Choral Public Domain Library

I am trying to find the copyright owner of collections of church music arranged and/or composed by Carlo Rossini (d. 6 Aug 1975) and was a little surprised to find arrangements of a number of his works published on CPDL: by my calculation copyright in these works would naturally expire on 31 Dec 2045! I see no mention of any copyright licence having been obtained to publish these arrangements.

Either these are illegal copies or the publisher has properly obtained permission to arrange and publish (in which case I should be interested in knowing where I too might obtain permission to make copies for liturgical use in UK. )

AJ Tocher

ajtocher wrote:by my calculation copyright in these works would naturally expire on 31 Dec 2045

In the U.S., where CPDL servers are located, copyright lasts 70 years after the death of the composer only for works created after December 31st, 1978, which is obviously impossible as Carlo Rossini died in 1975. Carlo Rossini's works are public domain in the U.S. if they were published before 1923, or if they were published betwwen 1923 and 1964 without an appropriate copyright notice, or if copyright was not renewed through an appropriate procedure after 28 years from first publication. I'm not sure whether Carlo Rossini's publisher had targeted the U.S. as a significant market and therefore took care of the procedures to obtain and maintain the copyright status in the U.S.

Anyway, if you wish to contact the editor of Carlo Rossini's works available on CPDL, you may leave a note on his talk page, or use the function "Email this user" that is available on his user page.

Max

According to the source below, his 1930 book "Cantate Domino; prima anthologia melodica, liturgica, 145 cantus sacri tribus vocibus aequalibus quos composuit vel transcripsit Carlo Rossini" had the copyright renewed in 1958:

https://archive.org/stream/uscopyrightr ... 1818-8.txt

To complicate things even further: this other site gives different birth and death years for Carlo Rossini, apparently based on a 2003 book entitled "Dies Irae: A Guide to Requiem Music" by Robert Chase.

http://www.requiemsurvey.org/composers.php?id=2978

PS: Thanks, Max, I only saw your reply after posting mine.

Interesting about the discrepancy regarding birth/date years! I wish that source had fewer typos. Should we annotate the composer's page with something like the note below right below the birth/death years?

'''Note: Some [http://www.requiemsurvey.org/composers.php?id=2978 sources] indicate other birth/death years (e.g. 1839 - c.1900)."

http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php?title=Carlo_Rossini

On further investigation, it seems that the information on requiemsurvey.org is wrong, given that no other sources confirm those dates. It turns out that Father Carlo was very active during the 20th century, both as a composer and editor of Catholic publications. Worldcat Identities gives more detailed information:

http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no97037266/

I finally tracked ownership of copyright down to Alfred Publishing. They had no problrm in providing a free licence to make 20 copies and/or transpose all of the works by Rossini in all the books I own, and some I don't yet own. They were extremely helpful, and I also obtained a similar licence for a choir in a neighbouring parish.

Thanks for all the earlier comments, especially those explaining US copyright.

Alastair J Tocher

Schola Gregoriana Malverniensis (Gregorian Chant & Latin Polyphony)
e: scholasi@btopenworld.com
w: scholamalverniensis.btck.co.uk
f: www.facebook.com/ScholaGregorianaMalverniensis