IMSLP Forums

The Packard Humanities Institute is sponsoring a project to publish fascimile editions of the autograph manuscripts of Mozart's last seven operas in conjuction with the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth.

The link is:
http://mozart.packhum.org/mf

Ordering information:
http://mozart.packhum.org/mf/ordering.html

The first two operas manuscripts up for sale are Idomeneo and Cosi fan Tutte while Le Nozze di Figaro will be available soon.

Thanks! I'm really glad to hear about this... I love collecting facsimiles (and they also make great gifts...)

I'm especially excited about the Le Nozze di Figaro fascimile. Only drawback is I have to cough up some 200 US dollars
On another note, I would like to ask about the copyright status of these autograph mauscripts. Do these autographs belong to somebody or an entity like the Prussian State Library House? Can they still be coyprighted after all these years? If so, are these manuscripts public domain in Canada?

Facsimiles of this nature are not the subject of copyright at all in either Canada or the USA (the facsimiles of original manuscript pages themselves, that is). Any added prefaces, comments, forewords, etc. are naturally copyrighted as the work of whoever wrote them.

When IMSLP goes up again, we'd love to have scans of these volumes to distribute to the musical world at no charge. I expect the reason these volumes are relatively expensive (they're actually fairly cheap for facsimile editions, which can easily run into thousands of dollars per volume) is that they involve color printing, an odd trim size, and a limited print run.

This is another good reason for IMSLP to set up as a non-profit corporation. If we had a reasonable budget, volumes like these could be purchased, carefully disbound, scanned, rebound and resold at a reduced price (as "used") at Abebooks, Amazon Marketplace, etc.

Carolus, you mean that the autograph manuscripts pages themselves of Mozart's operas are completely PD in Canada? And there is no chance of getting them re-copyrighted?

Carolus wrote:This is another good reason for IMSLP to set up as a non-profit corporation. If we had a reasonable budget, volumes like these could be purchased, carefully disbound, scanned, rebound and resold at a reduced price (as "used") at Abebooks, Amazon Marketplace, etc.

And IMSLP could potentially retain lawyery types to help determine the status of such items (not that Carolus isn't a great help, but he can't know everything!).

And IMSLP could potentially retain lawyery types to help determine the status of such items (not that Carolus isn't a great help, but he can't know everything!).

Seems to though.

Carolus, you mean that the autograph manuscripts pages themselves of Mozart's operas are completely PD in Canada? And there is no chance of getting them re-copyrighted?

Yes, they are absolutely free. They are free in the USA also (there was a major district court decision just a couple of years ago about a nearly identical issue). A two-dimensional scan, photograph or image made of a public domain item (like a Mozart manuscript) fails to meet the threshold of originality needed to qualify for copyright status as a derivative work.

As I pointed out on the other thread, this fact would not prevent someone from attempting to sue IMSLP over the issue. It just means they have no case under the written law or under precedent. It's really fairly outrageous that publicly-funded institutions who own and archive such treasures feel as if they own some sort of reproduction rights on them. In the USA, this behavior might be grounds to bring suit against them under the anti-trust laws (restraint of trade, using public property for their own personal profit, etc.)

Hi Carolus,
Another similar case appears to be the Schubert manuscripts, sketches and letters that are being scanned and offered for sale:

http://www.schubert-online.at/activpage/index_en.htm

Pleaes correct me if I'm wrong, but is it safe to say that these manuscripts are out of copyright and hence should be free? I find it unbelievalbe that they are going to charge 8 euros per scanned autograph page, and that's it. No binding of the pages to form a hardback, which is the case for the Mozart opera autographs, which I think may justify the high costs.

I don't like this, a dangerous precedent is set where any institution or entity who owns autograph manuscripts may charge a certain fee for access to them. At least the Beethoven-Haus Bonn did the right thing by allowing access to digital archives of Beethoven's autograph manuscripts free of charge:

http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcm ... _archiv_en

It's possible that images, scans, or photos of such manuscripts are considered to be derivative work copyrights in the EU or in the individual country in question like Austria or Germany. They may be perfectly within their rights to charge whatever they like.

That said, there is a serious problem with libraries and archives behaving as if they are copyright owners of the manuscripts like those mentioned. If, for example, an individual purchased the images from a library like the Beethoven Haus or Schubert archive, extracted the images, embedded them in a PDF, and uploaded it to IMSLP, no doubt some archive will try to do the same thing UE attempted to do. The public domain has to be defended from those who seek to lock it up for their own benefit, which is one of the reasons we are working very hard to set up a non-profit organization.

Agreed.

However, if these digitized versions of the autograph manuscripts are indeed considered derivative work copyrights in the EU or in the individual countries then I suppose they would have the right to charge for it.

The other thing that I'm concerned will be the size of the autograph manuscript scans. Since these scans are made in colour or greyscale, their sizes would be quite large compared to sheet music scans which are done in black and white, more so if the resolution is high and lossless compression is used. I'm just wondering if and when these scans are uploaded, how much will downloading these large size scans have on the bandwidth of the IMSLP server?

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's wait until IMSLP is back up and then we can worry this later.

I found this old discussion on IMSLP Forum to be especially interesting, especially Carolus' informative remarks about the inabily for libraries and foundations to copyright ancient manuscripts in the USA and Canada.

Carolus wrote:Facsimiles of this nature are not the subject of copyright at all in either Canada or the USA (the facsimiles of original manuscript pages themselves, that is). Any added prefaces, comments, forewords, etc. are naturally copyrighted as the work of whoever wrote them.

When IMSLP goes up again, we'd love to have scans of these volumes to distribute to the musical world at no charge. I expect the reason these volumes are relatively expensive (they're actually fairly cheap for facsimile editions, which can easily run into thousands of dollars per volume) is that they involve color printing, an odd trim size, and a limited print run.

This is another good reason for IMSLP to set up as a non-profit corporation. If we had a reasonable budget, volumes like these could be purchased, carefully disbound, scanned, rebound and resold at a reduced price (as "used") at Abebooks, Amazon Marketplace, etc.

However, though two years have past since Carolus' remarks, still no scans of the manuscripts for Mozart's operas have been posted on IMSLP. Indeed, I can find no downloadable pdf scans of any major Mozart manuscripts on IMSLP or anywhere else.

There are scans on IMSLP of manuscripts by Schubert. Beethoven, Bach, Grieg, and others. Personally, I would be most interested in examining on IMSLP manuscripts by Mozart, as well as those my many other composers. In addition to final fair copies in the composers' hand, unfinished sketches would be fascinating to see.

MS

Yagan Kiely wrote:

And IMSLP could potentially retain lawyery types to help determine the status of such items (not that Carolus isn't a great help, but he can't know everything!).

Seems to though.

Carolus = weight in

Ha! If you send me a few of those items in the picture, Phildor, I'll be happy to obtain some facsimiles, scan the music and post them here.....after a nice cruise.