IMSLP Forums

So an update by Schissel mention on the issue of the mysterious english translator, Eric Smith, which includes the Kantate I and II and Das Augenlicht that we know so far; his real full name is now believed to be Erik Georg Sebastian Smith/Schmidt-Isserstedt who was born in 1931 and died in 2004. Of the little research I found out online elsewhere on this new name, he did work with Universal Edition publishing company for some years with them in the mid-1950s and was very good with english, since he was . The publishing dates of the full scores and vocal scores that me and Madcapellen uploaded are from 1954 at the earliest to 1957 at the latest. Why I bring up this issue is obviously that the edition we have now seem to be not PD right now most likely and that to avoid any copyright legal issues, it would be best to take these editions down. Does anyone know if there are any published copies from UE that just include the german text from these pieces without the english translations at all? Were so close to having all of Webern's Opus numbered scores here on IMSLP! If we can find any editions without the translations, please put them up on here!

Here is a short biography about him here which mentions the time he worked with UE: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/t ... 1141559671

Judging from the Worldcat listings, it seems there were no earlier publications of the pieces, in which case there would be little reason for the publisher to issue both German-only and German/English versions.

Well, there remains some serious question as to whether a translation is to be considered a contribution worthy of copyright extension. There doesn't appear to have ever been rulings on that question, but if memory serves, we made an internal judgement to disregard those translations when figuring end of copyright. Maybe Carolus will pop up and say otherwise, but this is my recollection.

As is often the case: It depends. If a translation is merely a re-working of an earlier, public domain, translation of the original - probably not. On the other hand, if it's something created directly from the original which was never before translated - probably so. The last surviving contributor rule is subject to the threshold of originality at least in Canada. Even in the EU, urtext editions are limited in term, so a slight re-working on an older translation to update terms and idioms used would arguably be protected for only 25 years at the outside there.

So, if the translations of Mr. "Smith" are new and not some re-vamp of an earlier one - yes, they have to be removed and the file must be blocked until they can be replaced. Good sleuthing!