COLLECTION “BLEU”
Creative music
www.bleumusiquedecreation.com

The “Collection Bleu” explores innovative ways of presenting the profusion of musical works of different genres and aesthetics that reflect musical creation, in parallel to the conventional paper format, and not as a substitution for it. Twenty years ago, I set up a collection named “Carrousel”, which was jointly published by six editors. Digitalization offers other ways.

Accessibility of creative works

Bleu reduces production costs and, consequently, sale and rental prices, which, as we all know, have become dissuasive for those who want to play the music of their time, and are no more satisfying for the musical creators!
To this advantage can be added the speed of production (when a score is ordered) delivery to the musician -including the possibility of postal delivery - is faster, or it can be downloaded online.
This new “vehicle” accompanies distribution in a non-exclusive manner, as orders can also be placed in stores. Fragments selected by the composers can be sampled instantly.
The Publishers who participate are associated with the distribution vector.

It is also a question of helping original musical creations to reach a wider audience. At the moment, imaginative musical creations do not have the benefit of the powerful structures placed at the service of other, more easily reproducible types of music, that are subject to more or less passing trends: music that is produced “commercially for the mass market” to use the consecrated term, or again certain types of music that are called “actuelles” in France (as if any music being performed in the present moment was not “contemporary”!). Mainstream commercial music is a homogeneous commodity that tends towards a “One-Music-System” (in the same way as globalization tends towards a One-Idea-System) as it imposes itself on everyone unavoidably through all the existing channels, on most radio stations and in public places.

Accessibility of information about the composers and the works

The sheet music could be enhanced with the addition of details about the composer (biography, bibliography, discography, etc.) which is not really possible on paper. This information can obviously be continuously and instantly updated. It would be possible to provide the dates of concerts the works have been performed at or will be performed at in the future, works in progress, etc. Links to other websites (personal, institutional, editorial, etc.) would constitute a precious complement to the documentation.
If the composer has a personal website, it would evidently be advantageous to establish a link with it. As the work of distribution represents a skill and an investment that the composer has not generally mastered, this would effectively provide the benefit of doubling the initial amount of information available on the web.

Geographic and temporal accessibility

Global distribution presupposes the development of networks and of individual connections of interested audiences, which is apparently happening at the moment.
Tarifs are being examined that would permit effective accessibility depending on location.

Access to a long term memory

In the field of the printed document, digitisation projects are gradually compiling a vast global Library or Babel.
Many musical works fall into obsolescence not through lack of appreciation of their intrinsic value but as a consequence of low sales.
A global memory bank would avoid this drawback, on condition that the global virtual capacity be adequate.
Enlightened choice is only possible if all the elements required to make that choice are available. This partial memory is situated half-way between the giant databases of sheet music – which also constitute parallel electronic reserves - and the shelves of the retail distributor, where it also has its place.

Copyright

Two opposing ideologies continually try to call the principle into question. This is not a new situation, although it is assuming new forms! Some people would like to impose a “fixed price” and cream off the fruits of the creators’ painstaking work, while others would like to see no charge at all.
For this collection, conventional royalties remain in force when the publisher burns the CD. The rate increase, according to the terms of a veritable partnership, when the author supplies a medium that can be readily integrated.
The composer retains total freedom, the possibility of withdrawing some or all of the scores placed on the site if he wishes to have them conventionally printed by his own means, and also to place them if they have already been printed.

Any work that is still played, that is sufficiently rich, in every respect, to arouse interest, aspiration or pleasure, belongs to all human beings, beyond any superficial cultural differences.
It is important to stress this ethical aspect of the question at a time when pathological consumerism is spreading, all the more deadly in its advance since it leads to generalised entropy.
The new vector makes it possible to generate resources more in keeping with the considerable investments in creative, exploratory research required for formal innovation, which our species will have an increasing need for in the face of the ethological conundrums it has devised for itself.

“Bleu”

There is a consensus around the colour blue. This was not always the case and is still not the case in some cultures. It is the symbolic colour of dreams and creativity and at the same time symbolises the risk-taking of adventure and free exploration.
A bright shade of blue expresses this opposition.
Like the colour blue, the creative instinct is meant to be reassuring, in an a priori contradictory manner, evoking both tranquillity and salutary transgression, in the sense that life cannot exist without a continuous mutation of appearances, thought and perception. The creative imagination is vivacious, a sign of vitality, far beyond the modes of repetition and compulsory uniformisation in which it is often more comfortable to confine “captive” audiences.

JEAN-MICHEL BARDEZ