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Celebrating Public Domain Day 2024 with Chamber Music

December 18, 2023 / / Comments Off on Celebrating Public Domain Day 2024 with Chamber Music

Friday, January 12, 2024 at 4:00 p.m.

Thompson Library, 11th Floor Campus Reading Room

Join us for a live performance of chamber music in celebration of Public Domain Day 2024, featuring music that has recently entered the public domain in the U.S. The event will include remarks on the music, recent copyright developments and resources that promote works from 1927-1928 entering the public domain for the first time.
The Janus String Quartet will perform the recently public domain Third String Quartet by the Hungarian-American composer, pianist and conductor Ernst von Dohnányi, and String Quartet no.2 by African American composer Adolphus Hailstork, which is a set of variations on the public domain spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. One of Dr. Hailstork’s most celebrated works is Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed (In Memoriam Martin Luther King, Jr.). This concert also honors Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy as we near his 2024 birthday observance.
Questions about public domain, the composers, performers and the music itself will be welcomed following the performance. 

Janus String Quartet members:

Devin Copfer and Kelsey Shaheen, violin

Nancy Nehring, viola

Mark Rudoff, cello

String Quartet no. 2: Variations on “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”          Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941)
String Quartet no. 3 in A minor, op.33 (published 1927)         Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960)

I. Allegro agitato e appassionato

II. Andante religioso con variazioni

III. Vivace giocoso

Notes on the program by Mark Rudoff:

Adolphus Hailstork is Eminent Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Music at Old Dominion University. He received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed. He completed earlier studies at the Manhattan School of Music under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and Howard University with Mark Fax. His works have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, under the batons of leading conductors including James DePreist, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, and Lorin Maazel.

The Variations on “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” was commissioned by the Marian Anderson String Quartet, part of a MASQ project inviting composers to speak to the history of the Black African diaspora. The piece sits within a body of work that includes Rise for Freedom (Hailstork’s opera about the Underground Railroad), and choral works A Knee on the Neck (a cantata about the murder of George Floyd) and Tulsa 1921 (for the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre). Dr. Hailstork embraces the composer’s role as advocate and change agent:

I like to think that I encourage some people to think about, yes, the music there, or at least the subject. A lot of my music is program music, and so, they need to think about the program a little bit. “Art for art’s sake” or “music for music’s sake” only, it’s never been a big thing for me. You know, since I grew up as a boy in that cathedral and singing, every time you sang an anthem, there was a subject. You know, if you heard a sermon, there’s a subject.  So, there’s a point to this musical utterance, and what is the point? And can it influence you to think about things?

By contrast, Ernst von Dohnányi sought a life in music distanced from capital-P Politics, which proved a frustrating aspiration in the turbulence of early 20th century Europe. He grew up in what was then Poszony (later Pressberg, Germany, and now Bratislava, capital of Slovakia) part of the Hungarian empire but multiculturally Hungarian and German. Dohnányi identified with both cultures (you can find works he published as Dohnányi Ernö) and was a citizen of both Hungary and Prussia when he held a position as professor of piano at the Berlin Hochscule. In 1914, Dohnányi resigned that post and renounced his Prussian citizenship to protest German wartime policies. Returning to Hungary, he was appointed professor at Budapest’s Franz Liszt Academy, setting an ambitious agenda for reforming Hungarian music and championing a new generation of Hungarian composers that included Bartok, Kodaly and Weiner. But Dohnányi opposed Hungary’s postwar fascist regime, was dismissed from his post, and fled with his family to Norway.

Dohnányi composed his Third String Quartet in 1926, a few years into a blessedly stable, peaceful period in his career. Hungary’s dictatorship had collapsed, allowing him to return to Budapest to resume teaching, concertizing and conducting. The new Hungarian state honored him with an honorary doctorate from the University of Szeged, and celebrated his 50th birthday with a gift of 50,000 pengös, the new state currency. He was settled in a mountain retreat with his wife, Elza Glafrés, a marriage that only came to pass after contentious divorce proceedings for both. Elza is the “mein leben frau” to whom Dohnányi dedicated the Third Quartet.

____________________________________________________________________

JANUS STRING QUARTET takes its name and inspiration from Janus, the Roman god of time and transitions, presenting faces that look to the past and the future.  Janus brings together rising stars Devin Copfer and Kelsey Shaheen with veterans Nancy Nehring and Mark Rudoff. They share the artistic mission of tugging on threads that connect old and new musics, and weaving those threads into the broad tapestry of the humanities. Janus is pleased once again to be part of this OSU Libraries project, having previously launched into the public domain quartets by Hindemith, Schulhoff, Bloch and Gruenberg. Other Janus work includes appearing on stage in BalletMet’s production of Cacti, and video performances of works by Haydn and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson for the First Community Church Easter season Meditations on the Crucifixion: An Evening of Transfiguration.
DEVIN COPFER is a violinist, vocalist, recording musician, registered Suzuki teacher, and arts entrepreneur based in Columbus, OH. Her musical collaborations range from classical to avant-garde pop, from arranging Jazz standards to hiring string ensembles. Devin’s work spotlights and grows her community of incredible musicians through purposeful concert design and meaningful audience connection.
KELSEY SHAHEEN is a passionate performer and private violin and viola instructor based in Columbus. Kelsey collaborates and performs regularly with her husband, Ben Shaheen in their violin and percussion duo, Summit Ridge. In their duo, Kelsey and Ben work to expand the violin and percussion repertoire and bring new music to unique spaces. Kelsey holds a deep interest in the mind-body connection that fuels music making.
NANCY NEHRING started out as a piano major but ended up with a Masters in Viola from Michigan, later playing with orchestras in Oklahoma, California, Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming, Mexico & Canada. An experienced arts administrator, Nancy has taught viola at every level and performed with chamber ensembles across the Midwest. She is currently assistant principal viola and personnel manager of the Newark-Granville Symphony, and serves as a collaborative pianist for an OSU voice studio and many Columbus-area string students.
MARK RUDOFF is Associate Professor of cello and chamber music at The Ohio State University. A respected chamber and orchestra musician, Mark performs with Janus and the Galileo Trio, and served as principal cello of the Calgary Philharmonic and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestras. Away from OSU he has served on faculties at Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, Zephyr International and Florentia Consort Chamber Music Festivals, and is Music Director of the Cincinnati Community Orchestra. Mark is a recipient of the Ronald and Deborah Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award in Arts and Humanities in the OSU College of Arts and Sciences.

The Hardy Boys: Public Domain in 2023

December 6, 2023 / / Comments Off on The Hardy Boys: Public Domain in 2023

This post is authored by Heidi Bowles, current student at the UC Davis School of Law and former research assistant at Ohio State University Libraries’ Copyright Services. This blog also appears on Copyright Corner.

The first three novels of the popular children’s detective series The Hardy Boys (The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff, and The Secret of the Old Mill) entered the public domain on January 1, 2023, meaning that they are free from copyright protection in the United States. The Ohio State University’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Library has copies of the original 1927 editions of The Tower Treasure and The House on the Cliff.

The Tower Treasure cover

The Tower Treasure (The Hardy Boys), 1927

The House on the Cliff cover

The House on the Cliff (The Hardy Boys), 1927

The Hardy Boys was created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and published by Grosset and Dunlap. The Syndicate was a book packaging company that produced many popular children’s series in the twentieth century, like Nancy Drew and The Rover Boys. To create so many books on a short timeframe, the Syndicate operated as a well-oiled machine that followed a standard process for creating a book: a Syndicate executive, often Edward Stratemeyer himself, produced a short outline of a story, which was provided to a contracted ghostwriter who then wrote it into a book for a flat fee. The book was then returned to a Syndicate executive for final edits before being sent to the publisher. When launching a new series, they would release three initial books to test whether or not there was a market for their idea. These first three test books for The Hardy Boys are now in the public domain.

In the early years of the series, Edward Stratemeyer provided the outlines to Leslie McFarlane, who wrote under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. The first eleven books in the series were written by McFarlane, who also contributed to other Syndicate series under various pseudonyms. After Stratemeyer’s death in 1930, other Syndicate writers, including his daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, contributed outlines to several uncredited ghostwriters writing as Franklin W. Dixon.

Copyright

The Copyright Act of 1909, which applies to works created before January 1, 1978, provided new works that followed proper formalities with a 28-year period of copyright protection with the option to renew the copyright for another 28-year period. Changes in the law (in the Copyright Act of 1976 and the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)) extended the second period, making the maximum copyright term for published works covered by the 1909 Copyright Act 95 years from the date of publication.

Under the terms of an agreement between the authors and Stratemeyer Syndicate, copyright in the works appears to have been transferred and then registered in the name of the publisher (Grosset and Dunlap). Under the agreement, actual writers of the series did not receive a share of the royalties for sales of the books.[2] Franklin W. Dixon (a pseudonym) was listed as the author in the copyright registrations for many of The Hardy Boys novels, rather than the actual writers.

Under the 1909 Copyright Act, a publisher who was assigned copyright could control the copyright for the initial term, but the author, if still living, could claim the copyright for the renewal term. If the author was not living at the time of renewal, the copyright in the renewal term could be claimed only by those designated under the law. Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who took charge of the Syndicate after her father’s death, renewed the copyrights in 1955 and claimed them for the renewal term.

The Syndicate’s practices of hiring contract writers and publishing series under a pseudonym let them control their stories and their legacies. They were able to authorize many spinoffs, adaptations, and revisions. In the 1950s and 1960s, during the renewal copyright term, the Syndicate shortened and revised the original Hardy Boys series. Although they were based on the original public domain books, these revisions are still protected by copyright.

Releasing these revisions did not restart the copyright in the original books—as derivative works, the elements taken from the original books are not copyrightable, only the new creative elements in the revised versions. The revised wording, revised characterization, illustrations and other new elements are protected by a separate copyright that will last for 95 years after publication.

Similarly, characters and events from the revised version or later iterations of the series are still protected by copyright. In the 1927 Tower Treasure, Frank and Joe Hardy were sixteen and fifteen years old but they were eighteen and seventeen in 1959. Only the sixteen-year-old and fifteen-year-old brothers are public domain.

The later revisions also altered the sidekick characters. One snarky review explains:

All the same, the Hardy Boys’ gang was a model of diversity for its day. In addition to best pal Chet Morton (or as he’s referred to in the original books, “the fat youth”), there was strongman Biff Hooper and two bona fide ethnics—Phil Cohen, a brainy Jewish kid; and Tony Prito, who is so darned ethnic that his poor Italian-accented English is the subject of good-natured mirth in the 1927 version of “The Tower Treasure.” In the 1959 rewrite, the melting pot has done its work and only the ethnic names remain. Tony Prito becomes “a lively boy with a good sense of humor.” Phil Cohen is “a quiet, intelligent boy.”

Characters and their characterization are copyrightable elements of a story, so only the version of the characters as they appear in these three 1927 books are in the public domain. Later updates to the specific characters are still protected by copyright. The stereotypical versions of Tony Prito and Phil Cohen are in the public domain, but the homogenized versions are not. Anyone making an adaptation or using these characters should be careful to avoid using any later versions of the character to avoid copyright issues.

This does not mean that any adaptation has to include these characters as they exist in the 1927 books. They can be changed and updated; it is just important to make sure that any changes to the characters have not already been made in copyrighted materials. To take clothing as an example, an adaptation would not have to dress the brothers in their original 1920s clothing simply because that version is in the public domain. There would be no copyright issues with styling the brothers as punks with pink mohawks and leather jackets (assuming that no copyrighted version like this already exists). There might, however, be copyright issues with dressing them in sweaters and denim as they appear in the 1950s.

Public Domain

Now that these books are in the public domain, they can be freely copied, adapted, distributed, performed, and displayed without having to seek permission from a rightsholder, negotiating a license, or paying royalties. This means that they can be posted online so they are more easily available for researchers and general readers, and they can be adapted by creators.

Public domain children’s books are particularly valuable because they are more accessible to children who do not live near a library and cannot afford to buy their own books, and, as the Authors Alliance pointed out, there is a severe lack of children’s books in many non-English languages. Public domain books are easier and cheaper to translate into languages with fewer available books.

Public domain materials are also available to be updated to address past injustices. The original Hardy Boys books were filled with racist and sexist stereotypes, and other reflections of 1920’s white male middle-class prejudice.[1] These books have sentimental value for many, and their enduring popularity makes them important material for researchers. Although these books might not be the best option to give to children, it is important to preserve and understand the underlying values of a series that many remember fondly as a part of their childhoods.

The public domain is a valuable and essential part of the lifecycle of copyright that makes creative works available to be freely used and inspire new works. This year, many important and interesting works entered the public domain. A few other notable works include:

  • Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse
  • Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry
  • Langston Hughes’s Fine Clothes to the Jew
  • Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat
  • Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Plumes: A play in one act

Learn more about how Ohio State is celebrating the public domain at go.osu.edu/PublicDomainDay.

[1] For more about the history and business practices of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, see Carol Billman’s 1986 book, The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and the Million Dollar Fiction Factory (link to OSUL catalog).

[2] For an analysis of The Hardy Boys series, see Joe Arthur’s 1991 OSU dissertation, “Hardly Boys: An Analysis of Behaviors, Social Changes, and Class Awareness in the Old Text of the Hardy Boys Series.”

 

 

 

Celebrating Public Domain Day 2022: Lil Hardin Armstrong (1898-1971)

October 4, 2022 / / Comments Off on Celebrating Public Domain Day 2022: Lil Hardin Armstrong (1898-1971)

This post is authored by Heidi Bowles, current student at the UC Davis School of Law and former research assistant at Ohio State University Libraries’ Copyright Services.

Fourteen of Lil Hardin Armstrong’s songs entered the public domain on January 1, 2022. Lil Hardin Armstrong was a jazz pianist, singer, bandleader, and composer who worked mostly in Chicago in the 20th century. Raised in Memphis by her mother and grandmother, Hardin was trained in European classical piano. She played the organ for her church growing up and recalled being given stern looks from the pastor for jazzing up the hymns. She graduated from a music-focused high school and attended Fisk University for a short time before moving to Chicago with her family. Although her formal music training was in the style of European concert music and her mother and grandmother reportedly disparaged jazz at every opportunity, Hardin was regularly exposed to jazz through her childhood in Memphis. She recalled hearing her cousin play jazz on his guitar, and she lived near Beale Street, a monumental location in the jazz and blues history. Her mother and grandmother discouraged her from interacting with jazz—in their minds it was connected to the drugs and prostitution whose influence they wanted Hardin to stay far away from.

After moving to Chicago, Hardin started working as a demonstrator in a music store, earning $3 per week. According to Hardin, she took the job to learn new music and memorized all the music in the store as quickly as she could. While working at the store she met the famous jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton and credits hearing him play as the inspiration for her heavy style. This job is also where she met the first band she played with in a cabaret, the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band.

After that band began to dissolve, she joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, where she began making almost $100 per week. She met Louis Armstrong while working with King Oliver. In 1924, after a few years of working together, they both attained divorces from their first spouses and got married. She mentored the younger Armstrong and taught him about European classical music. Hardin helped him refine his look and was responsible for branding him as a world-class trumpet player. Hardin and Armstrong separated in 1931 but did not legally divorce until 1938, when Armstrong and Alpha Smith wanted to get married.

Hardin and her husband often wrote music together for Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five, a prolific recording group with Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano, Louis Armstrong on cornet, Kid Ory on the trombone, Johnny Dodds on the clarinet, and Johnny St. Cyr on guitar and banjo. Most of Hardin’s songs that entered the public domain this year were written for and recorded by this group.

Copyright Process

The Copyright Act of 1909, which applies to works created before January 1, 1978, provided new works that followed proper formalities with an initial 28-year period of federal copyright protection. After the initial term of protection, and following a timely renewal registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, copyright could be renewed for another 28-year period. Under the original law, songs published in 1926 would have remained protected by copyright through 1982 at the latest (measured as a maximum term of 56 years from the date of publication). Changes in the law (in the Copyright Act of 1976 and the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) extended the renewal period, making the maximum copyright term for works covered by the 1909 Copyright Act 95 years from the date of publication. Therefore, musical works first published in the U.S. in 1926 that met all required formalities, remained protected by copyright through 2021.

Additionally, the 1909 Copyright Act granted federal copyright protection for unpublished works that were registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Musical compositions that were registered as unpublished works with the U.S. Copyright Office would receive the same term of federal protection as published works.

Copyright and music have had a complicated relationship throughout American history (see Katherine M. Leo’s dissertation, Blurred Lines: Musical Expertise in the History of American Copyright Litigation). When the 1909 Act was written, music was primarily transmitted through live performance, so the tangible medium of expression required for a work to be copyrightable was typically sheet music. The development and rising popularity of recording technology allowed musical performances themselves to be fixed, but copyright law did not quickly adjust to this new reality. There were patchwork state-level copyright provisions for sound recordings, but federal copyright law did not provide copyright protections to sound recordings until 1972 (Important note: This does not mean that pre-1972 sound recordings are public domain. Title II of the 2018 Music Modernization Act extended federal copyright protection to historical sound recordings, see the Library of Congress’s Copyright Breakdown: The Music Modernization Act and our earlier blog post on the public domain status of music for more information).

Publication status for a piece of music therefore relied on the distribution of its sheet music; a published recording of a song did not constitute a published piece of music. To register her work with the Copyright Office, a composer had to deposit sheet music with an application and $1 fee. This posed challenges for many jazz and blues musicians, whose musical traditions were largely oral so they did not need to learn the European musical notation required by the Copyright Office. Hardin was able to notate her compositions as a pianist trained in the European style, but even so, jazz is difficult to distill into a lead sheet. In the words of Eileen Southern, “Jazz is primarily an aural kind of music; its written score represents but a skeleton of what actually takes place during a performance” (The Music of Black Americans: A History, 363).

This has significant consequences for composers and rightsholders. A recent lawsuit over whether a riff in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” infringed on the Michael Skidmore’s copyright in his song “Taurus” was decided based on the fact that musical works under the 1909 Copyright Act are only protected by copyright as far as their deposits cover (see DAC Beachcroft’s Sheet Music v. Sounds: Led Zeppelin Case Reminds us of Copyright Technicalities). This affords little protection to jazz, whose lead sheets are sparse and unrepresentative of the work.

Copyright’s slow reaction to recording technology, as well as elitist and Eurocentric ideas of what music should be, disadvantaged Black musicians and Black musical traditions in complex ways. For more information, see Candace G. Hine’s Black Musical Traditions and Copyright Law: Historical Tensions and Gary A. Rosen’s Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer: Nathan Burkan and the Making of Popular Culture (link to OSUL catalog).

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Jeremy E. Smith

Public Domain Day 2022, Jazz Music and Remarks

September 19, 2022 / / Comments Off on Public Domain Day 2022, Jazz Music and Remarks

Public Domain Day 2022: Jazz Music and Remarks

Recreating Louis Armstrong’s “Hot Five” Combo of 1926

Friday, October 7, 2022   4:00 PM

Thompson Library, 11th Floor Campus Reading Room

Cover art for Cornet Chop Suey by Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five

This event features performances of public domain jazz tunes composed by Louis Armstrong, Lillian Hardin, and others, in versions recorded by Armstrong and his New Orleans-style combos in the 1920s.  New public domain editions of Armstrong and Hardin’s music, transcribed and arranged by Alan Green from manuscript sources and recordings, are highlighted.  You can read more about Lillian Hardin here. You can also hear performances of the tunes Cornet Chop Suey and Flat Foot recorded at the event.

OSU almunus Dr. Jeremy E. Smith is the coordinator an ensemble of musicians for this special event:

Alto Sax/Clarinet – Jerrod Shackelford

Tenor Sax/Clarinet – Ben Syme

Bb Trumpet – Alex Sanso

Trombone – Mike Foley

Bass Trombone/Tuba -Jeremy Smith

Piano – Drew Powell

Drums – Jakob Stephens

Jeremy E. Smith

Jeremy E. Smith is a professional musician and brass educator located in Central Ohio. As a performer, Jeremy is the bass trombonist for the Huntington Symphony Orchestra. In addition to playing with Huntington, he has performed with numerous ensembles including the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, Central Ohio Symphony, Opera Project Columbus, and the orchestras of Springfield (OH), Westerville, Youngstown, Mansfield, New Albany, and Knox County.  As a chamber musician, Jeremy has traveled with brass ensembles throughout the United States, China, and South Korea. Fluent in various styles, Jeremy has performed with the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Tim Zimmerman and the King’s Brass, Vaughn Wiester’s Famous Jazz Orchestra, and the Knox Community Jazz Orchestra. Jeremy has also had the privilege of sharing the stage with artists such as Jeff Hamilton, Byron Stripling, Mary Wilson, Michael W. Smith, All-4-One, Sean Jones, Martha Wash, Theo Peoples, and Steve Green.

As an educator, Jeremy currently teaches in the brass areas at Ohio Wesleyan University and Kenyon College, and Mount Vernon Nazarene University He has given clinics and recitals at Capital University, Marshall University, Indiana Wesleyan University, and the North Carolina Trombone Festival. An advocate for all styles of brass music, Jeremy is a member of the Jazz Education Network (JEN), the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA), and the International Tuba Euphonium Association (ITEA). Also a member of the International Trombone Association (ITA), Jeremy currently serves as the Events Coordinator and Web Assistant for the Association. In addition to serving the ITA, Jeremy is the Founder and Editor of Last Row Music. With over 10,000 monthly visitors, Last Row Music contains an online listing of brass audition listings as well as news, events, links, and articles read by brass musicians and enthusiasts around the world.

Jeremy recently completed a DMA in performance at The Ohio State University where he studied with Dr. Sterling Tanner and Jim Masters, and served as a Graduate Associate for the Jazz Studies area and Trombone Studio. He holds music performance degrees from both Carnegie Mellon University and Grace College. His primary instructors include Peter Sullivan and James Kraft with additional studies from Denson Paul Pollard, John Kitzman, Graeme Mutchler, and Amanda Stewart.

 

Public Domain Day 2021, Chamber Music and Remarks — Program & Notes

September 17, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Public Domain 2021 Chamber Music and Remarks

Friday, October 22, 2021   4:00 PM

Thompson Library, 11th Floor Campus Reading Room

JANUS STRING QUARTET:

Devin Copfer and Kelsey Shaheen, violins

Nancy Nehring, viola

Mark Rudoff, cello

 

Four Indiscretions for String Quartet, Op. 20                         Louis Gruenberg (1884–1964)

I. Allegro con spirito

II. Lento sostenuto e espressivo

III. Moderato grazioso e delicato

IV. Allegro giocoso

 

Paysages, B. 62                                                                                            Ernest Bloch (1880–1959)

I. North

II. Alpestre

III. Tongataboo

 

String Quartet No. 1                                                                                 Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942)

I. Presto con fuoco

II. Allegretto con moto e con malinconia grotesca

III. Allegro giocoso all Slovacca

IV. Andante molto sostenuto

 

Discussion Notes by Mark Rudoff

To look back at music composed in the 1920’s is to step up to the rich smorgasbord of styles and influences at play among composers inventing a string quartet repertory for the new century. The mashup is unmistakable in this program of 1925 quartets. The Indiscretions of Louis Gruenberg get up in the face of conventional musical pulse and tonality. Ernest Bloch honors his French compositional heritage in Paysages: Satie’s protominimalism in the construction and language; Debussy’s pictorialism and fascination with the exotic (note that “Tongataboo” is an old spelling for the Pacific island now known as Tongatapu); Ravel in the string colors. Tasting notes in Erwin Schulhoff’s First Quartet might include Bartók (note the edgy sounds from alternative string techniques), Stravinskian polytonality, and zesty Slavic nationalism that reaches back to Dvořák.

One question teased us as we curated this program: how did these three brilliant, original pieces fall out of the quartet repertory—and for that matter, why is music by Gruenberg and Schulhoff barely heard at all? Of course, aesthetic ideals are always up for grabs, fame is illusory, the public is fickle—those are the hard truths if you are an artist, and maybe that is the whole story. But the connecting thread of this program is these three European Jewish composers working between the world wars. Which leads to a nagging question: was the work of 20th century Jewish composers marginalized?

First, it should be said that what we think of as 20th Century American Music (not just the compositions, but also the great orchestras and conservatories) was built by European Jews who emigrated to the United States. A 1930’s study found that Jewish musicians accounted for one-quarter of the players in major American orchestras, as well about half of the conductors and concert artists. Gruenberg’s parents left Russia for New York City, where Louis became a brilliant piano student at New York’s National Conservatory of Music. By 1925 Gruenberg was well established, winner of the New York Philharmonic’s Flagler Prize, and even more widely known and performed in Europe. Bloch found immediate success when he emigrated to the United States in 1916. He taught at New York’s Mannes School and in 1925 he was serving as director of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Major orchestra works were performed in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and Schirmer’s publishing house created a special Bloch imprint for their editions.

But in the minds of some the important question was not, “Is this good music?” but rather, “Is this American music?” Through much of the 20th century, avant-garde composers organized around a shared preoccupation with creating true, purely American music. Leading the campaign was the International Composers Guild and its successor organization, the Pan-American Association, a cadre of composers and performers dedicated to promoting concerts, recordings and broadcasts of their members’ work. Founder Edgard Varèse (yes: a French immigrant), offered this ugly comment: “Jazz is not America. It’s a negro product, exploited by the Jews. All of its composers from here are Jews.” Carl Ruggles wrote to Henry Cowell, “…it is a great mistake to have that filthy bunch of Juilliard Jews in the Pan American. They are cheap, without dignity, and with little, or no talent… .”

The Schulhoff case is more straightforward, though tragic. In the 1920’s he was the brightest star in Prague’s new music circle, active as a composer, concert pianist, music critic, and radio and recording artist. Universal Music, the leading European publisher of new music, had him under contract, and his works appeared at the premier European festivals. Schulhoff was also a committed communist on the front lines of anti-Nazi political activism. In the late 1930’s Germany began to occupy Czech territories, taking Prague in 1940. Schulhoff was arrested in 1941 and would die in a concentration camp at Wülzburg. Before his arrest he had applied to emigrate to the United States. The application was rejected.

If you want to read further:

JANUS STRING QUARTET takes its name and inspiration from Janus, the Roman god of time and transitions, presenting faces that look to the past and the future. Janus brings together rising stars Devin Copfer and Kelsey Shaheen with veterans Nancy Nehring and Mark Rudoff. They share the artistic mission of tugging on threads that connect old and new musics, and weaving those threads into the broad tapestry of the humanities. Recent Janus work includes appearing on stage in Ballet Met‘s production of Cacti, and video performances of works by Haydn and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson for the First Community Church Easter season Meditations on the Crucifixion: An Evening of Transfiguration.

DEVIN COPFER (she/her/hers) is a violinist, vocalist, recording musician, registered Suzuki teacher, and arts entrepreneur based in Columbus, OH. Her musical collaborations range from classical to avant-garde pop, from arranging Jazz standards to hiring string ensembles. Devin’s work spotlights and grows her community of incredible musicians through purposeful concert design and meaningful audience connection.

KELSEY SHAHEEN (she/her/hers) is a passionate performer and private violin and viola instructor based in Columbus. Kelsey collaborates and performs regularly with her husband, Ben Shaheen in their violin and percussion duo, Summit Ridge. In their duo, Kelsey and Ben work to expand the violin and percussion repertoire and bring new music to unique spaces. Kelsey holds a deep interest in the mind-body connection that fuels music making and she currently teaches at Pure Barre Columbus.

NANCY NEHRING (she/her/hers) started out as a piano major but ended up with a Masters in Viola from Michigan, later playing with orchestras in Oklahoma, California, Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming, Mexico & Canada. An experienced arts administrator, Nancy has taught viola at every level and performed with chamber ensembles across the Midwest. She is currently assistant principal viola and personnel manager of the Newark-Granville Symphony, and serves as a collaborative pianist for an OSU voice studio and many Columbus-area string students.

MARK RUDOFF (he/him/his) is Associate Professor of cello and chamber music at The Ohio State University. A respected chamber and orchestra musician, Mark performs with Janus and the Galileo Trio, and served as principal cello of the Calgary Philharmonic and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestras. Away from OSU he has served on faculties at Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, Zephyr International and Florentia Consort Chamber Music Festivals, and is currently Music Director of the Cincinnati Community Orchestra. Mark is a recipient of the Ronald and Deborah Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award in Arts and Humanities in the OSU College of Arts and Sciences.

Public Domain Day, celebrated January 1st of each year, is the day we recognize new works that have entered the public domain. In 2021, we welcome works first registered or published in the United States in 1925. Works published during that time that met all required formalities enjoyed a maximum term of copyright protection of 95 years. With copyright term running to the end of the calendar year, works first published in 1925 officially entered the public domain in the U.S. on January 1, 2021. Now, as public domain works, these creative materials are free of copyright protection in the U.S.

About the Project

The Public Domain Day Project is a collaborative project between University Libraries, the School of Music, and other units across the University, planned to coincide with Public Domain Day. The Public Domain Day Project at The Ohio State University began in 2019 in celebration of a special event, January 1, 2019, which marked the first time in many years that works first registered or published in the U.S. entered the public domain in the U.S. due to expiration of their copyright term. For 20 years, the works remained protected by copyright due to a retroactive extension of copyright under the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act.  Now, with published works once again entering the public domain on a rolling basis, new works will enter the public domain in the U.S. every year on January 1st.

With this project, we hope to bring attention to works whose term of copyright protection has expired and contribute new works to the public domain. Contribution to this project will help to support future learning, scholarship, and creative endeavors from members of the OSU community and beyond.

 

Celebrating Public Domain Day 2021

January 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Today is Public Domain Day; the day that we celebrate new works that have entered the public domain. This year, we welcome works first registered or published in the United States in 1925. Works published during that time, that met all required formalities, enjoyed a maximum term of copyright protection of 95 years. With copyright term running to the end of the calendar year, works first published in 1925 officially enter the public domain in the U.S. on January 1, 2021.

Public domain works are free of copyright. This means they may be freely copied, adapted, distributed, performed and displayed, without permission from a rightsholder.

A Selection of Public Domain Works

Below are just some of the creative works that have entered the public domain in the United States this year:

Literature:

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
  • Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
  • The Informer by Liam O’Flaherty
  • Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
  • An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  • In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
  • Gentleman Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

Film:

  • The Circle, directed by Frank Borzage
  • Clash of the Wolves, directed by Noel Smith
  • Go West, directed by Buster Keaton
  • Seven Chances, directed by Buster Keaton
  • Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Shoedsack
  • The Freshman, directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor and starring Harold Lloyd

Music:

  • “Sweet Georgia Brown” by Ben Bernie, Kenneth Casey & Maceo Pinkard
  • “That Certain Feeling” by Ira and George Gershwin
  • “Sugar Foot Stomp” by Joe Oliver and Louis Armstrong
  • “Always” by Irving Berlin

Celebrating the Public Domain at OSU

The Public Domain Day Project at OSU continues this year to highlight and share public domain musical compositions.

We are offering a variety of 1925 works from the Music & Dance Library collections and creative projects, including: musical settings of fourteen children’s poems by A. A. Milne (featuring the first appearance of Winnie-the-Pooh) for voice and piano; a set of art songs inspired by the city of Paris, by American composer Kathleen Lockhart Manning; a piano solo by American avant-garde composer Henry Cowell; and popular sheet music by two Cleveland-based musicians, including a song inspired by a sensational 1920s serial fiction story in The Cleveland Press.

Visit the Music Scores & Audio page on the Public Domain Day Project site for access to available items, with more to be added throughout 2021.

Interested in learning more about the public domain? Explore the Public Domain Day website to learn more about the Public Domain Project at OSU, access public domain music scores and select audio recordings (dedicated to the public domain via Creative Commons CC0), and to view additional copyright and public domain resources.

When does music enter the public domain in the United States?

July 27, 2020 / / 0 Comments

When determining copyright status of music, it’s important to understand that separate copyrights may exist for musical compositions and sound recordings. Musical compositions have been protected under federal copyright law for some time, having been added to the list of protectable works when the copyright law was revised in 1831.

Sound recordings began to receive federal copyright protection in 1972, with sound recordings defined to include “works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work…”[1] But the federal rights given to sound recordings only applied to new works. Earlier sound recordings (those recordings made before February 15, 1972) were, by contrast, protected under state laws. Those laws varied from state to state. Recently, through the passage of the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (Music Modernization Act), U.S. Copyright Law was amended, adding Section 1401, to provide defined periods of protection for these pre-1972 sound recordings.[2]

While the goal of the Music Modernization Act was to create greater parity in the treatment of pre and post-1972 sound recordings, you’ll see below that the term of protection for musical compositions and sound recordings are structured in slightly different ways. The result? It is possible for a sound recording to be protected under federal law, even if the musical composition that is captured in that recording is in the public domain and free of copyright protection. In other words, the separate copyrights in a single piece of music may have different terms of protection.

The charts below summarize terms of protection under federal copyright law for both musical compositions and sound recordings:

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OSU Symphonic Band concert featuring ‘The Stadium’ march by Ralph W. Price

March 6, 2020 / / 0 Comments

On February 13, The Ohio State University Symphonic Band shared a concert with the Hilliard Davidson High School Wind Symphony. Featured on the concert was a march titled The Stadium by Ralph Price, newly edited from the original 1924 parts by Professor Alan Green, and offered as part of the Public Domain Project at Ohio State. The concert also featured Sounds from The Oval by alumna and retired Hilliard Band faculty, Lisa Galvin. (Pictured L to R: Alan Green; Lisa Galvin; Shawn Malone, conductor, Hilliard Davidson Wind Symphony; Scott A. Jones, conductor, The Ohio State University Symphonic Band.)

 

From L to R: Prof. Alan Green (editor of “The Stadium” by Ralph Price), Lisa Galvin (composer of the last work on the concert, “Sounds from The Oval”), Shawn Malone, conductor, Hilliard Davidson Wind Symphony, and Prof. Scott A. Jones, conductor, The Ohio State University Symphonic Band.

The Public Domain Day Project at The Ohio State University

March 6, 2020 / / 0 Comments

On January 1 of each year, we celebrate Public Domain Day: the day that new works enter the public domain. Public domain works are free of copyright restrictions, meaning they can be freely copied, adapted, distributed, performed and displayed without having to seek permission from a rightsholder.

On January 1, 2020, we will welcome into the public domain works first registered or published in the United States in 1924. With thousands of new works now entering the public domain, each year presents new materials and new opportunities to engage with copyright-free content.

 Whether it’s organizing a public film screening, including an image in a research article or sharing copies of works in an online blog or course page, public domain works can be used to support future learning, scholarship and creative endeavors from The Ohio State University community and beyond.

The Public Domain Day Project began in 2019 as a way to share information about public domain materials and to highlight and encourage creative uses of those works. New materials that are created as part of the project are also being dedicated to the public domain through the use of the Creative Commons CC0 tool. This collaborative project involves partners within University Libraries, the School of Music, the Wexner Center for the Arts and other units across the campus.

In 2019, works first registered or published in the United States in 1923 entered the public domain. To celebrate, University Libraries collaborated with the School of Music to offer live performances of public domain music, and also offered a film screening of the public domain silent film Safety Last! in partnership with the Wexner Center for the Arts.

The first project event in 2020 will be a free concert at Hilliard Davidson High School on Thursday, February 13 at 7:00pm. The Ohio State University Symphonic Band, conducted by Professor Scott A. Jones, will perform The Stadium, a march by Ohio composer Ralph W. Price, using Alan Green’s new Creative Commons edition based on the original 1924 parts. This rediscovered work was written shortly after Ohio Stadium opened, for The Ohio State University Band and their director Gustav Bruder.

To stay up to date on events for 2020 and to learn more about the project, visit the Public Domain Day website at go.osu.edu/PublicDomainDay.

Conditions of Use

CC0
Unless otherwise noted, materials created by OSU faculty, staff, or students for the Public Domain Day Project Website are made available CC0 1.0 Universal. To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with the work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the work. These works are published from: United States.

Note: The CC0 waiver does not extend to any scores, images, or other third party content that has been digitized as part of the project.

library.osu.edu/site/publicdomain

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