IMSLP Forums

Hypothetical Scenario No.1:
I have (or will buy) "official" (UE etc.) copies of certain works by Webern that are posted here in untrustworthy Russian editions. One or more of these official scores may be a relatively recent (i.e. not PD anywhere) critical edition.

In the course of studying this music, I go through the official scores compiling a lists of variations from the Russian editions.

Are these lists, which can be used to correct the Russian scores, postable here? If so, would there be any country restrictions?

The shortness of the Webern scores is the only thing that makes this feasible. Even slightly longer pieces, such as Debussy's Nocturnes, have so much to change that the list for one movement alone would run to dozens of pages.

Hypothetical No.2:
Certain new non-PD critical editions of very large pieces (St.Matthew Passion, Mass in b, Wagner operas) have measure numbers whereas the old editions here do not. Would lists of measure numbers quickly derived from these critical editions, enabling students to accurately insert measure numbers into IMSLP score printouts or any corresponding Dover printed editions, be postable?

--Sixtus

Facts can't be copyrighted. Certainly the measure number issue should be no problem. A 'list of corrections' I would THINK be ok, but IANAL or even as knowledgeable as some people here, of course.

Melodia is basically correct. A listing of differences between two editions of a score, regardless of whether one - or both - are under copyright is actually your own copyright, assuming you've added the type of commentary you typically do here in the forum. You are naturally free - and indeed most welcome - to post such observations on the talk pages associated with certain works, etc., under our CC general license governing the site itself. A simple listing of differences might not be the subject of copyright at all. Adding measure numbers is not an original creative contribution. Again, such listings of cold facts are most likely not even eligible for copyright unless you add some remarks.

You might wish to get some specific help from some of the folks here for advice on how to construct it, but a nice wiki-table with comparisons between lots of different editions would be a wonderful help and great benefit to the many, many people who visit the site.

I totally agree with Carolus: the intellectual property on an error listing is with the person who identified the errors and created the listing.

I often perform checks between choral editions available at CPDL (http://www.cpdl.org) and commercial editions (or also editions available at IMSLP). To this purpose I developed automatic systems that can compare MIDI files and pinpoint even just one different note among thousands. Then I write error listings that are reported on the wiki "discussion page" (or "talk page") associated to the corresponding CPDL edition. This is an example of error listing I prepared, if it can be useful to define some kind of standard format:

http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Talk ... o_Vivaldi)

Max