When can I find when this music was published?

Question by spk: When can I find when this music was published?
I like to add music to the website IMSLP, a website with public domain/royalty free music (you don’t have to be a musician to answer this). It has scanned music that volunteers scan and upload. Anyway, at a local library, I found a musical score book that looked kind of old. However, when I checked the book, I didn’t see a publication date. I checked it out, and pretty much searched the whole thing for the publication date. I’ve decided that the publication date isn’t there, so where is it?

It’s called “83 String Quartets” by Josef Haydn in 3 Volumes. I think Josef is a mistake because everywhere else it says Joseph. Anyway, It was published by Edition Eulenburg (or Ernst Eulenburg). I only have the first volume, but all the pieces (quartet scores) are edited by Wilhelm Altmann, and say something about Eulenburg companies, in London, Zurich, and New York.

I know it was published before 1967, because there’s a stamp (put by the library) that says OCT 6 – 1967.

I think the most important part are the plate numbers – for op.1 no.1, it’ E. E. 1270. I think the plate numbers range from around E. E. 1150 – E. E. 1290.

Wilhelm Altmann died in 1951, in case that is a contributing factor.

Also, I wanted to know the US copyright laws. I thought it was basically:
published before 1923 = public domain
published after 1923 and any contributors dead > 70 years = public domain

However, some websites confirmed this and others went against it. Can someone tell me what happens to works published after 1923?

Thanks for answers!

Best answer:

Answer by bcnu
The book publisher doesn’t own any copyright in materials that were originally published in the USA prior to 1923 because there isn’t any copyright to own. However, if they hired somebody to transcribe the works of Haydn to modern notation or to make an arrangement, then they may own those newly created derivative works, but only to the extent they differ from the originals (i.e., you can’t copy their printed page but you can transcribe the original music freely).

No, the rules of US copyright are a bit more complex than “before 1923” or “70 years”. Other factors include whether the pre-1989 publication had “copyright notice” on it, and if pre-1963 works were also “registered” and whether earlier works had registered copyrights that were also renewed.

One useful site is the one at Cornell devoted to “public domain”.

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