Society of Composers and Lyricists

The Society Of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) is an organization consisting of Hollywood's professional motion picture, Television, and multimedia music composers, songwriters and lyricists, with histories in the art of scoring for motion pictures and television. Many of its members have won or been nominated for Oscars, Emmys and Grammy Awards. Its current President is composer Ashley Irwin.

The parent organization, the Screen Composers Association, dates back to 1945 with such composers as Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind), Bernard Herrmann (Psycho), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood), Dimitri Tiomkin (High Noon) and David Raksin (Laura).

This was the first organization to attempt bargaining on behalf of the composers, and convince the performing rights organization [ASCAP] that film composers should share in broadcast and performance royalties for their creations.

Composer David Raksin headed a campaign to have the SCA become a guild, such as the writers, directors, and producers enjoyed. In 1953, its composer members voted unanimously to create a Composers Guild of America and finally negotiated a minimum basic agreement similar to the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America, which spelled out working conditions, rates of compensation, performance royalties, etc.

Over the next twenty years, the composers and studios fought over royalties and who had the right to exploit compositions beyond their original usage. On February 7, 1972, 71 composers and lyricists filed a $300-million class-action lawsuit against Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, MGM, Warner Bros., Columbia, Walt Disney, United Artists, CBS, ABC, NBC, the AMPTP and other film-related conglomerates. On April 9, 1979, the federal district court approved a settlement conferring some limited rights to certain composers who had worked for the studios prior to October 1973.

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