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Preface
The composers and authors of the Nation's songs and other musical compositions may justly be proud of their part in expressing to America and the world our hopes, our beliefs and our traditions of democracy. It is gratifying to know that creative composers and authors are determined to do their part to preserve our atmosphere of freedom, so essential to the survival of creative ability.—Harry S. Truman. (Excerpt from a letter by the President of the United States to the President of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.)
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is a democratic, nonprofit association of men and women who create and publish the music that is a vital part of our nation's living culture.
The Society originated because such well-known American composers as Victor Herbert and John Philip Sousa discovered that their most popular musical works were being performed publicly for profit without compensation to the composer.
The early history of the Society was largely a record of litigation in support of copyright and the integrity of music performing rights.
In a unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court upheld the copyright owner's right to control public performance of his work for profit, even though no admission was charged. Said Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in his opinion expressing the decision of the High Court:
If the music did not pay it would be given up. If it pays it pays out of the public's pocket. Whether it pays or not the purpose oi employing it is profit and that is enough.
The repertory of the Society represents the finest music produced in the past fifty-six years. (Musical copyright in the United States runs for twenty-eight years, with a renewal term of twenty-eight more.)
The composer and author members of ASCAP have written the musical plays of the country—the operettas, musical comedies, revues and motion pictures—from which so many song hits have come.
Victor Herbert was one of a great line of musical playwrights. Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, Rudolf Friml, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Sigmund Romberg, Vincent Youmans, and many others carried on and enriched this tradition. Their collaborators, the lyricists and librettists Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, |
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