ANYTHING PUBLISHED AFTER 1923 IS GENERALLY NOT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN
Now, a slight problem. Powerful American media magnates influenced the
U.S. Congress to pass the Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998, which
(mischievously) states that books/recordings published AFTER January
1, 1923 will be protected with copyright for another 20 years.
So nothing published after January 1, 1923 in the U.S. will be in
public domain in the U.S. until 95 years after its initial copyright
date, until at least 2018. Some German editions of music published
slightly after 1923 in Germany may be in public domain, however.
PRE-1973 RUSSIAN SHEET MUSIC IS IN PUBLIC DOMAIN
Also, ironically, most Russian sheet music editions published before
1973 are in the public domain. However, under terms of the 1996
GATT treaty, some Russian editions that were once in public domain
have had their copyrights restored! The more notable examples of this are
Shostakovich and Prokofiev editions published in the 1960s. There
is an American company called Dover Publications, Inc., which reprints
public domain sheet music editions. It used to publish reprints of
1950s/1960s Russian editions of Prokofiev's Sonatas and shorter piano
works, and Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano. But since
the recent GATT treaty the editions went back into copyright, even though
they were once public domain, and now Dover has discontinued
republication of these editions. However, pre-1973 Russian editions
of many other composers, including Scriabin, are still in public domain.
Actually, Dover still publishes a 1975 Russian
edition of Rachmaninoff's Complete Preludes and Etudes Tableaux, as
well as a 1975 Russian edition of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, and
these are both in public domain even though they were published
slightly after 1973.
MOST ANYTHING REPRINTED BY DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC. is P.D.
We mentioned Dover Publications. They publish over 600 editions of
public domain classical sheet music books, ranging from piano works
to opera to vocal to orchestral scores. Essentially, all of these
Dover editions are public domain and their contents may be freely
copied, sold and distributed. The only thing about them that may
not be copied are not very interesting anyway: tables of contents,
and translations of textual essays/commentary. Little things like
page headings, numberings and titles may be copied. So you can
just run down to the store, pick up a Dover edition, and scan it
back home. However, note that the three Dover editions of Russian
music mentioned are no longer public domain and can't be copied.
But very nice reprints of Russian editions of Rachmaninoff and
Scriabin may be copied. Also, a handful of these editions have
slight restrictions on them, such as they can be published in
the U.S. but not in France and/or Germany. We can tell you if
that is the case if you e-mail. Old editions of C.F. Peters,
Bach-Gesellschaft, and Breitkopf/Hartel that Dover republishes
are all in public domain in all countries.
Now, often Dover reprint editions have a copyright notice on the
front page. Almost always, this copyright refers to translations
of editors' notes and other literay texts contained within the
edition. It does not usually refer to the musical score itself, i.e.
the actual musical "data." What is copyrighted will usually be specified
with the copyright notice.
SOME GENERAL EXAMPLES of P.D. music
General examples: G.Schirmer editions copyrighted before 1923, C.F.
Peters editions printed before 1923, and Brietkopf and Hartel
editions printed before 1928 and the large majority of Dover Publications
reprint editions. Of course, there are many others.
WHERE TO FIND PUBLIC DOMAIN MUSIC
You may sometimes find public domain music editions at University
and public libraries, flea markets and old book shops, or you may easily
acquire them by buying a new copy of a Dover music score reprint.
YOU MAY MAKE YOUR OWN EDITION OF MUSIC
And, of course, you may typeset your own edition of music
on your computer. Make sure the music itself is in public domain,
however. The music of all composers who died over 75 years ago
is generally in public domain, as is any music composed over 75 years ago.
This includes most of the important works by Rachmaninoff,
Stravinsky, and Scriabin. Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of
Pagainini, and his 4th piano concerto, were both published less
than 75 years ago.
SCANNING MUSIC
3. When you SCAN your music, we suggest you scan at 300-600 dpi
resolution and scan in black and white to keep the file size down
and speed up scanning. Music scores are in black and white anyway!
SAVING FILES OF SCANNED MUSIC
4. In what file format should I save my scanned music files? Well, we
use .pdf format on this site. However, not everyone owns the software
to make .pdf files! So we don't expect people to make .pdf files
and upload them to us, although that would be nice.
We accept Postscript (.ps) files, Adobe Acrobat .pdf files, and tiff
files and files in any universal graphical format that can be converted
to tiff graphics format. Files scanned in the TIFF graphics format
(extension .tif) are preferred, because we can convert them to .pdf.
To make tiff files of scanned music, do the following. Scan the music,
and save each page in .tif format. You will have one tiff file for
each page of music. Name each page consecutively. For example, page
1 is 01.tif, page 2 is 02.tif, page 3 is 03.tif and so on. Then,
make a zip file containing all of your tiffs and upload the .zip file.
We can then unzip the .zip file, and use a program that takes the
consecutively numbered files and converts them into .pdf with the
pages in order. If your scanning program only saves in another, non-TIFF
universal graphics format, such as .gif or .jpg, save it in that,
following the same pattern for naming files.
UPLOAD YOUR FILES USING OUR UPLOAD PAGE AND FORM
5. Once you have your files to upload, go to our upload page, fill out
the information for your file, and upload it!
PLEASE SEND US AN E-MAIL IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS
6. If you have any questions about all this, please send us
an e-mail. It is a good idea to tell us in advance what music you
are considering scanning. We can often tell you if it is in public
domain or not. If in doubt, send us a few pages of a work in progress,
and we can tell you if it is acceptable. We will also accept alternate
editions of music we already have, if those editions are public domain.
SUBMISSIONS ARE SOON CAREFULLY CONSIDERED
7. Submissions are considered within a few days. We reserve the right not
to accept a submission. We carefully look at all submissions to make
sure they are legal or not, so it is highly unlikely that anything
not in public domain will wind up here! If in doubt about legality,
e-mail us, and remember, you can trust virtually all the Dover
republications as being in the public domain.
GOOD LUCK
8. It's a fair amount of work, and not 100% straightforward, and you may
wind up scanning something that is actually copyrighted and therefore
unusable, but it is easier than it looks! Thanks for any efforts and good
luck!