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[[Image:Ascap_low-res.gif|right|caption=ASCAP Logo]]The '''American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers''' ('''ASCAP''') is a not-for-profit [[performing rights organization]] that protects its members' musical [[copyrights]] by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them accordingly. ASCAP collects licensing fees from users of music created by ASCAP members, then distributes them back to its members as royalties. In 2005, ASCAP collected US$750 million in licensing fees and distributed US$646 million in royalties to its members, yielding a 12.5% operating expense ratio, the lowest of any performance rights organization in the world. In the United States, ASCAP competes with two other performing rights organizations: [[Broadcast Music Incorporated]] (BMI) and the [[Society of European Stage Authors and Composers]] ([[SESAC]]).
{{infobox Book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
| name = The Glass Bead Game
| title_orig = Das Glasperlenspiel
| translator = Richard and Clara Winston
| image =
| author = [[Hermann Hesse]]
| cover_artist =
| country = [[Switzerland]]
| language = [[German language|German]]
| series =
| genre = [[Novel]]
| publisher = [[Holt, Rinehart and Winston]]
| release_date = [[1943]] (Eng. trans. [[1969]])
| media_type = Print ([[Hardcover|Hardback]] & [[Paperback]])
| pages = 558 pp
| isbn = NA <!-- published before ISBN system -->
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}


ASCAP was established in [[New York City]] on [[February 13]], [[1914]] to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members, then mostly writers and publishers associated with New York’s [[Tin Pan Alley]]. ASCAP’s earliest members included the era’s most active songwriters – [[Irving Berlin]], [[James Weldon Johnson]], [[Jerome Kern]] and [[John Philip Sousa]]. Not long after, prominent songwriters such as [[W.C. Handy]], [[Richard Rodgers]], [[Oscar Hammerstein II]] and [[George and Ira Gershwin]] became members. As of early 2007, ASCAP claims 275,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers as members.
'''''The Glass Bead Game''''' ([[German language|German]]: '''''Das Glasperlenspiel''''') is the last work and [[magnum opus]] of the German author [[Hermann Hesse]]. Begun in [[1931]] and published in [[Switzerland]] in [[1943]], the book was mentioned in Hesse's citation for the 1946 [[Nobel Prize]] for Literature.


In 1919, ASCAP and the [[Performing Right Society]] of [[Great Britain]] signed the first reciprocal agreement for the representation of each other’s members’ works in their respective territories. Today, ASCAP has reciprocal agreements all over the world and licenses the U.S. performances of hundreds of thousands of international music creators.
"Glass Bead Game" is a literal translation of the German title. The title has also been translated as '''''Magister Ludi'''''. "Magister Ludi," [[Latin]] for "master of the game," is the name of an honorific title awarded to the book's central character. ''Magister Ludi'' can also be seen as a [[pun]]: ''lud'' is a Latin stem meaning both "game" and "school."


The advent of radio in the 1920s brought an important new source of income for ASCAP. Radio stations originally only broadcast performers live, the performers working for free. Later, performers wanted to be paid and recorded performances became more prevalent. Many composers didn't want their music performed or played for free, but some radio broadcasters grew reluctant to honor ASCAP license fees, and in 1940, during negotiations with ASCAP over rates, radio broadcasters formed [[Broadcast Music Incorporated]] (BMI) in an effort to drive down licensing fees. Eventually, public demand forced the radio broadcasters to agree to new rates. Today, over 11,500 local commercial radio stations and 2000 non-commercial radio broadcasters are ASCAP licensees.
==Plot summary==
{{spoiler}}
''The Glass Bead Game'' takes place during the 23rd century. The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Hesse mentions the political violence of the 20th century in passing, but his main critique of that century is encapsulated by his dismissive name for it: the Age of the [[Feuilleton]], an intellectually superficial and decadent period, when [[middle brow]] journalism replaced serious reading and reflection.


ASCAP was the first U.S. performing rights organization to distribute royalties for performances on the Internet, and continues to pursue and secure licenses for websites, digital music providers and other new media.
Castalia is home to a [[monastic]] order of [[intellectual]]s with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys (the novel is thus a detailed exploration of education and the life of the mind), and to nurture and play the Glass Bead Game (see below).


ASCAP honors its top members in a series of annual awards shows in seven different music categories: [[pop music|Pop]], [[Rhythm and Soul]], [[Film]] and [[Television]], [[Latin]], [[Country music|Country]], [[Christian]] and [[Concert Music]]. In addition, ASCAP inducts jazz greats to its Jazz Wall of Fame in an annual ceremony held at the society’s New York offices.
The novel chronicles the life of a distinguished member of the order, Joseph Knecht (the surname translates as "servant" or "farm hand"), as narrated by a fictional historian of the order. Hence the novel is an example of a [[Bildungsroman]]. At any given time, the member of the order deemed the best Game player is honored with the title ''Magister Ludi''.


Through its ASCAPlus Awards Program, ASCAP compensates those writers whose works are substantially performed in venues and media outside of its surveys. An independent panel reviews the applications and makes cash awards to deserving members as well as writers whose works have a unique prestige value. ASCAP is the only performing rights organization with a cash awards program of this kind. One common criticism is that the awards are actually quite low, normally ranging in the $25 - $100 range, and the reasoning behind the award is withheld from the writer.
Polarities lie at the heart of the work, as is commonly the case in Hesse's novels. Two relationships are of particular interest, that of Knecht with his teacher, the learned monk Father Jacobus, and with his best friend at the boarding school run by the order, Plinio Designori, the scion of a rich family. At the end of their school days, Knecht, representing [[aestheticism]] and the Life of the Mind, joins the order, while Designori returns to the world. He embodies a failed reconciliation between mind and world.


ASCAP had attracted media attention in 1996 when it threatened [[Girl Scouts of the USA]] and [[Boy Scouts of America]] camps that sang ASCAP's copyrighted works at camps with lawsuits for not paying licensing fees. These threats were later retracted. ASCAP has also garnered criticism for paying only $.20 on the dollar to instrumental (score) music vs. songs with lyrics in them, even if the uses are identical, and the organization has not provided a rationale for this discriminatory policy. ASCAP has also been criticized for it's extremely non-transparent operations, including the refusal to release attendance records for board members, the notes from board meetings, and the true reasoning behind their weighting formulas which determine how much money a song or composition gets paid for use on TV or radio.
In his introduction to ''[[Demian]]'', [[Thomas Mann]] likened his relation with Hesse to that of Knecht and Jacobus, adding that their knowledge of each other was not possible without much ceremony. Mann extrapolates on Hesse's observance of Oriental customs in the novel. The ''Glass Bead Game'' manifests Hesse's enduring dream of combining East with West. For example, the discipline of the imaginary monastic community includes breathing and [[meditation]] techniques of clear Oriental inspiration.


In April of 2006, ASCAP inaugurated its annual ASCAP “I Create Music” EXPO, the first national conference fully dedicated to songwriting and composing. The first EXPO featured workshops, panels, mentor sessions and performances with hundreds of notable figures from all music genres and sectors of the music industry, including an interview and Q&A session with [[Tom Petty]]. The second EXPO took place between April 19 and 21, 2007. Highlights included an interview with Randy Newman, performances by John Rich, Jimmy Webb and Glenn Ballard, and panels with Marc Shaiman, Chamillionaire, ''Family Guy'' creator Seth MacFarlane and Jermaine Dupri, among hundreds of others music creators and industry insiders.
Castalia is an [[Ivory Tower]], an ethereal protected community within a larger nation, devoted to pure intellectual pursuits, and oblivious to the problems posed by life outside its boundaries. Knecht gradually comes to doubt whether the intellectually gifted have a right to withdraw from life's big problems. He eventually concludes that they do not, and that conclusion precipitates a sort of midlife crisis. Accordingly, he does the unthinkable: he resigns as Magister Ludi and asks to leave the order, ostensibly to become of value and service, in some way, to the larger culture. A few days later, he drowns in a mountain lake, while attempting a swim for which he was not fit. Tragically, living in Castalia made Knecht unfit for life in the world. Hesse also makes an [[existentialist]] point: faced with a dilemma, Knecht opts for the world and not the ivory tower.


==See also==
Many characters in the novel have names that are allusive word games. For example, Knecht's predecessor as Magister Ludi was Thomas van der Trave, a veiled reference to [[Thomas Mann]] who was born in [[Lübeck]], situated on the Trave River. Father Jacobus is based on the novelist [[Jakob Wassermann]]. The character of Carlo Ferromonte is a punning reference to Hesse's nephew Karl Isenberg.
* [[Copyright collective]]
* [[Performing Right Society]]


==Central characters==
==External links==
*ASCAP [http://www.ascap.com/ Official website]
*Joseph Knecht: The central character of the book. The Magister Ludi for most of the book.
*[http://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/events/expo/ ASCAP "I Create Music" EXPO 2007]
*The Music Master: Knecht's spiritual mentor who when Knecht is a child examines him for entrance into the elite schools of Castalia.
*[http://www.ascap.com/about/history/ ASCAP's history]
* Plinio Designori: Knecht's antithesis in the world outside.
*[http://www.ascap.com/about/specialawardsinfo.html ASCAPlus Awards]
*Father Jacobus: Knecht's antithesis in faith.
*[http://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/awards/jazzwall/index.html ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame]
*Elder Brother: A former Castalian and student of Chinese.
*[http://www.myspace.com/ascap ASCAP Myspace page]
*Thomas van der Trave: Joseph Knecht's predecessor as Magister Ludi.
*Fritz Tegularius: A friend of Knecht's but a portent of what Castalians might become if they remain insular.


==Hesse's Glass Bead Game==
At the center of the monastic order lies the (fictitious) glass bead [[game]], whose exact nature remains elusive. The precise rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Suffice it to say that playing the Game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract [[synthesis]] of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. For example, a [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]] [[concerto]] may be related to a mathematical [[formula]]. One [http://www.sfhreview.com/workingpapers/?p=1 description] says:


[[Category:1914 establishments]]
''“Theoretically,” writes the Narrator Archivist, “this instrument is capable of producing in the Game the entire intellectual content of the universe. The manuals, pedal, and stops are now fixed. Changes in their number and order and attempts at perfecting them, are actually no longer feasible except in theory.” And with this statement, he reveals the limitations of the game: its elitism, its hubris, its stagnation, and its sterility.In its infancy, the Game was played with delicate glass beads, which have since been discarded as too . . . real? They connected the Game with the spiritual beads played by religious believers worldwide, as the robes, and secret language, and ceremonial trappings of the game form a mock religious experience in the time of the Narrator Archivist. Without them, the game flies into the ether without a tether to reality. In our world, prayer beads and the repetition of simple phrases serve as keys to transcendence. In Castalia, they are discarded and the key is lost. The Narrator Archivist makes no reference to the ecstatic states that might be achieved by Glass Bead Game players. The games as he describes them in Knecht’s time (the twenty-second century) and his own (the twenty-fourth century) apparently fall short of what seems the obvious goal.''
[[Category:Copyright collection societies]]
[[Category:Music industry associations]]
[[Category:American music]]


[[de:American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers]]
The Game derives its name from the fact that it was originally played with tokens, perhaps analogous to those of an [[abacus]] or the game [[go (board game)|Go]]. At the time that the novel takes place, such props had become obsolete and the game is played only with abstract, spoken formulas. The audience's appreciation of a good game draws on its appreciation of both [[music]] and mathematical [[elegance]].
[[fr:American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers]]

[[sv:ASCAP]]
The Glass Bead Game also brings to mind [[Leibniz]]'s notion of a universal [[calculus]] and his dream of a [[Mathesis universalis]]. [[Douglas Hofstadter]]'s ''[[Gödel, Escher, Bach]]'', even though it does not mention Hesse's novel, is an intellectual exercise very much in the spirit of the Game.

However rather as being seen as a purely intellectual or rational notion it is more likely the glass bead game includes more [[Existential]] elements. As Hesse's other works (such as Steppenwolf for example) draw strongly on [[Existential]] themes it is likely that the glass bead game refers to the way in which people construct their realities. That is to say that the glass bead game is in fact life or existence and it illustrates the ways that people position not just themselves material but how they construct their entire perception of reality. As one needs to understand reality before one can deliberately allocate it this is the reference to the years of study.

==Allusions/references from other works==
* The [[Yugoslavia|Yugoslav]] band [[Igra Staklenih Perli]], and their [[eponym|eponymous]] record, was named after the book.[http://www.progarchives.com/Progressive_rock_discography_BAND.asp?band_id=1614]

== See also ==
*[[Hermann Hesse]]
* [[Existentialism]]
* [[Jorge Luis Borges]]
* [[Epistemology]]
* [[Noosphere]]
* [[Ontology]]
* [[Polysemy]]
* [[Rithmomachy]]
* [[Syncretism]]
* [[Efforts to Create A Glass Bead Game]]

== References ==
* Hermann Hesse. ''The Glass Bead Game''. Vintage Classics. ISBN 0-09-928362-X

{{Hermann Hesse}}

== External links ==

* [http://www.ludism.org/gbgwiki/ Glass Bead Game Wiki.] Links to efforts at developing a Glass Bead Game.
* [http://www.erpmusic.com/Glasperlenspiel.htm Glasperlenspiel Festival.]
* [http://glassplategame.org/ Details] of Dunbar Aitkens' "conversation in the trappings of a board game."
* [http://www.beadgaming.com/pageindex.html On the hipbone metaphor.]
* [http://www36.pair.com/waldzell/GBG/index.html The most complex of the attempts to create a real-life Glass Bead Game.]
* http://www.joshuafost.com/glassbeadgame/ A Semantic Web instantiation with examples from symbolism in Pulp Fiction.
* http://kennexions.ludism.org/ A link to Ron Hale-Evans' Kennexions game.
* http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/%7Etas3/wtc/ii21.html Timothy A. Smith's Shockwave movie analyzing a Bach fugue with visual symbols.
* http://log24.com/theory/kal/ Kaleidoscope Puzzle with symbols like those in Smith's movie.
* http://www.spookybug.com/bgirls/pif.html The Gospel of Pif: A playable variation on the glass bead game
* http://www.island.org/ive/1/leary1.html Huxley, Hesse and The Cybernetic Society

[[Category:1943 novels|Glass Bead Game]]
[[Category:German novels|Glass Bead Game]]
[[Category:Fictional games|Glass Bead Game]]

[[de:Das Glasperlenspiel]]
[[fr:Le Jeu des perles de verre]]
[[it:Il gioco delle perle di vetro]]
[[ja:ガラス玉演戯]]
[[nl:kralenspel]]
[[ru:Игра в бисер]]
[[fi:Lasihelmipeli]]

Revision as of 17:46, 14 July 2007

caption=ASCAP Logo
caption=ASCAP Logo

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a not-for-profit performing rights organization that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them accordingly. ASCAP collects licensing fees from users of music created by ASCAP members, then distributes them back to its members as royalties. In 2005, ASCAP collected US$750 million in licensing fees and distributed US$646 million in royalties to its members, yielding a 12.5% operating expense ratio, the lowest of any performance rights organization in the world. In the United States, ASCAP competes with two other performing rights organizations: Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC).

ASCAP was established in New York City on February 13, 1914 to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members, then mostly writers and publishers associated with New York’s Tin Pan Alley. ASCAP’s earliest members included the era’s most active songwriters – Irving Berlin, James Weldon Johnson, Jerome Kern and John Philip Sousa. Not long after, prominent songwriters such as W.C. Handy, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and George and Ira Gershwin became members. As of early 2007, ASCAP claims 275,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers as members.

In 1919, ASCAP and the Performing Right Society of Great Britain signed the first reciprocal agreement for the representation of each other’s members’ works in their respective territories. Today, ASCAP has reciprocal agreements all over the world and licenses the U.S. performances of hundreds of thousands of international music creators.

The advent of radio in the 1920s brought an important new source of income for ASCAP. Radio stations originally only broadcast performers live, the performers working for free. Later, performers wanted to be paid and recorded performances became more prevalent. Many composers didn't want their music performed or played for free, but some radio broadcasters grew reluctant to honor ASCAP license fees, and in 1940, during negotiations with ASCAP over rates, radio broadcasters formed Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) in an effort to drive down licensing fees. Eventually, public demand forced the radio broadcasters to agree to new rates. Today, over 11,500 local commercial radio stations and 2000 non-commercial radio broadcasters are ASCAP licensees.

ASCAP was the first U.S. performing rights organization to distribute royalties for performances on the Internet, and continues to pursue and secure licenses for websites, digital music providers and other new media.

ASCAP honors its top members in a series of annual awards shows in seven different music categories: Pop, Rhythm and Soul, Film and Television, Latin, Country, Christian and Concert Music. In addition, ASCAP inducts jazz greats to its Jazz Wall of Fame in an annual ceremony held at the society’s New York offices.

Through its ASCAPlus Awards Program, ASCAP compensates those writers whose works are substantially performed in venues and media outside of its surveys. An independent panel reviews the applications and makes cash awards to deserving members as well as writers whose works have a unique prestige value. ASCAP is the only performing rights organization with a cash awards program of this kind. One common criticism is that the awards are actually quite low, normally ranging in the $25 - $100 range, and the reasoning behind the award is withheld from the writer.

ASCAP had attracted media attention in 1996 when it threatened Girl Scouts of the USA and Boy Scouts of America camps that sang ASCAP's copyrighted works at camps with lawsuits for not paying licensing fees. These threats were later retracted. ASCAP has also garnered criticism for paying only $.20 on the dollar to instrumental (score) music vs. songs with lyrics in them, even if the uses are identical, and the organization has not provided a rationale for this discriminatory policy. ASCAP has also been criticized for it's extremely non-transparent operations, including the refusal to release attendance records for board members, the notes from board meetings, and the true reasoning behind their weighting formulas which determine how much money a song or composition gets paid for use on TV or radio.

In April of 2006, ASCAP inaugurated its annual ASCAP “I Create Music” EXPO, the first national conference fully dedicated to songwriting and composing. The first EXPO featured workshops, panels, mentor sessions and performances with hundreds of notable figures from all music genres and sectors of the music industry, including an interview and Q&A session with Tom Petty. The second EXPO took place between April 19 and 21, 2007. Highlights included an interview with Randy Newman, performances by John Rich, Jimmy Webb and Glenn Ballard, and panels with Marc Shaiman, Chamillionaire, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and Jermaine Dupri, among hundreds of others music creators and industry insiders.

See also

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