I was dismayed last night when a friend of mine took out an old Alan Parsons Project album and played a work entitled "The Fall of the House of Usher" The orchestral music was taken directly from a work of the same name by the French composer Claude Debussy. It is a work that is difficult to find and is rarely recorded, although I have an old LP copy myself. It is a work Debussy never completed and apparently the Alan Parsons group felt as though they had a right to plagiarize the work without ever mentioning the fact that they never wrote the music. In fact, all the orchestral music in that particular "song" was written a century ago by Debussy and nowhere on the album, nor on the internet, has anyone ever mentioned or admitted this dreadful deed--stealing the music of a great composer without so much as mentioning his name or giving him any of the credit he deserves. Very, very low indeed!
Re: fall of the house of usher from original album
June 21 2005, 4:35 PM
Um, could you provide a specific reference to the unfinished Debussey work? Even better, a specific reference to the LP that has this unfinished Debussey work? That way, some of us could track down this alledged pirated work, listen to it, and make our own comparisons.
I might add that Andrew Powell did a lot of the work on the Tales suite. I can't remember specifics however.
Anyway, if you could provide the song reference and the LP reference, I'd love to track down a copy and have a listen.
Re: fall of the house of usher from original album
July 19 2005, 1:41 PM
Dear Anonymus,
I cannot understand, why you are so upset. It is known, that the Alan Parsons Project (indeed the writers of Fall of the House of Usher, Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson and Andrew Powell) did use Debussy's work as a starting point and inspiration for their song. The work from debussy, if i remember correctly, is itself inspired by Poe's Usher story, was called "Le Projet" (The Project, so The Alan Parsons Project's name in itself is a whole reference to Debussy) and never finished or published by the musician itself.
And in the 1987 edition of the Tales album (unfortunately not on the original album) the Alan Parsons Project give credit to Debussy in the liner notes.
And in any case debussy died in 1918, so there is absolutely no copyright issue involved here.
And i highly doubt that debussy intended to use electric guitars, drums and a lightning and thunderstorm recording from outside abbey road studios in his work, so you might want to reconsider the term "plagiarize".
And they state openly, from whom the original is, the add their own ideas, production style, new music and new instruments and then put it as a new song on their album; which is, IMHO, absolutely legitimate!
And I just like it that way, it is a great piece of music and a wonderful achievement of the "Project"!
Re: fall of the house of usher from original album
September 6 2005, 9:48 AM
While I see your point in general (and I'm pretty touchy about Copyright infringement issues!), this one has never worried - I always knew it was basically a Debussy piece. I don't know *how* I know that, but I'm wondering whether it was listed on the original LP release somewhere - I'll have to check...
APP are very eclectic at times, but never plagiarists!