# Is Baroque period music copyrighted?



## GrandMasterK (Mar 4, 2007)

If so, who holds the rights to those kinds of works? Are people free to put Mozart and Beethoven's music into films and the like without having to get it licensed?


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## DeadlyKomplexx (Nov 16, 2007)

I always wondered this myself,seeing as I sample alot of their work for beat making.


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## Sam (Nov 17, 2007)

Well. The compositions themselves are no longer copyrighted. They are now public domain. However. You have to be very careful. Any recordings you find will almost definitely be copyrighted as a recording. So you can't use those. Also, scores and arrangements may be copyrighted, so you could have trouble there. Theoretically, you could re-record a piece and use this, you shouldn't experience problems. But just be careful .

And by the way, Mozart and Beethoven aren't Baroque composers. I don't know if you meant to say that they were, but for Baroque, you want people like Bach, Vivaldi and Handel.

Cheers guys!
Sam


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## Morigan (Oct 16, 2006)

If I remember well from the famous conflit that caused the shutting down of that international free music scores database, music scores are copyrighted for 50 years after their publication in America. However, in certain (or most??) European countries, it's 70 years.


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## Sam (Nov 17, 2007)

Yea, that's right. I think really the only way around it is to perhaps arrange the work from a manuscript dating before the 50/70 years. This is how the original publishers do it I assume. Of course, you could also score by ear!


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## Frasier (Mar 10, 2007)

And don't forget that editors own the copyright for their editions. So if someone's popped up to edit Bach's 48, like re-done the fingering or something, printing that music off without permission within the copyright period (that varies from country to country) will infringe copyright.


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## Mr Salek (Apr 11, 2006)

I seem to remember that it's anything published before 1923 (not completely accurate but definitely in the 1920s) that's public domain.


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## Morigan (Oct 16, 2006)

The United States copyright law seems a bit complicated. What you said avout 1923 is true, but there are other clauses. I think the standard has been put to 70 years?

The Canadian copyright law is simpler : "According to s. 6 of the Act the copyright of a work lasts the life of the author plus 50 years from the end of the calendar year of death."

If the copyrighted material is published on a Website, it must respect the law of the country in which it is hosted (see the International Music Score Library Project affair).


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Morigan is correct about the US copyright being 70 years. The 70 years begins in the month of January after the year in which the composer died. We just experienced this with Louis Vierne who died in June of 1937 - his works become PD in January 2008 officially. 

What adds to the complexities are the "family rights" and "heir rights" when a composer passes on ... some of those copyrights keep going ad-infinitum into endless perpetuity as the compositions pass from one generation of family to the next.


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