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Copyright question
I own the Schott edition of the Jenner trio for Piano, Clarinet and Horn. This edition is edited by Horst Heussner and is copyright B. Schott's Sohne, Mainz, 1990.
Jenner died in 1920: his work is no longer in copyright. That whole 70-years-after-the-death-of-the-composer thing suggests that Schott weren't able to publish until 1990, but how did they get hold of it?
Am I legally allowed to re-typeset this music? The big problem I can see is that there is no way to tell which markings are Heussner and which are original.
I very much doubt I can get hold of an earlier edition: this one was difficult enough to find. If Schott own it they certainly aren't going to let me have a peek. The Preface says that an early copy passed from the ownership of Mandyczewski to the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreude in Wien, but doesn't say where they got their later edition from (presumably Jenner himself sent it to Brietkopf & Hartel at some point, as he'd sent them an earlier version as well).
This is very sad: a lovely piece of music which is difficult to get hold of by traditional means is virtually unheard of (neither my current horn teacher nor my old teacher, Julian Baker, had any idea of the existence of the piece before I told them), the composer certainly doesn't stand to benefit and the work should be out of copyright, but I see no straightforward way to make a public domain edition available. It isn't that I don't think the editor should be paid for editing, or the typesetter for typesetting: doing these things well does take skill. I do wonder, though, how much of the editing was simply a matter of copying down exactly what was in the manuscript to begin with. If Jenner was anything like Brahms (who wrote down every meticulous detail) then there wasn't much to be done there. And while doing a better job myself on the typesetting is a tall order that I won't be able to fill anytime soon, I'd like to be able to have a crack at it, particularly given that there are some badly-crowded passages in the piano part I have.
There are practical considerations, as well. Foolishly I only ordered one copy of the music (at 57.15 EUR each there is good reason), but in the past I've played in chamber groups and had people not return parts to me. That gets expensive, and extremely annoying. At the moment there are two different groups I want to play this with, but me keeping control of all parts between rehearsals is completely unrealistic: they need to take them away and learn them. But I can't photocopy what I've got because it isn't legal to do so, even if there is no profit involved. In theory I should be getting four more people to buy their own copies, but that takes time and is rather silly. And no, it isn't in the Trinity library, or the Alan Cave chamber music collection, or anywhere else in London that I've been able to look.
I sort of hope that when IMSLP comes back in July I find that the Jenner is already in there. There is nothing by Jenner in MusOpen, or in the Werner Icking Music Archive, or in the Mutopia Project, but they're all smaller than IMSLP was.
Jenner died in 1920: his work is no longer in copyright. That whole 70-years-after-the-death-of-the-composer thing suggests that Schott weren't able to publish until 1990, but how did they get hold of it?
Am I legally allowed to re-typeset this music? The big problem I can see is that there is no way to tell which markings are Heussner and which are original.
I very much doubt I can get hold of an earlier edition: this one was difficult enough to find. If Schott own it they certainly aren't going to let me have a peek. The Preface says that an early copy passed from the ownership of Mandyczewski to the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreude in Wien, but doesn't say where they got their later edition from (presumably Jenner himself sent it to Brietkopf & Hartel at some point, as he'd sent them an earlier version as well).
This is very sad: a lovely piece of music which is difficult to get hold of by traditional means is virtually unheard of (neither my current horn teacher nor my old teacher, Julian Baker, had any idea of the existence of the piece before I told them), the composer certainly doesn't stand to benefit and the work should be out of copyright, but I see no straightforward way to make a public domain edition available. It isn't that I don't think the editor should be paid for editing, or the typesetter for typesetting: doing these things well does take skill. I do wonder, though, how much of the editing was simply a matter of copying down exactly what was in the manuscript to begin with. If Jenner was anything like Brahms (who wrote down every meticulous detail) then there wasn't much to be done there. And while doing a better job myself on the typesetting is a tall order that I won't be able to fill anytime soon, I'd like to be able to have a crack at it, particularly given that there are some badly-crowded passages in the piano part I have.
There are practical considerations, as well. Foolishly I only ordered one copy of the music (at 57.15 EUR each there is good reason), but in the past I've played in chamber groups and had people not return parts to me. That gets expensive, and extremely annoying. At the moment there are two different groups I want to play this with, but me keeping control of all parts between rehearsals is completely unrealistic: they need to take them away and learn them. But I can't photocopy what I've got because it isn't legal to do so, even if there is no profit involved. In theory I should be getting four more people to buy their own copies, but that takes time and is rather silly. And no, it isn't in the Trinity library, or the Alan Cave chamber music collection, or anywhere else in London that I've been able to look.
I sort of hope that when IMSLP comes back in July I find that the Jenner is already in there. There is nothing by Jenner in MusOpen, or in the Werner Icking Music Archive, or in the Mutopia Project, but they're all smaller than IMSLP was.
no subject
I believe there are no 'fair use' exceptions in British law, certainly with sheet music anyway. Certainly it is legally prudent to assume this is the case... hence Trinity (http://www.tcm.ac.uk)'s policy of requiring written permission from the publisher for all photocopies used in exams.
Now, I could write to Schott and say something along the lines of, "Hey, I have this music you published, I'm playing it in two different groups, can I make some copies so we can actually, er, practise and stuff?" but the likelihood is that they'd reply, "No, you have to buy more copies."
Personally if people kept stealing my expensive music I probably would photocopy them and not use the originals, but that's probably illegal and if people keep them then not very ethical.
Well, the thing is, stealing the clarinet part is stupid without stealing the other parts: you can't re-create the thing from just the one part. The piano part does, to be fair, have tiny clarinet and horn parts above it, but as far as I'm concerned anyone who wants to re-create the whole thing from those is a) mad and b) welcome to do it if they want to put in the hours... it's a lot more than just a cut-and-paste job with a photocopier if you want to make it readable, and at minimum wage you'd be better off buying a new copy instead. So, in practical terms there isn't much ethical trouble in copyright terms with someone running off with a photocopy of one part: it isn't going to result in fewer sales of the original, and in fact I'd probably then have to buy another copy to replace the missing part. (My Brahms horn trio is without a piano part but thankfully someone has public-domain typeset that, if rather shoddily, and I can get it online.) But the fact that it could happen in theory means that no, I can't photocopy a part (not even the clarinet part, which doesn't have all the information) and give it to someone to learn. Or not legally, anyway.
Most musicians don't steal music on purpose: they just forget to give it back, and it gets put in a pile of papers to be dealt with, and once every two or three years they come across it and think, "Oh, must give that back to $person," and put it in another pile of papers and Nothing Happens. Meanwhile they've moved or their phone number has changed or they've stopped going to that particular music summer school and I can't remember their last name and it's really rather a lot of work to hound people for a bit of paper.
I think copyright laws have got stupid, they were supposed to be fair in recompensating the original rights holder, not restricting people from fair use afterwards.
But people might steel all our musics and use them to earn monies! Oh NOES!!!!eleventy!! Because, er, that's NOT what the publisher is doing in this case: making profit with minimal effort from work that was done by someone else around 100 years ago.
Le sigh. Yes, copyright laws have got stupid.