Choral Public Domain Library

In advance of posting my own edition, I have added publication details and description to "Ein Kindelein so lobelich" (Michael Praetorius). All details on that page are correct with one exception.
The piece was composed by Hieronymus Praetorius, NOT Michael.

I should be grateful for someone to process the re-attribution; I don't feel capable of doing it efficiently/comprehensively myself.

The PDF also reflects the misattribution; I assume that to be beyond our remedy

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cjshawcj wrote:The piece was composed by Hieronymus Praetorius, NOT Michael.

Could you please better document the above statement? Most results for this title on Worldcat report Michael, not Hieronymus. IMSLP also reports Michael. Maybe two different works exist, one by Michael and one by Hieronymus? Or is it a common misattribution?

Max

There is only one 8 part setting of "Ein Kindelein so lobelich" attributable to Michael Praetorius: it was published in Musae Sioniae, 1607, and I have had an edition on my website for a couple of years http://www.notamos.co.uk/113791.shtml (view/playback free, but pdf download subject to charge)

The item under discussion comes from a collection of works indubitably by Hieronymus Praetorius: Polychoral motets vol. 1 ed. F.K. Gable (A.K.A. Recent researches in the music of the Renaissance, vol. 18), published by A-R Editions, Madison, Wisconsin, c.1974. I have inspected that volume, and can vouch that the uploader of the current item has altered it not one iota (I should think this is an infringement of copyright). The same uploader is responsible for the misattribution on IMSLP, which is in any case a site known for its slipshod scholarship and pusuit of quantity rather than quality of editions.

Hope this helps

I've moved the work page to reflect Hieronymus Praetorius as the composer.

cjshawcj wrote:The item under discussion comes from a collection of works indubitably by Hieronymus Praetorius: Polychoral motets vol. 1 ed. F.K. Gable (A.K.A. Recent researches in the music of the Renaissance, vol. 18), published by A-R Editions, Madison, Wisconsin, c.1974. I have inspected that volume, and can vouch that the uploader of the current item has altered it not one iota (I should think this is an infringement of copyright).

The legal question of copyright infringement is not as easy as it seems, and it presumably depends on the local copyright law. In Germany, public domain works can be re-copyrighted when they are

1. published in a scholarly edition that uses more than one source and includes a critical report (copyright only covers the edition)
2. or the music stems from a manuscript and has not yet been formally published (copyright covers the work itself so that no one else may use the source for making a modern edition during the copyright term)

In both cases, the copyright period is 25 years. 1974 + 25 = 1999, so the modern edition is definitely no longer copyrighted in Germany. Concerning b), there was an interesting trial recently about the performance rights on Vivaldi's opera "Montezuma" (I can provide more information in case of interest).

As CPDL is hosted in the US, I think, it would be interesting to hear the legal situation in the US.

Beside the legal question, there is the moral question of plagiarism, i.e. that an editor claims to have made an edition that in fact someone else has made. I consider this bad style and would urge contributors to name their sources, but apparently the majority on CPDL thinks otherwise.

Cdalitz wrote: Beside the legal question, there is the moral question of plagiarism, i.e. that an editor claims to have made an edition that in fact someone else has made. I consider this bad style and would urge contributors to name their sources, but apparently the majority on CPDL thinks otherwise.

This was more uppermost in my mind. I endorse the moral position entirely. Personally, I would comply with disclosure if required, but would not seek to introduce the system, since it would entail so much more extraneous clutter. And it would be somewhat tedious to read the name C. Proske attached to 87% (in my conservative estimation) of "new" items.

CHGiffen wrote:I've moved the work page to reflect Hieronymus Praetorius as the composer.

Thank you, kind sir. My edition will be winging its way onto the site in the next couple of days. I now see that the M.Praetorius setting has been requested: I am considering withdrawing the download charge on my edition thereof.

Incidentally, how do I put quotes from two different postings into one reply? Requesting the second quote seems to efface all previous drafting of a reply.

(Oops, a post slipped in while I was drafting this reply to Cdalitz)

I'd like to better understand which aspect(s) you are referring to.

Can you say more about which aspect of the note-for-note setting by the later editor is plagiarized from a creative contribution by the earlier editor, but which is not part of the original public-domain work or one of several likely ficta/underlay/voicing/octivation solutions that people would independently come up with?

Or are you saying that it's not that you know of a creative element in that regard but, rather, that if an editor does the hard work of mechanical transcription (say from old clefs into modern ones), that mechanical transcription is itself copyrighted even if no creative elements are added, or at least should have moral protection if not copyrightable?

I presume you are not focusing on any editorial decisions in the layout of a piece, which are generally mooted when a piece is typeset differently by a later editor (esp. if the sofware makes most of the decisions).

I'd appreciate your clarifying what you are referring to.

I personally agree that CPDL should strongly encourage editors to post about the sources used for their editions. Regarding *requiring* this, I have not thoroughly analyzed the issue of what impact requiring that would have, and thus do not yet have any firm personal opinion regarding this aspect. But why should that stop me? Here's my own thinking so far:

My feeling is that we collectively don't have enough data about either the impact of such a type of user violation. I am guessing it is rare. Also, impact is further reduced because editors of rare or otherwise distinct editions do have an easy method of making a DMCA claim on if they care to run a periodic search on the specific work). OTOH, we also don't have data about the inhibiting impact on the many editors uploading legitimate scores. I think it would be hard to get real data about this. The latter risk (inhibiting legitimate contributions) is a really big one for CPDL to treat speculatively, especially when the earlier risk (violating the rights of earlier editors whose works might be copied) is mitigated by the ease of searching CPDL directly or having a recurring Google search pick things up once Google indexes a new work and then filing a DMCA claim with CPDL to request removal.

You've always had thoughtful contributions to make and I really would like to hear more about your thoughts on these subjects.

Can you say more about which aspect of the note-for-note setting by the later editor is plagiarized from a creative contribution by the earlier editor

I was not referring to the murky area of "creative editing" beyond error correction (whether ficta or guitar chord suggestions are copyrightable is unclear, I believe, in particular as both obey straightforward algorithms with very limited room for "creative solutions"), but to the "note-for-note" music. The paragraphs allowing for copyrighting public domain works are in the German law "Urheberrechtsgesetz" (UrhG) §70 and §71.

My feeling is that we collectively don't have enough data about either the impact of such a type of user violation. I am guessing it is rare.

As most editions on CPDL do not give their sources, we cannot know. It might raise the suspicion that many editors deliberately suppress their sources because they know that their use of sources might be unfair (which includes the unjustified fear of copyright infringement even when the used source actually is out of copyright). From a legal standpoint, there is the problem that CPDL can easily neither prove nor disprove copyright violations. From a standpoint of editorial diligence, this is very bad style, of course, but editorial diligence was never a primary goal of CPDL, I think.

For a practical solution, an easy addition would be two fields "Source used for this edition" and "Date of source used for this edition" in the "Add work" form.

For a practical solution, an easy addition would be two fields "Source used for this edition" and "Date of source used for this edition" in the "Add work" form.

Though CPDL would want to evaluate the legal implications before considering such a change, I like the idea of adding a set of fields to the add-works form to encourage editors to provide this information and to have fields in the schema to hold it (rather than it being open text in the edition description). This is definitely a suggestion worth further consideration.

I regret that I am not familiar with the German legal approach and provisions you describe, and will make a note to research it further (though can't get to it soon).