IMSLP Forums

Hello,
I would like to know if one can add scores of Chostakotich (personally Preludes and Fugues)?
It died in 1975 but I have see that a composer as Sorabji (death in 1988) is authorized in the USA.
Then? What says the experts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shostakovich

never heard of the spelling Chostakotich ... ever. Are you sure this is correct?

hum... yes I talk about ChostakoVich (or Schostakovich or Shostakovich with the different country).

If you can find pieces by Shostakovich published before 1923 (i.e. before he turned 17), then they would be in the public domain. The reason the Sorabji scores are in the public domain is because they were published before 1923, and thus in the public domain in the US. Unfortunately, I don't think there are any Shostakovich pieces published before 1923... :/

As far as I know, there are only a couple of minor Shostakovich piano works that were actually published in 1921 or 1922 - thus public domain in the USA only. The vast bulk of his works was "restored" to copyright status in the US thanks to the GATT treaty and the associated amendments to the copyright law. As our admin mentioned, the two Sorabji works at IMSLP were published before 1923 and thus free in the US, which is why they are stored on the US server.

BTW, Shostakovich is phoentically closer in most western languages. The Russian spelliing begins with the letter "sha", the Cyrillic letter that looks like a squared-off "w" or a capital "E" turned on its side. "Ch" is pronounced similarly (but not identically) in French.

Nomis wrote: hum... yes I talk about ChostakoVich (or Schostakovich or Shostakovich with the different country).

That is a really interesting picture of Shostakovich I must say haha...