The copyright rules regarding Urtext/Scholarly editions are confusing to me, so hopefully someone can shed some light as to whether a particular edition of the Sonatas of Carlos Seixas are ok to upload to IMSLP or not.
The edition is volume 10 of Portugaliae Musica, Serie A. 80 Sonatas para instrumentos de tecla, Ed. Macario Santiago Kastner, and contains this copyright notice:
Copyright by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / Lisboa:1965 / Portugal
OK or Not OK for IMSLP?
Carlos Seixas Sonatas
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pml
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Re: Carlos Seixas Sonatas
Hi Steve,
yes they are confusing... and thanks by the way for the huge amount of work that evidently has gone into your edition of the Soler sonatas.
The Urtext provisions in the EU limit the copyright of a scientific publication to a maximum of 30 years, so fortunately that Portuguese copyright will have expired.
Complicating the issue are two further considerations: first, has the editor provided any copyrightable material of his/her own in order to complete or realise the work - if these are substantial, then the editor is taken to have a life+50 years copyright in respect of Canada. (I will assume Kastner had no need to reconstruct or provide any especial originality in his edition.) Second, has the work been published before so that issues of Editio Princeps are avoided? (This is where we had to do quite some legwork with Soler - and Carolus, BTW, is the past master of sleuthing these issues out.)
I'm guessing that if the sonatas weren't published in Seixas' lifetime or shortly afterward, then the Kastner edition may well be the first published edition, and if so it would be eligible for copyright of 50 years from year of publication under Canadian law, i.e. 1965–2015. That would make 2016 the earliest they could be uploaded to IMSLP, unless you had gone to the trouble of making new editions yourself. I'd be inclined to think however that these works (or a portion of them) were published sometime in the 18th century, since most of Seixas' œuvre was apparently destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake, and in cases like that publication is usually a means of salvation for perishable items such as manuscripts. We'd probably mark a score like that as checked (C/C/C*), but not verified.
It would be helpful if Kastner has an editorial preface in the volume, describing what original sources he used - if he used a published 18th century score rather than manuscript then you're home and hosed, only editorial accretions would be still copyrightable.
Regards, PML
yes they are confusing... and thanks by the way for the huge amount of work that evidently has gone into your edition of the Soler sonatas.
The Urtext provisions in the EU limit the copyright of a scientific publication to a maximum of 30 years, so fortunately that Portuguese copyright will have expired.
Complicating the issue are two further considerations: first, has the editor provided any copyrightable material of his/her own in order to complete or realise the work - if these are substantial, then the editor is taken to have a life+50 years copyright in respect of Canada. (I will assume Kastner had no need to reconstruct or provide any especial originality in his edition.) Second, has the work been published before so that issues of Editio Princeps are avoided? (This is where we had to do quite some legwork with Soler - and Carolus, BTW, is the past master of sleuthing these issues out.)
I'm guessing that if the sonatas weren't published in Seixas' lifetime or shortly afterward, then the Kastner edition may well be the first published edition, and if so it would be eligible for copyright of 50 years from year of publication under Canadian law, i.e. 1965–2015. That would make 2016 the earliest they could be uploaded to IMSLP, unless you had gone to the trouble of making new editions yourself. I'd be inclined to think however that these works (or a portion of them) were published sometime in the 18th century, since most of Seixas' œuvre was apparently destroyed in the great Lisbon earthquake, and in cases like that publication is usually a means of salvation for perishable items such as manuscripts. We'd probably mark a score like that as checked (C/C/C*), but not verified.
It would be helpful if Kastner has an editorial preface in the volume, describing what original sources he used - if he used a published 18th century score rather than manuscript then you're home and hosed, only editorial accretions would be still copyrightable.
Regards, PML
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SteveBNA
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Re: Carlos Seixas Sonatas
I was afraid of that... This edition is in 5 volumes. Volumes 2-5 contain the 80 Sonatas only, with no editorial material. Volume 1 contains the editorial preface, as well as several pages of facsimiles. It would appear that some, if not all, of these works may have been published in the 18th Century, but I'm still trying to determine this for certain. The editorial notes are in Portuguese and also translated into French. I don't speak either language, unfortunately. I'm going to try running a few paragraphs through an online translator in hopes that maybe I can get some information that will be useful. In the meantime, hopefully someone else might be able to track down enough information to accurately determine the copyright status of this...