Are the scores ever going to appear?
This composer has 30 items listed, at least some of which have been listed for some months now - and yet there is only one tiny piano piece available. Are the rest ever going to appear?
I don't quite understand why this site lists music in the first place which appears not to be available in fact. It would save a lot of time looking for non-existent scores if pieces could be listed only when and if they are in fact available. M.J.E. 00:43, 18 January 2009 (EST)
- The reason for this has been explained several times now on the forums. Although we are located in Canada, the vast majority of traffic comes from the USA. Unfortunately, the absurd copyright situation there is such that we have no choice but to apply the 95-year from publication rule (works published 1923-1977) or life-plus-70 rule (works published 1978-83) until there is an actual court case to determine the status of critical editions. Unless we receive the level of funding which would permit us to hire a team of attorneys to fight a years-long legal battle through the US courts (I'll leave you to guess what level of funding that would take), this situation will not be changing very soon. Scans of older, pre-1923 publications present no problem, of course, since they are all public domain in the USA. Carolus 01:07, 18 January 2009 (EST) (IMSLP Copyright Admin)
Thanks for your reply.
I appreciate that factors like this may have an effect. I was just wondering why anyone bothers to list the scores at all and provide empty front pages for them if they are not available, and not likely to be for a long time.
It would be useful to know what scores are available now without having to go through long series of individual pages to find out, which can be a bit of a problem if (like me) you have a slow connection which sometimes chokes up altogether. M.J.E. 08:26, 21 January 2009 (EST)
- Having a quick look via Worldcat for older scores, and later a more thorough-going. University of Rochester Sibley Library has a (apparently not scanned-in - it's not at urresearch...) 1890s score of the A major piano quintet, and a piano reduction dating from 1883 of the opera Estrella di Soria (this would be worth someone there scanning, also, I hope they will...); 1903 edition of the A minor string quartet at the Royal Library of the Netherlands; Marteau's edition of the violin concerto (violin/piano score), published in 1911, is there too but Marteau (French/Swedish violinist-composer) (1874-1934) died more recently. Also, there's a 1921 publication of a piano arrangement of his tone-poem Alviek at Hollis (Harvard Library). Some of these probably show up in booksales, not just at libraries, of course... Not aware of any already scanned in. As to why people list them (etc.) - don't know. Eric 22:41, 22 January 2009 (EST)
Thanks for the suggestions; but unfortunately I'm in Australia, so those resources are of no use to me. I will just have to wait for them to appear here, if they ever get copyright clearance. If not, then very likely this composer is just one of many I will never get to explore. (Life won't be long enough anyway, very likely.)
Is scanning in scores a very difficult or time-consuming thing to do, anyway? I've got a ton of stuff that maybe could be posted here, although it's largely very obscure stuff, so I don't know if there's a limit to obscurity. (Of course I have lots of better-known stuff too, but most of it is either already posted here, or can't be because of copyright.) A huge amount is relatively easy stuff of the sort designed for advanced piano students, much of it once well-known to piano students but out of print now. A lot of it is enjoyable enough to play for its musical value, though, so that's why I collect and play this sort of music. I'm sure a lot of it would be out of copyright, but just hasn't been quite well-known enough for anyone to think of posting it. Much of it is British or Australian, and some American. For Australian examples of the kind of thing I'm talking about, I'm thinking of composers like Frank Hutchens, Miriam Hyde, Alfred Hill, and dozens of others.
I've occasionally thought it would be good to post it here, but there are a couple of problems to doing this. I don't have a scanner and have only a slow connection; obviously I would need a scanner, and to learn how to use it, and I would probably realistically need a broadband connection. I don't know if I will ever have that or not - maybe one day if I can find it somewhere not too expensive. The other thing is that I have no idea about the copyright restrictions, and cannot spend a lot of time researching this. Indeed, I have heard it said that only a copyright lawyer (at $500 an hour!) can tell for sure whether any given piece is in the public domain or not. (How citizens are expected to obey laws that are too complicated for them to even understand, I don't know! There's something wrong with the whole system: I would have thought it a most fundamental principle of justice that, if anyone is to be expected to obey a law, it should be designed so that they can easily understand it. I mean it's grossly and fundamentally unfair to punish someone for breaking a law because they can't even understand it.) I hope I am wrong and that there is a broad guideline on how to tell if music is still copyright or not, although I have not yet heard of it - at least not one that isn't full of exceptions and complications. But the reality is that, even if I had the scanner and broadband Internet access, I could not share any of the music I have (despite wanting to) if I couldn't easily find out if it was in copyright or not.
Anyway, that's getting a bit away from Berwald; but it seemed to follow on from your comments. M.J.E. 23:26, 25 January 2009 (EST)
- I appreciate your frustration, M.J.E. We are attempting (via intermediaries) to contact Baerenreiter about getting permission from them to allow unrestricted downloads of scores only in return for free links to a place where one can purchase their scores. Some publishers seem quite OK with this idea, while others are extremely hostile. I'll put in a request at the University of Rochester site for any Berwald they might have to be scanned. We have a fairly cordial relationship with them and mirror a large number of the scores in their collection here. There are differences, of course, since they are in the USA. I'll also look around Google to see if any Berwald has surface there (in Google books). The scans are peculiar but basically OK once the logos are removed. BTW, our own copyright pages here, found in the contributor portal section, are a good way to get the basics of copyright. If you're in Australia, the basic rule is that works of authors who died before 1955 are public domain. Carolus 00:08, 26 January 2009 (EST) (IMSLP Copyright Admin)
- Since Hill died in 1960... guessing that things will be ok in about 5 years there though. (With Sutherland, though you don't mention her, rather longer; since Hyde died three years ago... etc.) I did look around Google books in the usual places (eg search "subject:"String quartets"")- nothing found by me, anything (and yet they have quartets by Glazunov, Taneyev, Scontrino, Gliere, McEwen, Borresen, Sokoloff, Saint-Saëns, Sowerby, d'Indy, Goossens and HH Huss even in full-score scans... however, Google uses a detector that blocks you depending on your location if you try to download something that would be in copyright where you are, but out of copyright where they are, say, as a friend of mine discovered at one point... which explains the presence of the early Sowerby works, given his late date of death.
- I'd frown heavily myself on the idea of removing Google book scan logos- they explain why in a way that makes all sense.Eric 13:48, 26 January 2009 (EST)
- The reason we require that contributors remove Google (or any other corporate logo) is to avoid giving Google the opportunity of suing us for trademark infringement for having items with their logo present on the site. We do maintain attribution, however, and list them as the scanner in all cases where we know the scan is from Google Books (some posters even put the link for Google Books in the scanning field, which is helpful). Carolus 20:46, 26 January 2009 (EST) (IMSLP Copyright Admin)
Opus numbers
I believe the piano quartet is opus 1, and the violin concerto may have been given the opus number 2. Eric 19:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
