My Shostakovich-fan friend got really excited recently cause, the composer is about to enter public domain — 50 years after he passed away (August 9 1975). He was like “all his scores are going public, and I can’t wait to see the original manuscript of his Waltz No. 2”.
Huh? Well not exactly. Cause first, in most countries, copyright protection lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. Second, most jurisdictions apply public domain changes on January 1st of the year following the 70th anniversary of the death. So even though enter died in August 1975, his works won’t become public domain earliest until January 1, 2026. Lastly, when we say Shostakovich’s works enter the public domain, that means his OG composition (eg. melody, harmonies, structure) are no longer protected. Yet special editions of his scores might still be under copyright — eg. B & H publishes a special 50-anniversary version has editorial rights.
Copyright is extremely tricky in classical music. Classical music are meant to be reproducible. This introduces more challenges into copyright protection — and more gleaches. In terms of Shostakovich’s popular Waltz No.2 though — the manuscript’s copyright becomes publicly available after 2026 — given it’s scanned after Jan 1 2026 and no editorial rights are attached.
(It has 103M views on YouTube?)