IMSLP Forums

http://www.upv.es/coro/victoria/mas_partituras.html

This site has many choral works of leading Spanish Renaissance composers, mostly Victoria, Morales, and Guerrero. There's basically no copyright information given, so I can't tell for sure if they're all PD. It doesn't help that I don't speak Spanish. Help?

They are all lilypond typesets, and this is what he has said (in Spanish translated with google)

Yes, you can use and distribute free of charge, wherever non-profit basis. That is, if you go to print these scores to sell, you must contact me before.

Unless stated otherwise, I have based editing Felipe Pedrell made in Leipzig in the early twentieth century.[/quote[

As far as no copyright marks are given, I think this typeset copies are not copyrighted, and music is old, so might be in public domain.

First. Almost all of Victoria's works were published by the composer in his own lifetime (there are only about a dozen, extremely minor works not in this category). Thus there are no copyright issues regarding the date of first publication as the composer died in 1611. (Victoria is fairly unusual in a Renaissance context, to have had virtually 99% of his music published in the course of his life.)

Second. Pedrell's edition of the Victoria works is very close to an urtext, irrespective of the facts that Pedrell died in 1922, none of it was issued posthumously, and thus any creative work on his part (which I am not convinced is apparent) would no longer qualify for any residual editorial copyright.

The volumes are thus in the public domain. However Nancho Alvarez's typesets may be eligible for a typographical copyright in some jurisdictions, and as the copyright tagging system doesn't allow a mixture of PD and non-PD tags, it would be actually more accurate to mark them V*/V*/V* (PD, urtext) rather than !N/!N/!N (non-PD, permission granted).

Regards, Philip