IMSLP Forums

I am trying to contribute with some collections of early keyboard music, but I am not quite sure to proceed. The score books I own are compilations of works by several composers, so I wouldn't start by looking at a specific composer's page. Submitting works individually by each composer would sort of break the unity of the whole score. I know things like The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is there complete, and would like to do the same. Any suggestions? Many thanks.

You should direct this type of compilation to this page: http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Various. Take a look at a few workpages as examples to follow.

One thing to remember is that collections are governed by two levels of copyright...

1. The dates of the longest surviving composer, arranger, text author, or non-urtext editor;

2. The dates of the person who assembled the collection, if it is original and unique in nature.

In cases where an individual has put together an original compilation, the collection itself cannot be added if the compiler died less than 50 years ago. Also, such collections assembled, edited, and/or arranged by one person go under that person's category instead of various as too many collections with identical names exist to have them all under various.

Understood. The collection cannot be added. The person who compiled the works is still alive!

That's a problem unless the collection at hand is an unoriginal one like Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.

Now I am not sure about it any more. I'll be very specific and hope you guys will shed some light to me: It is a collection of early keyboard spanish works by A. Soler, M. Albéniz, F. Rodríguez, J. Gallés and some others (some don't even have a composer page). Youngest composer died in 1783, so no problem there. It is a Ricordi edition with a copyright notice of 1955, so EU and US have a problem there but wouldn't prevent me to upload it, right? Finally, there is a note of "revision conforming to originals" by Giuliana Marchi, who, as far as I know, was born in 1925 but is still alive. But there is no copyright notice regarding this revision. So, may I or may I not submit this work as a whole? Perhaps piece by piece? Thanks again for attending my doubts.

The problem is not with the composers in the collection, and (possibly not) with the editorial amendments. The collection itself - from your description - appears to be an original selection of pieces. This is covered in Canada for life-plus-50 of the person who selected the items (the editor). Taken individually, it all depends upon the nature of the editing. If the editorial changes of Giuliana Marchi are original in nature (as in not taken from other public domain sources), we're back to life-plus-50. If they are not original in nature - as in an urtext edition - the individual pieces would be fine to add as they were published more than 25 years ago (our voluntary rule for urtexts).