IMSLP Forums

Does anyone know if any urtext scores of Beethoven Symphonies are freely available on internet?
Barenreiter edition copyright is still valid? Mozart's scores are available on Mozarteum website, I hope there's something similar for Beethoven!

We have the Max Unger (Eulenburg) urtext editions available. The Jonathan Del Mar editions are too new. Urtext editions over 25 years old are generally free in the EU. The Del Mar scores are less than 20 years old so they will be protected there for some time to come. In the USA, there is no legal differentiation between an urtext edition and a interpretative edition, so - without getting into the all the legal reasoning about the issue - they are officially protected for 70 years after the death of the last surviving editor.

The del Mar edition is available in reasonably priced study scores from Barenreiter (16 Euros for the 9th). While the editorial notes in the study scores cover some of the major differences in each from previous editions, the full critical reports, essential for a full appreciation of sources, validity and importance of all the changes, are rather more expensive (41 Euros for the report on the 9th). And they are under copyright everywhere for quite some time.

The Unger Beethoven scores were reprinted by Dover (and may still be found 2nd-hand), before they dumped them in favor of the old Litolff plates, another incomprehensible marketing decision by Dover, like their Soviet-era full score of the 1812 Overture that leaves out the hymn to the Czar. Incredibly, at Amazon there is somebody offering a "new" copy of that Dover score for more than $300.

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/f ... erture.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Overture-Marche-S ... 577&sr=1-2

The Unger Beethoven scores are also available at IMSLP, damnably shorn of their introductory notes on the texts (I think Dover included them), though they are quite skimpy in comparison to the del Mar reports and by the standards of modern musicology.

--Sixtus