Glière Symphony No.3 'Ilya Murometz'

[Mark Thomas]

That I'd forgotten. No UC post of the audio from this YT post, then, but I do recommend the performance.

[MartinH]

Is that some Swiss Youth Orchestra? Very young players, and what a fine performance!

[TerraEpon]

The music of all composers (and their arrangers) are automatically copyrighted till 70 years after their death(s). This has not to be mentioned, it's an old law (Berne Convention of 1886, revisions followed after the 2nd WW and, lately, the USA finally joined in too). YouTube agreed with the EU already in 1993, but is was not working properly, so many complaints started - and new laws were issued this year upon pressure by the EU Parliament).

Well yes and no. I know you've mentioned the fact they offer music that's still copyrighted in Europe is why you seem to hate the IMSLP but Gliere's 3rd is very much in the public domain in the US, Canada and Japan (and I'm sure a lot of other places). It's a bit dishonest to paint the above as the whole truth when it's not. Canada/Japan it's death + 50, and US it's 95 years after publication.

If the mods don't want it here, fine whatever, but the issue isn't so black and white as you say it.

[adriano]

Thanks TerraEpon for considering my posting as "a bit dishonest". I have the impression that you mix-up composer's (author's) coyright with music publishing copyright laws.

I read as follows:
"Copyright protection generally lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. If the work was a "work for hire", then copyright persists for 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shorter. For works created before 1978, the copyright duration rules are complicated. However, works created before 1924 (other than sound recordings) have made their way into the public domain.
For works published or registered before 1978, the maximum copyright duration is 95 years from the date of publication, if copyright was renewed during the 28th year following publication. Copyright renewal has been automatic since the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992."

See also:
http://www.floridalawreview.com/2010/michael-w-carroll-the-struggle-for-music-copyright/

And, to learn that already Bach, Abel and Hummel struggled for such a cause:
https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=wps
(page 942)


Now concerning works (and not their publications, like scores, sound carriers etc.):
"For works created before 1978, but not published or registered before 1978, the standard §302 copyright duration of 70 years from the author's death also applies. Prior to 1978, works had to be published or registered to receive copyright protection. Upon the effective date of the 1976 Copyright Act (which was January 1, 1978) this requirement was removed and these unpublished, unregistered works received protection. However, Congress intended to provide an incentive for these authors to publish their unpublished works. To provide that incentive, these works, if published before 2003, would not have their protection expire before 2048."

The thing is an international agreement:
"The Berne Convention is an international treaty standardizing copyright protection since 1886. In 1994 a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed by 117 countries, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in Geneva, Switzerland, to enforce compliance with the agreement. GATT includes a section covering copyrights called the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). US law was amended to be essentially consistent with GATT by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) in 1994 and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act in 1998.  Despite GATT, copyright protection varies greatly from country to country, and extreme caution must be exercised on all  international usage of any intellectual property.
You should use a public domain composition only if you have proof of public domain from a legitimate source.  If you do not have a legitimate source in your possession, there is no way you can be certain that the music you use is in the public domain.  A legitimate source is a tangible copy of the work with a copyright date old enough to be in the public domain. Sources are almost always either an original or a copy of a book or sheet music. You cannot just "know" a song is in the public domain or just "see" the name of the song in a book, on a list, or even on this web site.  An attorney will tell you that there really is no such thing as absolute "proof of public domain". But you must protect yourself with the best "proof" you can find.  If you do not do your own research and obtain a legitimate public domain copy of each work you use, you can easily make errors which could result in your having to pay substantial royalties."

In any case: One has to clearly understand the distinction between the public domain status of a work (its publication) and the public domain status of the source of the work (the composition).

As far as my attitude is concerned, "honesty" means 100% respect towards the product of an artist and its copyright. As a composer and conductor myself, I am proud of never having ceased struggling for this cause. And, since it is well-known that 70 years after the author's death are recognised in most countries, I don't care about doubtful special cases. Music (like other arts) is a worldwide affair, therefore it should be protected the same way in all over the world.

"Thanks" to the social media, we have landed now in an epoch where everybody thinks he can get art (and the media they have been made available on) just for free. They don't realise what it costs (spiritually and economically) to create it.

Paul Sacher (who became a multimillionaire after having married a industrial's daughter) has still the reputation of a great and generous sponsor, for having commissioned works by many composers. He used to pay but a few hundred Francs for a composition, demanding that he would premiere it and that its autograph would become his propriety. He also tried to get additional copyrights. But he never cared about financing the publication of those works; he was just a greedy collector - and a mediocre conductor. Today these autographs are preserved as in a refrigerator - and are accessible only to some happy few. One of his illegitimate sons presides the Sacher Foundation, he decides whether an interested person is allowed or not to consult his treasures.


A rather bizarre anecdote: I think it happened in 1974 or 1979, at the coccasion of Karl Böhm's 80th or 85th Birthday Celebration in Salzburg Christa Ludwig, after performing a song which Bernstein had composed for this occasion, hands Böhm the manuscript over as a gift. Böhm's first question is: "Will I also get the copyright?"

[adriano]

@ MartinH
The orchestra is clearly mentioned at the very beginning of the video. And, even more in detail, in the final credits.

[Alan Howe]

Is that some Swiss Youth Orchestra?

As Adriano indicates, the orchestra is named in the credits:

10th Orchestra Academy of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and the Haut école de musique of Geneva-Neuchâtel (HEM).

[eschiss1]

Apparently IMSLP's solution to the problem of the differing copyright laws in the US, Europe, and Canada was good enough to satisfy Universal Edition and get the c-and-d order lifted, but hey, what's the opinion of a  publisher of international standing that's been around since 1900/1 matter? (And their solution, by the way, involves several lines of defense. The site takes the possibility of being sued again very seriously. I do not advise our hosting (the recording of) Ilya Murometz here- or quite a few things we do _already_ host- but I am _quite_ fine with IMSLP hosting (the score of) it (with its current restrictions- which should be needless to say, but I suppose nothing is "needless to say"), and Brian's first symphony (US-only), and etc., etc., etc.)

(PS scores and recordings have rather different laws applying to them, at least in the US; afaik most recordings will still be copyright for quite some time, I gather, older ones if they have been properly renewed. The oft-cited 1923-now-24-soon-to-be-25-etc date for scores is, iirc, a date such that scores given their first US publication before that date (not "first published" - specifically "first given US publication", with ©, etc) can no longer be renewed now. (If not renewed in the regular 27? 28? year cycle at some point between then and now, they tend to lose copyright -anyway- - the onus is actually on the publication and publisher to _maintain_ the copyright, for works first-published before a certain date or first published between that date and 197x but improperly published (no proper copyright registration on score or found @ Library of Congress when requested (the online one is warned to be incomplete.)

Obviously, I am not a copyright lawyer (or any other kind) (and the lawyers I know specialize in other issues- no, not criminal law, that wasn't about to become a standup joke.)

[Gareth Vaughan]

At the risk of expanding this conversation beyond the remit of the subject, may I make one observation.  Whilst I am passionate in the defence of copyright so that it may benefit a composer, or his/her immediate heirs, or a performer or performers, I get really (and I think justifiably) annoyed with publishers who, having allowed a work to go out of print, refuse to make a copy, for which one is of course prepared to pay, on request by an individual for private use. True, this happens infrequently, but it has happened.

[adriano]

As far as publisher's behaviour towards copyright is concerned, I fully agree with you, Gareth Vaughan. I had to experience various grotesque - and absolutely unacceptable - situations, which even can be considered as obstructive towards music.

[Gareth Vaughan]

obstructive towards music.

That is precisely what it is.

[MartinH]

I get really (and I think justifiably) annoyed with publishers who, having allowed a work to go out of print, refuse to make a copy, for which one is of course prepared to pay, on request by an individual for private use. True, this happens infrequently, but it has happened.

This happens all too frequently! There's a lot of great music that is OOP and unless you have good contacts with orchestra librarians, obtaining scores and parts for performance is often futile. Here's a list of just a few things I've tried to acquire for performance recently:

1. Victor Herbert: Festival March.
2. Robert Farnon: Westminster Waltz.
3. Albert Ketelbey: Cockney Suite.

Renting music is even becoming a challenge, and the hallowed Fleisher Library in Philadelphia won't loan some items out any more because a) the parts are in extremely fragile condition and b) the work is still under copyright and they can't make photocopies available. Insane.

[Alan Howe]

OK, I think we're really off topic here. Please start another thread if you wish to continue, otherwise it's back to Ilya Muromets.

[Justin]

I'm surprised the first Swiss performance of this piece was just in the past few years. Many Russians were expats in Switzerland around this time (including Scriabin), so I am not sure why this monumental work was neglected for so long!

[adriano]

There may be a simple reason, Zusac: in the 1950s for example, we had a similar anti-Russian hysteria over here as in other countries (France and Germany behaved more progressively). And this even later: in 1965, after corresponding with the Tchaikovsky House in Klin, they had sent me over some LPs as a gift. I remember Tchaikovsky's "Hamlet" (conducted by Ivanov) figured amongst them. I was 21 years old and had to show up at the customs office, where I was thoroughly interrogated. My parents were informed by the police. My father reprimanded me harshly (I had left home already since one year); they thought that the Russians were going to use me as a spy - that eventually I would land up in prison. Fahter was a well-known military instructor... Grotesquely enough, in the 1970s, he went into diplomacy and became a Swiss military attachee in Moscow! He lived there for 7 years and (as I learned later from one of his colleagues) took frequently advantage of the possibility to smuggling foreign currency through the diplomat's courier.
My parent's Moscow stay has, incidentally, nothing to do with my own "Moscow connection" as a conductor: I had broken with them 15 years earlier.
But I think this experience consolidated my intense love for Russian music.
In those years, composers à la Rimsky and Tchaikovsky - and the emigrated ones - were considered as harmless in Switzerland; but imagine Glière, whom Stalin has nominated a "People's Artist"and who presided the URSS Composer's Committee! Shostakowitch was quite a risk; even to Fritz Brun, who in December 1937 conducted Shostakovich's First Symphony in Berne.
Today many things have changed. Switzerland has become one of the preferred shopping countries for the rich Russians - and we court them. On Saturday mornings, if you go to a Zurich department store's café, you hear more Russian conversations than German and English ones. And the Banks are just round the corner. Many Russians have rented luxury apartments. Fritz Brun's villa in the Ticino (Southern Switzerland), for example, is now surrounded by some decadently-styled Russian mansions - which mostly remain closed all the time.

[adriano]

In the meantime I could find out that the music of "Ilya Murometz" was used in a 1945 (black-and-white) documentary feature entitled "The Fall of Berlin", which was directed by Yuri Reisman. A Russian army camerateam was responsible for firsthand footage. This film has nothing to do with the 1949 colour feature with Shostakovitch's music. A copy is on the way to me, so I will be able to check the soundtrack. Maybe this reveals that a Russian mono recording of Glière's Symphony was already around by then...