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valuable collections in the Music Division.) He left behind my grandmother and three young children (age 10, 14 and 19) who survived primarily on copyright royalties. Today, our family continues to spend a great deal of time and energy promoting my grandfather's works and protecting his cultural legacy which is a treasured asset of the City of Los Angeles.
My generation, the grandchildren, span from age 17 to 35. It would be a great loss if our family were not now able to reap the benefits of my grandfather's life's work, just as those benefits are coming to fruition. In serious music, even 70 years after death is sometimes insufficient. J. S. Bach's music had to wait almost 100 years after the composer's death before Felix Mendelssohn "discovered" it and proclaimed its greatness to the world.
My grandfather wrote an essay in 1949 in which he challenged the philosophical underpinnings of the copyright term and questioned:
why an author should be deprived of his property only for the advantage of shameless pirates, while every other property could be inherited by the most distant relatives for centuries.
Indeed, there does not seem to be any sound reason for this disparity in the treatment of intellectual property from other forms of property. As the nations of the world lengthen the term of copyright, intellectual property is beginning to be placed on an equal playing field with other forms of property. This is as it should be. For the record, I have attached a copy of my grandfather's essay.
For my grandfather, as with most serious composers today, the prospect of performances and recognition after his death was his only hope of compensation and support for his young family. Had he not had faith in the ability of his copyrights to support his family, he would not have been able to devote the time that his groundbreaking work required. Certainly, The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995 will be a further inspiration to those artists creating today, whose works are also not likely to receive their due during their lifetimes.
Thank you for your support of this important measure.