Written and Composed by Claribel™: Musical Authorship and Brand Identity in an 1868 English Court Case
Creators: name: Thompson, Whitney
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: music
music history
Victorian England
intellectual property
legal history

description: This paper was delivered at the 2022 conference of the North American British Music Studies Association, on July 24, 2022. --- ABSTRACT: The Victorian composer Claribel (AKA Charlotte Alington Barnard, 1830-1869) was many things: an immensely popular balladeer, a thorn in the side of multiple London publications who resented her lyrics’ sentimentality, a flashpoint in the moral debate over royalty ballads—and, in 1868, the named plaintiff in an intellectual property case. As summarized in an issue of <em>Weekly Notes</em>, Claribel and her publisher John Boosey filed for an injunction against another publisher, Sinclair and Co. Sinclair had published four songs to which Claribel had written the lyrics but not the music, and these songs were being advertised as “written by” Claribel with no mention of the music’s composer. Boosey’s lawyers alleged deception, claiming that the public would assume Claribel composed the music for these songs as well. The Master of the Rolls, however, was unimpressed by this argument. He dismissed the case and discouraged further litigation, to the completely undisguised delight of staunchly anti-Claribel publication <em>The Orchestra</em>, which claimed the ruling came down “as justice and common sense would have it.” The true historical significance of the case, in fact, is somewhere between the dispassion of <em>Weekly Notes</em> and the schadenfreude of <em>The Orchestra</em>. In this paper, I hope to make the case (forgive the legal pun) that <em>Barnard v. Pillow</em> was in essence a question of trademark infringement, heard and decided before the concept of trademark infringement solidified. <em>The Orchestra</em> remarked in their reporting that John Boosey had “monopolized” Claribel—and despite their obvious bias on the subject, they weren’t wrong about his intentions. From the outset of their business relationship, John Boosey bought Claribel’s copyrights from other publishers in addition to publishing new works. He also put Claribel on retainer (which Joyce Andrews notes was uncommon for the time), to the tune of 300 pounds a year. Additionally, Boosey worked with prominent singers to “introduce” Claribel’s newest songs at public concerts. At first, these concerts were largely hosted by entertainers like Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, but Derek Scott has noted that as the decade went on, music publishers began mounting their own concerts. Though John Boosey’s first ballad concert in 1867 contained but little of Claribel’s music, a dour prediction in <em>The Orchestra</em>—in “the musical sandwich” of these concerts, “the Claribel mustard” would come to dominate the program—was (eventually) accurate. Viewed holistically, all these actions coalesce into a larger marketing strategy, and it becomes far more obvious why Boosey and Claribel took Sinclair to court in 1868: in essence, concern for Claribel’s brand. Trademark law as a field was both new and confusing in this era, as scholars like Lionel Bently and John Mercer have discussed, and England wouldn’t even create a formal register for trademarks until after Claribel’s death. Nevertheless, Claribel may have been one of the first musicians whose “stage name” was akin to a brand or trademark, and she is notable for that <em>and </em>for her efforts to defend that brand. As such, I hope to accord Claribel her proper place in not just the history of music, but the history of intellectual property as well.