Simpedia

Amy Y. New Mexico

The problem with copyright law is that what is legal in one country may not be in another.

I feel somewhat comfortable starting with this website http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page (some have actual publication date of the particular copy in question) though you still need to be careful with any supposed public domain music because I believe if the publisher reformat it and add additional notations then I think that particular format would be considered as copyrighted material and many publisher do this with classical music in order to sell them as copyrighted material. So just because the composer may have been dead for centuries, a particular copy of their work may still be copyrighted depending on where you live.

Kerry H. AU

If you Google ‘public domain songs’ or ‘public domain music’ you will find a large number of websites that list songs. Here’s one:

http://www.pdinfo.com/list.php

There is an enormous list – it just takes time to look through all the listings.