In Canada, it's 50 years after the death of the relevant people.
In many (all?) jurisdictions, a published music manuscript - the
layout, fonts, etc. - is considered artwork, and hence falls under
copyright law, regardless of whether or not the music itself is
in the public domain.
My understanding is that you can work from a copyrighted
score to prepare a new edition as long as you restrict yourself
to using the non-copyrighted part of the score: the composer's
notes, phrasing slurs, and so on. Evidently, if you're making
a new edition with lilypond, you won't be using anyone else's
layout etc so that shouldn't be a concern I would think.
Editorial fingerings, phrasing slurs and so on are a grey area:
can one really 'copyright' a fingering solution to a technical problem?
That would seem to me to be an area outside of copyright law but
who knows; I myself don't include fingerings in the stuff I publish
so I haven't looked into that issue. (I generally use out-of-copyright
editions, or work from a copyrighted edition until I can find a non-
copyrighted one to check).
Anyway, that's just my two cents on what it means to claim a copyright
on an edition of music that is itself in the public domain.
-Mike
Good Luck
Yeah. I'm now half through Part three of Danses de travers. But I'm not
sure about the copyright, Satie is dead long enough, but my score is
marked with (c) 1978.
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