IMSLP Forums

Looking for Uzeyir Hajibeyov's full (or vocal) score of the opera Koroghlu.
Though rarely known in the west, but it's really a masterwork and I love it !
So any help would be great appreciated.

Uzeyir Hajibeyov died in 1948. Though he is in the public domain in Canada and other countries that observe a life+50 copyright law, he is still under copyright in the EU and probably also the US, which means it would get a [TB] block until 2019.

steltz wrote:he is still under copyright in the EU

If Hajibeyov was not a citizen of a country that is now member of the EU, and if this work was not published in a country that is now member of the EU, then within the EU the work's copyright status must follow the original country's (Azeri/Soviet?) copyright status, according the EU's observance of the Berne convention − am I wrong?

AFAIK, the exception to this would be that if it was first published in the USA (even before 1923!) it would be considered as published in Germany − but in Germany only (?).

pierre.chepelov wrote:

steltz wrote:he is still under copyright in the EU

If Hajibeyov was not a citizen of a country that is now member of the EU, and if this work was not published in a country that is now member of the EU, then within the EU the work's copyright status must follow the original country's (Azeri/Soviet?) copyright status, according the EU's observance of the Berne convention − am I wrong?

Azerbaijan is a 50pma country according to Wikipedia, so if it was published there within Hajibeyov's lifetime then it would not be under copyright in the EU (RoST).

AFAIK, the exception to this would be that if it was first published in the USA (even before 1923!) it would be considered as published in Germany − but in Germany only (?).

I don't quite understand what you mean by this. If it were first published in the US then it would be considered to be published in the US, and its copyright status there would then affect its EU copyright status (application of RoST is determined by country of publication='country of origin'). So if it were published in, say, New York in 1920, then it would be tagged as V/V/C (librettist Mămmăd Săid Orubadi died in 1950, so it's essentially the same deal for him) because there's a good chance it is not under copyright in the EU (the 'C' accounts for the possibility of bilateral treaties that restore EU copyright on pre-1923 US works). However, this case would not apply here, because it was completed (I believe) and premiered in 1938. I don't know when it was published; if the vocal score was engraved by Muzyka then it's effectively copyrighted 1938 in Russia, meaning he and the librettist both get an EU term of 70pma (i.e., unblocked there 1 Jan. 2021, and in the US 1 Jan. 2034).