Trial by Ear: Legal Attitudes to Keyboard Arrangement in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

Keyboard arrangement was a vital tool for the circulation of music in the nineteenth century, and the economic rewards for publishing a successful arrangement—or at least one of a successful work—could be profound. Legal cases throughout the nineteenth century investigated the permissibility of producing keyboard arrangements of original works. These cases are repositories of the contemporary attitudes to keyboard arrangement. Three legal cases concerning different practices of keyboard arrangement and different kinds of source work are recounted and analysed. It is shown that legal practitioners were often unable to respond adequately to the complex questions about imitation and creativity raised by the practice. Society at large believed that keyboard arrangement possessed two very distinct kinds of value: the idea and ideal of the original work, and the utility of domestic performance.