On Sep 15, 2004, at 2:34 PM, Chuck Israels wrote:
Here's a list of really good PD songs:
<snip>
Warning. This list seems to be referring to the tunes, not the lyrics.
Indian Summer was written by Victor Herbert as a piano solo (1919). The lyrics were added by Al Dubin in 1939. Thus, in the United States, the music is public domain but the lyrics are not. Furthermore, if you're copying from a score with the lyrics and not the original piano solo, you might well be violating copyright law even with just the music.
A similar case exists for Song of India. The tune is from Rimsky-Korskov's opera Sadko (1898), but the lyrics which made it a pop song in America were added by Johnny Mercer. I don't know exactly when that was, but Mercer was born in 1909, so it was almost certainly late enough for the lyrics to still be under copyright protection.
Most of these songs would be protected under the life-plus-70 rule, but I think most of Europe adopts the amendment to that rule which says that if the song is PD in its original country then it's PD in Europe also. Can someone confirm that?
mdl
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