Classical Music - Copyright etc

[Ellie]

What's the legalities regarding classical music?

I know it's mostly in the public domain because it's so old and all that, but what then happens if say someone makes a midi out of the notes, can they claim ownership of that midi or is that also public domain? Or an orchestra plays the song note for note - is it legally their work?

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Depends on the country, but in the US I think it's like anything before 1910 is not affected by copyright law (IE, they are public domain) and other than that it depends on when the work was created as to which laws apply to it. If you are looking to use stuff writting in the 1700s, you know you are safe. HOWEVER that does not apply to individual performances of the pieces. If Boston Pops performed the song, you can's just nab their performance and put it in your game, you would have to make your own performance/get someone to do it for you (So if you reproduce a song with a midi sequencer, that would be your performance)

EDIT: read your post closer, if one person does it via midi, and you do it via midi and they happen to be exactly the same, there's nothing they could really do about it since it still qualifies as a performance, and arguably there is only one way to perform it in that manner, so they can't claim you copied their performance. I think in order to claim someone copied your performance, you have to prove that your performance was significantly your work and not just playing the song. (IE, you can't get permission from Bob Dylan to play All Along the Watchtower and then play it like Hendrix, because Hendrix's interpretation was significantly different and was clearly his own interpretation)

 

[bacon]

yeah I am pretty sure anything past a certain point is free to use examples being Beethoven and Mozart; there was actually a commercial game whose music consisted of remixes of these works.

I am not sure about remixes though. I still think that remixes fall under the non-protected category as well, but any added beats and such I think are copyrighted. But Im no legal expert.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

A remix would count as a performance, so you couldn't just copy a remix exactly (I think). HOWEVER, you also cannot take someone else's performance and cut it up and call it a remix, because that would also be using a substantial part of someone else's performance.

 

[Juan J. Sánchez]

Most classical music is free, because copyright didn't exist before the XX century. However, some of Rachmaninoff's work and other modern composers, such as Gershwin, have copyrighted music.