Re: Solfege Resources -- 404 bach chorales in Lilypond format with Movable Do solfege.

[Michael Ellis]

Hi Phil & Graham,
Thanks very much for the information and discussion.  It's all
extremely useful.  Let me see if I can paraphrase a few points that
are influencing my thinking:

We all seems to agree that:

   1. The "music" of the chorales (the sequences of pitches and
rhythms notated in the Breitkopf edition) is public domain.
   2. The Breitkopf edition itself is also in the public domain.
   3. Margaret Greentree's XML files do not contain any copyright
assertions other than for the PDF output.
   4. Her site has the following text in the footer of each page:
        " © 1996-2010 by Margaret Greentree, some rights reserved.
Free midi files and sets, ongoing corrections.
         This site may be browsed, referenced or linked. Download the
ftp files, but do not use images or music for financial profit.
Commercial use of material without permission from me or the artists
is an infringement of rights reserved."

Given the above, it seems that an important question is whether her
reservation of rights applies to distributing material created by
applying LilyPond to the notation sequences embodied in her XML.   I
don't mean to sound like a lawyer here (and I'm most assuredly not
one), but to the extent that her notes match those in public domain
editions, one could argue that no copyright is possible.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that failing to declare a copyright to
the XML files necessarily invalidates a copyright to the digital
representation she created and one could argue that the translation
produced by MuseScore (via xml2ly, I think) is a purely mechanical
re-representation of her work.

As to my own contributions to this work, I am ok with dropping
commercial clause and issuing it with either the CC license or the
Free Art license or both.  So I think we need to wait for a response
from Margaret.  Hopefully she will be amenable to what we would like
to do.

Needless to say, another alternative would be to replace her work with
yours, Phil.  I think you said you've got about 300 of the chorales
already transcribed.  Is that right?  Would it be difficult to plug
your note sequences into the format I'm using?


Cheers,
Mike


On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 6:44 AM, Phil Hézaine <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Le 01/01/2011 23:30, Graham Percival a écrit :
> > On Sat, Jan 01, 2011 at 10:08:38PM +0100, Phil Hézaine wrote:
> >> Moreover, there are chorals which aren't changed from the Public Domain.
> >> I've checked some of it against my sources. Well, only a little bit.
> >> And i'm not sure of the data integrity of her typesetting.
> >
> > Interesting.
> >
> >> Then, why to claim a clause of copyright non-commercial without arguments?
> >
> > Well, if she made any editorial changes, the result is not in the
> > public domain.  Arguably, even simply making unintentional "data
> > entry" changes could be enough for the result to be under
> > copyright.
> >
> >> What a shame that Margaret Gentree is not on this list. We could have a
> >> better understanding. Are Barenreiter or Musica Budapest's sources
> >> closed?
> >
> > Unless they created an "urtext" edition, then yes, the notes and
> > markings are under copyright.  Even if they created an "urtext"
> > edition, the actual layout of music on the page is under
> > copyright.  In the latter case, typing the notes into a text file
> > (for processing with lilypond) does not infringe copyright,
> > whereas making a photocopy would infringe.
> >
> >> Could we use her work in a GNU app like GNU Solfege without
> >> infringements between the GPL and her license?
> >
> > No.  GPL does not allow you to play additional restrictions on the
> > distribution of material; the CC-NC has an extra restriction ("no
> > commercial use").
> >
> >> For now I plan to publish the 371 chorals from Breitkopf with a Free Art
> >> license,
> >
> > Have you checked that the Breitkopf edition is free from
> > copyright?  Mutopia has a good short discussion about this:
> > http://www.mutopiaproject.org/contribute.html
> >
> > Cheers,
> > - Graham
>
> Thanks for the informations, Graham, it's always useful.
> The handy sources i have are exactly the same you find on ISMLP:
>
>
> > http://imslp.org/wiki/Chorale_Harmonisations,_BWV_1-438_%28Bach,_Johann_Sebastian%29
>
> Rédacteur:
> Johann Philipp Kirnberger
> Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
>
> Édition:
> Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, n.d.[1878]. Plate V.A. 10
> Droit d'auteur: Public Domain
>
> Notes:
> Based on 1st edition (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1784–1788)
> 2 staves, without lyrics
>
>
> I think I'm right.
> However I add in my typesetting the BWV references and the corrected
> titles (there are a lot) from jsbchorales, and i point out the chorales
> in duplicate.
> Yes, in fact there are not 371 chorales in this edition!
> Off course, I'll mention the origin of my references in my final work. I
> think there is no copyright issue about their catalogue.
> Am i wrong?
>
> If you check the second chorale from the Breitkopf's edition against the
> jsb sources (BWV 347) you'll see no difference.
> The first chorale (BWV 269) has just a missing tie for the alto, 5 bars
> before the end.
> I don't say that to pull down the work of Margaret Gentree, it will be
> ridiculous, far away of my wish, just to point out you can find chorales
> of the Public Domain. Checking the whole stuff is not my purpose and may
> be irrelevant for now.
> Cheers.
>
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