IMSLP Forums

Seeing as this is one of the more popular pieces, as far as clarinet rep goes anyway, surprised it's not here.

Honestly I'm mainly interested in the clarinet part, so full score or piano reduction are both fine if the clarinet part is included.

I think it may have been first published by Supraphon in 1953, oddly. Still PD-CA and possibly even PD-EU, so someone might be able to upload it, however, given a scanned-in copy of the score. (Or Krommer's manuscript in a European library perhaps somewhere?)

The Supraphon edition seems to have been edited by Jiri Kratochvil, born in 1924, still living as far as I can tell. I can't tell whether he also did the piano reduction, because one entry seems to indicate that but another says "Klavírní výtah Ladislav Simon. Revidoval Jiří Kratochvíl". I can't find dates for Ladislav Simon.

There is another edition, copyright 1956, that says "Partition: E. Hradecký". The only E. Hradecký I can find is a pianist born in 1953 (doing piano reductions at age 3?) Can't work this one out.

Southern Music publishes it, edited by Bernard Portnoy, who died in 2006.

WorldCat shows a microfilm version of this concerto published by "Offenbach s/M., André [1803?]", with the note:
Parts only.
Reprinted from plates 1787.
Imperfect: solo clarinet part wanting, supplied by photostatic reproduction

This would seem to be the one that would be public domain, but WorldCat also says "We were unable to get information about libraries that hold this item." HOWEVER, the International Clarinet Association has it in its research archives (unfortunately orchestral parts only, no solo part). Anyone who is a member could scan the parts from that.

The bottom line is that I can't seem to find a solo part that is public domain, though the ICA Archives also shows an edition as follows:

Krommer, Franz Vincenz
Concerto, Op. 36
Praha: Státní Nakladatelstvi Krásné Literatury c1953
cl, pno
score (31p.), part
5649

This doesn't mention an editor, though that doesn't mean there wasn't one. Someone would have to borrow it from that library and have a look at it to ascertain the copyright status (and someone had to have done a reduction.)

And, as an added note, in searching for all of this, I came across the following in the Library of Congress:

Clarinet concertos from the Library of Congress:
Concerto : clarinetto primo principale, clarinetto secondo, due violini, duo corno, alto viola con basso / Anon. --
Concerto puer clarinetto principale, clarinetto / Anon. --
Troisième concerto pour la clarinette... oeuvre 86 / F. Krommer, arr. J. Küffner (Offenbach : J. André) --
Concerto pour la clarinette / Michel [Yost] (Amsterdam : H. C. Steup) --
Concerto per clarinetto... / del Sigr. Pfeiffer --
Concerto pour deux clarinettes... oeuvre 91 / F. Krommer (Offenbach : J. André).

All manuscripts, all public domain!!!

*raises happy eyebrow at mention of Küffner (though more interested in Krommer, relatively speaking, the others interest me too)- though whether manuscripts are public domain is sort of an "it depends" kind-of-thing or so I am led to believe? - the answer in the case of the Krommer non-arranged concertos - ... well, they probably do have the requisite during-lifetime performance history. (Given that opus 86 has been published recently, for instance, that is almost definitely a consideration in determining its date of first "publication" - performance or first modern edition, if there's no publication beforehand. Actually, I think opus 86 may have been published as early as 1812 anyway, so that that is not so much a problem... but with other works, yes.) (I generally go by the assumption that maybe someone reading this thread doesn't know this already- though it's true that I should leave this explanation in that case for someone who actually knows what they're talking about, which-- is not me. anyhow. night!)
Eric

Sorry, I read too quickly, and spoke too soon. The correct wording was "(incl. ms. parts)". The Offenbach: J.Andre and the Amsterdam: H.C. Steup items were formal publications, so they, at least should be public domain.

The manuscript items (and I think you are right, Eric, more delving needs to be done on those) would still be questionably PD.

Still, there is enough here to drool over . . .

The Portnoy (Southern) edition appears to be the only one that was actually registered with the US Copyright Office. Supraphon/SNKHLU editions are almost always PD everywhere, since they were government publications (=works for hire, not eligible for copyright protection) of works out of copyright. A fair number of them would probably fall under the urtext provisions even without this.
(P.S. Ladislav Simon was born in 1929 and as far as I know is still alive.)

Supraphon was generally very lax about renewals, despite being pretty good about making sure everything has a US-compliant notice (in sharp contrast to most of the other state publishers). Since there is an EU-wide urtext rule, nearly all of the Supraphon editions of older works more than 30 years old are free there also. The biggest outstanding case where a state-owned publisher renewed things in the USA was PWM's Chopin editions. The renewal issue only applies for works published between 1923 and 1963, of course. Anything published 1964 and later with a compliant notice was automatically renewed.

Well damn, never realized this piece would be so complicated. o.O

Would the public-domain status of the Supraphon editions still hold even if the editor was still alive?

In a word, yes. These editions are over 30 years old, so they have largely fallen into the PD under the EU's urtext provisions, which depend on date of publication rather than date of death of the last surviving contributor. (Canada gives no protection at all to urtext editions.) The piano reduction is more debatable, but it may (a) not display much originality, which would cast doubt on its copyrightability, or (b) be considered a 'work for hire' for the government and not subject to copyright protection anyway. (I'm not sure whether the first would apply, since I haven't actually seen the score.) It would probably be tagged as 'checked', but I truly doubt there would be any problem with hosting it here.

Just being extra careful here -- I'm not sure the Supraphon edition is urtext. If it isn't, what then?

Well, it's debatable whether it's eligible for copyright protection in many countries anyway. As I say, it was a government publication, which counts as a 'work for hire', which in most countries we worry about here cannot be copyrighted. If it's actually a new work, it wouldn't fall under that. If it were just an edition, though - even a piano reduction - it very much could. If the Supraphon edition were uploaded here, it would probably be tagged V*/C*/V* or something similar.
For other examples (in case you aren't convinced), you can look at some of the pages linked to from Supraphon's plate number table: http://imslp.org/wiki/Editio_Supraphon#Plate_Numbers

you posted a lot of needed things for me. I have never known about it....well-done!!!

Olivers clarinet page (http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/clarmusi/clarmusi.htm) contains a piano reduction of the concert in form of
finale and midi files. I can´t say nothing about the quality of these files, just want to mention them.