Here's the story.

My saxophone ensemble is playing Ronde Des Princesses from the Firebird Suite.
I have a piano reduction of the rest of The Firebird Suite.

Can I legally study the piano music and rearrange the parts for my saxophone ensemble to perform it for something like a fundraising dinner?
Would this be arranging, transcribing, or plagiarism?

(I have experience with notation software and with arranging stuff to avoid voicing problems...Just want to know how "okay" this is.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/312352.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performing_rights

Hope that helps.


In short, you're free to arrange it all you want, but an arrangement is a derivative work (http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/derivative-work.html). So you can't share it with anyone else, nor can you perform it publicly without an arrangement with the copyright holder. You'll have to figure out how to contact the holder, or more likely, their agent.

Does public domain mean anything for this? Anything published before 1923 is public domain and The Firebird Suite was released in 1910?

Does public domain mean anything for this? Anything published before 1923 is public domain and The Firebird Suite was released in 1910?
If the composer has been dead for 70 years it's in the public domain and you can do whatever you want.

Also, read this: http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2009/07/the-myth-of-the-pre1923-public-domain.html

You're probably right about the 1923 thing, but there are exceptions.