for contemporary intellectual property law and the creation of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO.) Most importantly, it was the first legal act to specifically acknowledge the rights of authors over their work.

This paper will frame current debates around authorship and creativity through the historical lens of Intellectual Property (IP) law. From the Statute of Anne, to the 1858 dispute about the inventions of enslaved people, to current adjustments to IP law addressing AI, regulations around IP reveal shifting concepts of property, appropriation, and creativity. The idea of authorship, in particular, has consequences in the arts where human-based creativity is inextricably linked with the principle of ownership and the right to profit from created work, both fiscally and ephemerally. In musicology, this principle undergirds the archive in the form of musical works as well as scholarship in the discipline. Until recently, proprietary rights and IP protection were presumed to be the purview of humans.

Building on the work of legal scholars such as Joseph Fishman, Rosemary B. Coombe, and Martha Woodmansee, this paper will address current challenges to the concept of authorship and potential consequences for the humanities. Recent developments in generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Dall-e, and Melomics, raise concerns about ownership and profit from AI generated artworks as well as the role authorship plays in creativity, commodification, and cultural validation. When generative AI can create convincing imitations of ostensibly human creativity, what becomes of authorship? In turn, what might the discipline of musicology look like in a post-authorship, post-IP environment?