Oslo October 24, 2007

Dear Colleagues

Today, on the Day of the United Nations, we address you in connection with the project Transposition, which is an initiative to help the symphony orchestras and conservatories in the Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City - HCMC).

Transposition

The project is initiated by Ultima - Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, and supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a period of three years. A main task is to help the symphony orchestras with instruments, organisation, management, education and music. Vietnam, with its long French traditions, had a well functioning “western classical” music life till the war broke out. After that the two orchestras and conservatories have been in a difficult situation. They are, though, quite active and the orchestras perform on a regular basis. The orchestra in HCMC also functions as an opera orchestra. The conservatory of HCMC has more than 3000 students, from children up to full time students. In Hanoi a new Institute of Musicology opened this year. Initially Transposition planned to include a program to rescue what is left of ethnic Vietnamese music, which UNESCO has decided to take over.

Support to music libraries

Ultima has asked Music Information Centre Norway to help in building the libraries in both orchestras and conservatories. Their collections mainly consist of photocopies, and they do not have the finances to change this bad habit. We have made it clear that a condition for helping them is that they respect international copyright law.

We are in contact with publishing houses and music information centres for support. However, these libraries have almost nothing. They lack substantial scores and parts from the historical repertory and our ability to fulfill their needs exceeds our budget.

We therefore appeal to music libraries throughout the world to donate spare copies to this project. We have worked out three listings based on the wishes from the four institutions:

• Sheet music (1040 titles – scores and parts)
• Music literature (235 titles)
• Recordings (129 items)

Orchestral materials

We especially request orchestral libraries to contribute complete orchestral sets (public domain materials) to the two orchestras. We know this is a difficult question, but because of the desperate need of these orchestras, we have to try. Maybe an orchestral library somewhere is in a position to help us?

How to do it

• Our listings contain composer/author, title, publisher (to some extent) and the institution requesting the title.
• We kindly ask you to go through the listings , and mark what you are able to donate: put the name of your institution, your email (preferably) or postal address in the columns to the right.
• We kindly ask you to mark if you are able to support us with parts.
• When the listings have been filled in, please mail them to us
• Then, please wait for an answer. This is a big and expensive operation, and to avoid ending up with lots of copies of the same title, we kindly ask you not to send anything till you get a confirmation from us.

Transport

• Transposition will pay for the transport to Vietnam.
• For those of you that are able we would appreciate it if you could pay the costs for the shipment to Oslo.
• If that is impossible, please inform us, and we shall cover your expenses by the reception of a receipt. In some cases, dependent on geography, it might be practical if the donors ship the materials directly to Vietnam. We shall return to that when time comes.

We are eagerly awaiting your reaction.

On behalf of the Vietnamese libraries and Transposition,

Yours sincerely
Hilde Holbæk-Hanssen (email)

Music Information Centre Norway
Phone: +47 23 27 63 08
P.O. Box 2476 Solli
NO-0203 OSLO
Norway