IMSLP Forums

There's an eccentric (unknown) composer who died at the age of 96 recently, Robert Tosh (1926-2022). The church in California where he was once organist cleared out his apartment and gave me all his sheet music. It includes hundreds of pages of original compositions, all unpublished. He had no kids. His closest living relatives are two cousins in their 80s and 90s. It would be nice to put this stuff on IMSLP, but copyright (whoever holds that -- his estate?). I'd have to get permission from the cousins, probably, to post it on IMSLP. I think it might be worth asking. How do I get permission to post this stuff on IMSLP?

His output is large and includes:
A 20 minute overture for orchestra,
Three full symphonies (4 movements each) with one have a piano solo and one having an organ solo and one subtitled Schmucke Dich,
A brass quintet (3 minutes long),
A full orchestral Latin mass,
A Cantata called The Strife is Over.

Whoever is the legal heir to the composer is who you would have to contact to get permission.

Update: The composer's legal heir doesn't really care about the music and is willing to sign something that makes the compositions available to the public for free. Is that a creative commons license? How can I (where I own the scores but do not have copyrights to them) obtain enough documentation (what kind of documentation?) to be able to post these compositions on IMSLP?

So you need to get a letter of permission from the legal heir sent to User: Carolus on the Main site under his email, signed if possible.

Only almost unknown, I’m fairly sure I saw an in memoriam/music-centred obituary in print or online by someone else a few months ago now you remind me.