V/V/V - Should be V/V*/V?

[vinteuil]

Is this PD in the U.S?
Piano Sonatina No.1, Op.146 (Heller, Stephen)

[pml]

Straight off the bat without looking at the piece (it's 2:40am and I should have been in bed hours ago), Heller is in the PD, so the V* would be merited because of editorial additions to the work?

Regards, PML

[vinteuil]

No -that's the U.S. Column
It was published after 1923 so something must be afoot for it to be P.D. - I assumed it was the typical improper notice and then it was out of copyrihgt in host country

[Carolus]

There no copyright claim or notice on the score, nor is there any claim of editorship. The statement is simply that the score was printed in 1926 (and reprinted in 1948). Ricordi is normally extremely meticulous about observing all of the formalities of the pre-1978 US statute - even to the point of renewing copyrights while Italy was at war with the USA during WW II. Ricordi and Durand were the two major European houses who never missed a beat when it came to observing the requirements of US Copyright law.

Even if this score were an anonymously edited Urtext edition, the Italian copyright would have expired no later than 1/1/1947, which means it was completely ineligible for GATT restoration due to its PD status in the country of origin. (Italy's 20 years after publication term for Urtext editions was probably not even on the books in 1947 anyway.) Thus, the work is PD in the USA. The 1923 rule, while useful as a rule-of-thumb, is by no means ironclad as there are many exceptions. If a post-1923 work is available from Dover, Kalmus (either Kalmus-Florida or Kalmus-Alfred), Masters, Broude or some of the other reprint houses, you can be 99.9% certain that it is PD in the USA.