IMSLP Forums

This is not so much an IMSLP related question, although it could be.

Assuming I take a piece by a contemporary composer such as Boulez or Ferneyhough, and I select 2 bars from an orchestral score, and I take those 2 bars and stretch them and re-orchestrate them to last 20 minutes. I then go on to compose some music on top of that (leaving the expanded part intact, and composing some other music for some other instrumentation).

Would that be a violation of copyright? Would I need to ask for permission before I did something like this? It would be impossible to perceive those two bars as what they really are, and very difficult to find on analysis of the score too, as it would be re-orchestrated to last 20 minutes (with dove-tailing, changes of instruments/timbres etc etc).

And, to relate this to ISLP - would I be allowed to upload such a piece on imslp?

I just looked up the situation in Germany... Here you have the right to cite from another musical work and to add it to your own work. So even if it is recognizable this should be no problem.

„Zulässig ist die Vervielfältigung, Verbreitung und öffentliche Wiedergabe eines veröffentlichten Werkes zum Zweck des Zitats, sofern die Nutzung in ihrem Umfang durch den besonderen Zweck gerechtfertigt ist. Zulässig ist dies insbesondere, wenn

1. einzelne Werke nach der Veröffentlichung in ein selbständiges wissenschaftliches Werk zur Erläuterung des Inhalts aufgenommen werden,
2. Stellen eines Werkes nach der Veröffentlichung in einem selbständigen Sprachwerk angeführt werden,
3. einzelne Stellen eines erschienenen Werkes der Musik in einem selbständigen Werk der Musik angeführt werden.“

– UrhG § 51 Zitate

which roughly translates to

Copying, distributing and public performance of published works for quotation is permitted .... if
3. single extracts from a published piece of music are added into an independent musical work.

I think this falls into a very grey area that could be interpreted differently in different countries depending on how actual cases have determined the interpretation of the laws.

For example, a well-known Hollywood composer that I knew when I was in college was asked to be an expert witness on what is plagiarism in music. Specifically, how many notes do you copy before you create a recognizable portion of the original work? I'm not sure, and other people in the US might have a better memory of the end decision, but I think it was 5 notes that had to be in the same rhythms as the original.

Check the case law in your country to see if it has addressed this issue.

Steltz is unfortunately quite right in that there are rather desultory cases of law around the place. In my country there was a recent case of copyright infringement brought against a band who had incorporated a well-known motif of about ten notes into a flute riff during an instrumental break in one of their songs, which was ruled to be substantial enough to be transgressing the law. To make matters worse from the point of view of there being any justice to the intent of the law, the complainant was not even the original copyright owner, and who might supposedly have been “out of pocket” from the exploitation of her work: the original quoted work had been purchased by a litigious copyright owner that deliberates purchases intellectual property in order to bring legal actions against others. (The law is an ass.)

Cheers PML

Hm.. Interesting.

Thing is - with my piece, it would be absolutely and utterly impossible for anyone to recognise that passage.

Unless I told anyone that this is where some of the material comes from, then no one would ever be able to tell. If I did tell someone, they'd still have a pretty hard time figuring it out.

I assume that if the piece is composed for my university folio, then it can be fair use of copyrighted material, as being for "educational purposes."

I'll try and give it a google, see what I can find on uk law regarding music notation (although it does seem hard to find..)