Daughter wants to play a piece in a concert but we can't get hold of a legal copy of the music because there is no distributor in the UK. I have emailed the overseas publishers to see if they can sell me a copy. I am still waiting for a reply.

If not, is it permissible to play it from memory - the accompanist would have to do the same (is it too much to ask of a professional pianist)?

Can't comment on how permissible it is to play from memory - however, memorisation isn't always easy even for professional pianists. I know several who don't play from memory. Of course this depends on what the piece is.

Is it available in America? I've bought things from www.sheetmusicplus.com in the past that I had trouble getting hold of here.

Me too, but it took three weeks from the day of posting for it to arrive. Depends when the concert is.

Concert is July so plenty of time.

Owainsutton, you are a star! I have found it on that site you mentioned. Hours of googling did not bring that up? Thank you!

Do you have anyone in US, so that they can buy and scan it across to you? If you wish, I could make a try?

Thanks

If a piece is still in copyright then, there are two separate matters:

1. To perform it to an audience may require a fee to be paid to the composer or their estate. This is a matter of performing rights. Usually this is covered by the venue at which the piece is performed. It makes no difference whether you play from memory or from a score.

2. You are not allowed to copy the score without authorisation. For out of print scores you will normally be allowed to make a copy on payment of a fee, and will receive a letter of authorisation. However this does not permit you to perform the piece.


If the piece is out of copyright then:

a. You may freely perform it.

b. You may make copies of the score. This is slightly more complex. Even if the composer has been dead the requisite 50 or 70 years, depending what country you live in, any particular edition of the work might still be in copyright, to cover the labourt and cost that went into making a sensible layout, and any editorial work. So you need to find an edition that has also been around for 50 (or 70) years to scan and print or photocopy.

I hope that makes the legal position entirely clear.

What goes on in the real world is quite different, and a matter for individual conscience, and risk assessment.

This latter one is pertinent. One of my choirs performed a work by Bach (so dead for over 250 years ) using the New Novello Choral Edition, which had a new English translation. In order to print the words in the programme we had to pay royalties since the text in the new edition was only about 10 years old and therefore it was still in copyright.

Thank you for clarifying VH2. I have found the permission forms on the publisher's website but just wanted a legal copy of the music which is now winging its way to me.

Glad you found it, Claudia's Mum. Just a warning they can be a bit slow sometimes but nothing to worry about. I received an email this morning that my order had been dispatched - I placed it on 28 January. I know from experience that it can take up to three weeks from today to get here. But it will get here

I've used them too, and have never failed to receive an order!

I'm awaiting an order from sheetmusic. I paid a little extra for the estimated 7-10 day delivery.
My order was dispatched on 31st January. Looks like I wasted my money there.
The last order I had from there arrived sooner than expected.

The post from the US is generally efficient but things like snow here cause terrible chaos to parcels if flights are diverted or cancelled. It took me a month once to retrieve a parcel which has been diverted to Amsterdam when Heathrow was closed and just sat in a warehouse for ages.

Customs can also sometimes be slow.

Not expecting a customs delay.

Though, incidentally, just because you've bought the music legally in the US does not necessarily give you the right to perform it in public in the UK. this is the case with some of Stravinsky's music - to perform it in the UK you have to hire the music (along with paying a performance fee), though whether you would be allowed just to pay a performance fee I'm not sure.

I suspect not. My understanding is that if a publisher has the copyright for a piece (as B&H has for Stravinsky, Finzi and some R Strauss in the UK) it is not legal to import it from the US, even though it is legal for the US publisher to sell it. Reading University has Gerald Finzi's books (a high-class collection including many early 20th C. poets) and the music that was played by his amateur orchestra in Newbury. The university used to (still does AFAIK) lend sets of parts of out-of-copyright music to local orchestras for rehearsal and performance but are forbidden to do so for Finzi's own compositions (e.g. Dies Natalis, of which they have a set of parts) because then B&H can be sure of collecting the performance fee, lumped in with the hire charge.

And I suspect you're right.

It annoys me intensely that UK libraries have paid for and possess sets of parts for Sibelius symphonies, but about ten years ago had to withdraw them from the shelves and were forbidden to lend them out (as they had been doing for many years), as the Sibelius estate still own all the rights for the music, and decided they wanted to make more money out of them. Result? Hardly any amateur orchestras can afford to play Sibelius symphonies now, as it costs something like ?800 to hire the parts of one symphony with performance rights.

Regaining a copyright over his works was at least part of the reason for the 1940s reworkings he did, for example, of The Firebird suite.

Just wondering how that works for an arrangement of an earlier piece (eg Bach). I understand that making a copy of the score would be forbidden until expiry of the new copyright period, but is that 70 years from the death of the arranger? And does the same thing apply to performing rights? Somehow, it feels wrong if the rules are exactly the same, in that the arranger has had to be a lot less inventive than the original composer [usually]....

(I'm not a copyright lawyer, but I think the 70 year rule does apply in all these situations.)

The 'usually' is the crucial element. Copyright law can't make a qualitative assessment of individual artistic creations and their value to society. A small number of arrangements are very skilled works, more so than the bulk of new musical works.

It does somehow feel wrong, but once you descend into the twists and turns of 'copyright' over the ages, it can all start to feel very wrong.

I'm not a copyright lawyer either, but I think you're right.

There is a grey area about when something becomes a new arrangement (e.g., changing one note wouldn't, I suspect, give you copyright), but there was the interesting case of Sawkins v. Hyperion, in which Hyperion were almost bankrupted when they lost to Sawkins, who claimed copyright for his new editions of pieces by Lalande, which included the re-creation of missing parts.

Peter Phillips says all I could have wanted to say at the end of that link, so thanks.

Ah, just noticed this. I don't think this is the entire picture.

Yes, there is the matter of performing rights - this is covered by PRS (Performing Rights Society) - regular performance venues must be registered, and must declare any copyright works performed. But the charge normally applies to the whole concert: if there is just one 60-second copyright piece in the concert, the charge applies to the whole concert. (What a marvellous way to encourage the performance of 20th-century music.)

But also, on top of that, you will normally have to pay for the licence to perform the music as well, if you are hiring the music. There will be a basic hire charge, but the hiring company will usually then add a substantial charge to allow you to perform that work in a public concert. (And they can dictate how you may use that music too: for instance, if you hire the parts for songs from West Side Story, and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, you are not allowed to perform the dances interspersed with the songs.)

It's all a bit of a confusing minefield.