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Music producer Mike Batt is best known to British audiences as the composer of the theme tune to The Wombles, a 1970s children’s show about a clan of litter-obsessed furry creatures living on Wimbledon Common. More recently, he found himself enmeshed in a curious legal battle after the release of The Planets' album Classical Graffiti. Batt had inserted 60 seconds of silence to separate the 12 main tracks from four supplementary remixes, naming it A One Minute Silence in honour of John Cage’s seminal noiseless symphony 4'33' (1952).
Two months after Classical Graffiti's chart debut, Mr Batt received a letter from the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS). 'It informed me' as the producer dryly put it 'that my silence was a copyright infringement on Cage’s silence'. The letter added that an initial payment of around four hundred pounds had been made to the administrators of the Cage catalogue.
In the end, the opposing parties agree to stage a concert, thereby allowing the public to assess the respective merits of the compositions. Batt went first, leading The Planets through a spirited rendition of A One Minute's Silence. Then a Mr Riddle, representing the cage camp, introduced a young clarinettist, who proceeded (not) to play 4'33’. The occasion, however failed to dampen Mike Batt's sense of grievance.' He has subsequently registered silent compositions varying from one-second to 10 minutes, and is particularly jealous of the rights adhering to 4'32' and 4'34'. If there’s ever a Cage performance where they come in a second short or longer,’ he has warned,' then it's mine.'
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