Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner New Transcription! Prokofiev's Public Merrymaking from R&J

Excited to share a score for a transcription that I've been playing for a number of years, but just now putting together for others. You can check it out on my facebook page (part of the public posts) or on my website in the "Store" link.

I don't want to take too much credit. It is really an "arrangement" of a piece from the Romeo and Juliet ballet score. Prokofiev made it easy by 1) writing the whole ballet score in a piano-playable form, and 2) basing his own 10-piece suite on this ballet score, so all I had to do was follow his model.

There are a number of other pieces that I've played that would also work. When I find time, I will eventually make working scores of those as well.

Who will be the first to play Public Merrymaking, besides me!?

Frederic

Since I am not a Facebook user and don't see a link to your Facebook page and don't know how to find your Facebook page, I guess I can't be as excited as you are about the transcription.

Regards,

Me.

Thank you very much for posting it. I had a good time attending your recital at UVM and heard you playing this transcription. I enjoyed it a lot then.

Could we have a link to find where we could get ahold of the score?

And this is great news indeed! Good job

It's in the "Store" link on his homepage. I guess he wanted us to figure out how to get there.

Regards,

Say,

I hate to be a party spoiler here, but since Prokofiev is still under copyright (or isn't he, in the US?) did you get permission to go ahead and publish, and sell a transcription of his music?

Some Prokofiev is public domain, and some is still under copyright. I guess it depends on how old the piece is?

It shouldn't be... Prokofiev died in a specific date, and since he actually lived through WW2 (!!!!) he was granted an extra 5 years of protection! I believe that his copyright expires in 2023...

But in any case R&J was composed towards the end of his life, so...

Just curious because I did go through the process of acquiring a license (and failed!)

Probably.. as long as he doesn't sell it, he won't have an issue. But since you're mentioning sales, then yes, there could be.

For the real answer, we'd probably need a copyright lawyer to help us out. But, here's what I do know:

R&J was published in 1935, and is subject to "death + 70", which means it won't hit public domain until 2023. (Of course, this may be subject to another clause that requires the copyright to be renewed 28 years after it was published... and maybe even other clauses I'm not familiar with.)

I usually go with the "death + 70" for all works copyrighted by an individual in the US. (I think it's "death + 120" for corporations.)

The copyrights are owned by sikorski... I met with them in Frankfurt (anybody remember a thread I made a little while back?). This is why I struck me like that...

Even if he's not selling it would be illegal, if it's still on copyright...

With the case of all the popular Russian composers (Prokofiev, Kabalevsky, Shostakovich, Kachaturian and counting) they added this clause of "extra 5 years" if they lived and worked while in war (WW2 that I mentioned earleir), so as far as I know it's 2028... though sikorski mentioned 2023 like you did.

That corporations thing, I've never heard before.

Does this mean there could be liabilities involved for performing some of this music? I was planning to include a set each of Shostakovich and Alexander Tcherepnin preludes in some recitals down the road - I obviously I wouldn't want up on the receiving end of an international lawsuit as a consequence!

At the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyri...iet_and_Russian_works_in_other_countries one reads:

"With the accession of Russia to the Berne Convention, Soviet and Russian works that were copyrighted in Russia in 1995 became copyrighted outside of Russia. By virtue of the retroactivity of the Russian copyright law of 1993, this also included many pre-1973 Soviet works. In the United States, these works became copyrighted on January 1, 1996, the effective date of the U.S. Uruguay Round Agreements Act, if they were still copyrighted in Russia on that date."

There is not enough information there to indicate definitively how this effects the status of the two specific sets of preludes but it seems to suggest that a lot of music became copyrighted in the U.S. starting in 1996 - and as U.S. copyrights are automatically internationalized through various treaties this could mean those copyrights have a long way to go and not just within U.S. borders!


M.

I haven't heard the Prokofiev transcription, but I have played Chiu's beautiful transcription of Bach's Erbarme Dich. I highly recommend it to those that love Bach transcriptions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkHYQ41gpI

I think this score available at his website.

Wanted to reassure everyone that, yes, I have permission to create this transcription. I was fortunate enough to have met the Prokofiev family, and made arrangements with the family lawyer to be able to publish various transcriptions, including the Lt Kije Suite, for example.
There have been issues over the years with the copyright of different works. In fact, there was a window of time when the 4th concerto was in the public domain in the US, and several orchestras bought the scores for their libraries. The window then closed, and now the score must be rented.

BTW, I fixed the link to the store on my site. Should be working now, and does include the new R&J piece. Enjoy!