IMSLP Forums

Hello everyone,

I am in the process of recording an album and I would love to use a classical piece as a prelude. The one that I am most interested in is "Andantino" by Aram Khachaturian. I am very, very confused about the copyright laws given that this was a piece written in Russia. I keep coming up with conflicting information about the exact time that a Russian piece becomes public domain. "Andantino" was composed in 1926 (86 years ago), and Khachaturian died in 1978 (34 years ago). Most of the information I see says that Russian copyrights were granted for life + 15 years, in which case it seems like this piece would be acceptable to use as public domain. But I am seeing other information that seems to contradict that. Can someone tell me definitively how this process works? Since I live in the United States, are there more problems? Do I have to get copyright laws here in addition? It's just a very confusing process which I've never had to deal with before. Thanks so much!

Jeff
jeffwatersmusic@gmail.com

What the copyright law is in Russia has nothing to do with what you must adhere to unless you are going to record and distribute your recording there only.

If you are, for example, in the US, then you must go by the number of years Khachaturian is covered for there, and Khachaturian is definitely in copyright there, as well as in most other countries in the world.

It might be a good thing to look at these pages:

http://imslp.org/wiki/IMSLP:Copyright_Made_Simple

http://imslp.org/wiki/Public_domain

That's interesting. So it doesn't matter the country where the piece originated from, only the country where I intend to reproduce the song? I know his music is definitely covered under Copyright laws in the US.