On The Joys of Recorded Music

On The Process of Releasing a Song

Notes by Patrice Michaels

What to do when the author of a letter that you’ve already set to music refuses permission to publish?

This was the problem I faced quite unexpectedly in 2017, just a few months before my song cycle about RBG was scheduled to be recorded as the anchoring composition for the album that became Notorious RBG in Song, with Kuang-Hao Huang at the piano and me singing the pieces that comprise my cycle, THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs.

In 1999, Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter wrote a perfectly lovely thank-you note to James Ginsburg, expressing gratitude for a particular recording he had received from his pal, RBG. The album that so moved him was Rachel Barton Pine’s 1997 debut on Cedille Records: her CD of the complete Handel Violin Sonatas. Souter’s suggestion that Cedille’s bottom line might be negatively impacted by James’ mother’s liberal gifting of CDs was a droll joke — a foil for his sincere and profound expression of appreciation for Ms. Pine’s recorded interpretations. 

As the song cycle about my mother-in-law and those whose lives she affected came together, this letter was an obvious gem, tying together so many aspects of her life, both familial and collegial. I also loved it for Souter’s stunned conversion to the possibility that a recorded performance might have the power to evoke emotion in the listener just as much as a live performance would. And, of course, it was terrific that his thanks for this creation were being offered to the recording’s producer, who was my colleague in 1999, but by 2017 was my very own husband. 

As Justice Souter had been off the bench for some years already, I didn’t worry when my first request for permission went unanswered. I sent another a few months later. On my third try, I finally found a circuitous route to him through a former secretary. When his response arrived, I was dumbstruck: due to his lifelong commitment to avoiding any publication that might result in monetary gain, he would have to refuse. 

I put “On the Joys of Recorded Music” in the drawer, remembering how many composers were similarly disappointed when they failed to gain the rights to desired texts. I wrote a new piece for the song cycle about a Very Young James, concerning his elevator thievery and his mother’s insistence that the school administrators who took James’ latest prank so very seriously should explain the gravity of this transgression to the boy’s father — for a change — and not to her.

Justice Souter passed away in 2025. Rights to the letter now belong to the recipient rather than the author. The drawer has opened, and we now have a stand-alone piece, or a coda to the cycle, as you please. The irony of Justice Souter’s response still makes me chuckle — he clearly had no idea that making classical music is anything but gainful for most of us — and I treasure the experience of giving breath to this song, at last.