IMSLP Forums

I would like to request the score for Respighi's "Feste Roma." Lots of stuff I would love to investigate in that piece. Thanks!

Hi M. Atelier,

the Roman Feste are in the same boat as one of the other scores of the tryptich, the Pines of Rome. They were composed and copyrighted post-1923, so despite Respighi being out of copyright in Canada and the European Union, in the US they are subject to 95-year copyright that is based purely on the date of publication. Carolus is the expert on the US renewals of copyright, but unless the US copyright was not renewed – and there seems to be no reason to think Ricordi did not do it for the Respighi scores- then they are still in copyright until the 2020s. Unfortunately IMSLP is currently unable to release scores subject to a US copyright.

The full score of the Fountains of Rome were released by Dover Publications a few years ago, and it seems reasonable to conclude that they would have reprinted the Pines and Festivals as well, had the copyright situation for the other scores allowed them to.

Regards, Philip

Indeed, Ricordi was notorious (like Durand) for filing copyright renewals, even in the midst of their participation in wars. However I might as well mention here first that, non-PD U.S. file blocking notwithstanding, before the year is out we will have the complete published works of Respighi (engraved, and published before 1960) at our disposal. That doesn't help much now, but there it is...

Dear Daphnis,

that is very useful to know! Respighi is now in the public domain in Australia, even with the copyright term extension we suffered a little while ago, and so I've been hanging out to get a lot of the other orchestral works. Borrowing the Pines and Festival from the library isn't as handy as IMSLP :)

Best regards, Philip

Ricordi has published what I'd call a "semi-study" edition of the entire Roman Tryptych (Pines/Fountains/Festivals) as a single collective volume now for awhile. It's about $40 US, and while Fountains is considered PD in the US, it's the ONLY way to get a score to Festivals short of renting the piece.

Oddly enough, Ricordi's been really, really good lately about publishing "study" full scores of a lot of the major works in their catalog, including their operatic material. I own a copy of the full score to Turandot which is really, really nice when wanting to analyze it and disassemble how it works.

Yes, my Uni library has a copy, but it's the only FS of Festivals in the collection so I tend to feel guilty about removing it for long periods of time. The format is A4, so not exactly pocket-sized!

Regards, PML