Archive des actualités – A la une
The Musical Public Domain in 2024
If you follow copyright news at all, then chances are you’ve come across the names Walt Disney and Sergei Prokofiev several times already this month. Mickey Mouse and the music to Peter and the Wolf have now entered the public domain—but only depending on where you are in the world....
25 January 2024
The German Musicological Society supports the preservation of Ukrainian cultural assets
Since the devastating Russian attacks on Ukrainian cultural assets such as historic churches, theaters, cultural centers, museums, libraries and archives, have been going on for almost two years and no end is in sight, it is urgent to save these from total destruction and provide help if they have suffered...
22 January 2024
The Musical Public Domain in 2023
Every year, the public domain grows, enriching the pool of works that can be drawn upon to inspire creativity. In law, the “public domain” refers to works without copyright, usually because copyright has expired. In the European Union, the works of people who died in 1952 are now in the...
14 February 2023
Animal of the Year 2022: Donkey
As in previous years, various organizations have made selections for a plant or animal “of the year” for 2022. The German environmental organization NABU has a good overview. Apart from this list, the non-profit organization Bündnis Mensch & Tier has picked the donkey as the domestic animal of the year....
11 August 2022
Embedded in a Worldwide Network: Projects of the Ukrainian RISM Working Group
Ukraine still features a number of music collections especially in the western part of the country, in venerable Lviv. The musical sources that are preserved in this multiethnic and multiconfessional trading town represent several music cultures. Besides the Greek Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox confessions, Lviv also has a Polish Catholic...
2 March 2022
The Musical Public Domain in 2022
What do the composers Arnold Schönberg, Armin Knab, and Camillo de Nardis have in common? They all died in 1951, so their music entered the public domain in the European Union on January 1, 2022. This means that they, and others who died the same year, died long enough ago...
20 January 2022
The Robin and Music
The fall bird migration is just about over here in Germany and many species have found their way to their winter quarters. But the European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) stays with us throughout the year and continues to show up at backyard feeders even as the days grow colder and darker....
29 November 2021
Launch of a Schubert Research Center in Vienna
We have received the following from Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl (chairwoman, Schubert Research Center): On April 1 of this year a Schubert Research Center was founded at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). The aim of the center is to uncover social networks in Viennese cultural life during the first half of...
16 September 2021
Summer festivals are slowly picking up speed
This year, rarely performed gems are also on concert programs, such as this evening as part of the Innsbruck Early Music Festival: Johann Mattheson’s opera Boris Goudenow. Mattheson set the story of the Russian tsar Boris Godunov to music in 1710 for the Gänsemarkt opera house in Hamburg. But the...
19 August 2021
The Flying Dutchman: The Dresden Performance Material for Richard Wagner's Opera
The Flying Dutchman has opened this year’s Bayreuth Festival. We will take the opportunity to look at the performance materials from the Dresden Court Opera. Just the fact that some of the parts were in use for over 100 years is alone worth mentioning: from 1842, the year of the...
26 July 2021