At 03:09 PM 8/26/2007 -0600, you wrote: >Now, since copyright prevents is your making a copy of the covered >material without permission, don't include most of the words of the text >of the copyright material in your setting. Rather, you music everything >else that would be in the printed score: notes, performance directions, >tempi, dynamics, &c. Where the lyric would customarily be printed, >include only the punctuation, and perhaps the occasional word or short >phrase from the intended text, as these are explicitly not >copyrightable. You could apparently link your music to the text by >giving it the same title as the text which inspired it, as titles are >not copyrightable in the U.S.
Two issues make this difficult. The first is the nature in which the text is integrated in a non-traditional composition from 1983. But wouldn't you know that the texts I picked are protected by the most aggressive estate in all of poetry: T. S. Eliot, who died in 1965. The estate denies all requests not accompanied by an enormous purse. The texts I've set are "Ash Wednesday" and one of the "Preludes" -- only the latter in the public domain (1917). "Ash Wednesday" was published in 1930. I composed the setting three years before the original copyright was set to expire, and didn't expect it to be published (though it was performed) until after the expiration in 1986. Now it is protected until (I think) 2025. Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
