On 9:50 Uhr Johannes Gebauer wrote:
In Europe there is also a copyright of the engraving itself, which I understand is not possible in the US. In Europe it is simply illegal to reprint an engraved page as long as it is in copyright (75 years?). It makes no difference whether it contains any editorial additions at all.
Furthermore I'd like to add: there are special copyrights in Europe for publishing previously unpublished music. Even if a piece was composed 500 years ago a publisher can claim the "publication rights" which will, as far as I understand, give him the sole right for publication, and indeed performance (this is usually regulated through a special agency, where standard rates apply for performance).
Similar regulations apply to critical editions, though obviously it is more complicated to extend this to performance (but it has been done).
These regulations led to a court case over the rights of Offenbach's "Hoffmann's tales", where some extra autograph material was found a few years ago and the German publisher Schott and a French publisher fought about the rights, not just the publication rights, but also the performance rights (which means substancial income for the publisher over the next 25 years).
These publication and performance rights are also the main reason we are still seeing so little of the Kiev CPE Bach Nachlass being published and performed, since two organizations fight over who actually owns it (there are two Singakademien today, a former East and a former West Berlin).
The most recent case where these regulations played a role is the very recent discovery of a JS Bach aria (I believe in Leipzig) which had never been published. These kind of things can provide major income to publishers.
I am not criticising these regulations, on the contrary, they are largely responsible for a lot of editorial activity in Europe for publishing previously unpublished material or making critical editions.
The "previously not published" regulation was recently (a few weeks ago) tried in court. I think the outcome was that it really only applies to works which were not circulated to a wider audience at the time. In the particular case tried the court decided that because the music was widely circulated in manuscript there was no case to claim publication rights on it, and anyone can publish it.
It is worth noting that _any_ previous edition will make it impossible to claim publication rights. Even if back in the 18th century someone engraved a piece of music and made three prints of it which are lost today, there is no way to claim publication rights (other than with a critical edition, but that is a slightly different story).
Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
