My Dad died five years ago. He was professional musician and a virtuoso organist of some renown within the admittedly small world of church organ music. He played all over Europe, performed thousands of recitals of his own and recorded some work, though mostly for charity. At one point he was rated one of the top ten organists in the world. He also wrote quite a lot of music which a friend of the family and former pupil of Dad's catalogued for us a few years ago. Unfortunately Dad wasn't the most organised person and there's probably only a fraction left of all the scores he wrote. What there is has sat in a box in storage ever since but now someone from the professional music world has expressed an interest in going through it with a possible view to performance and publication. As he is a friend of a family friend, my Mother is all for handing copies of the manuscripts over to him as she'd like to see it played or put into print. Contemporary classical music and sacred classical music in particular hasn't got anything like the commercial value of popular music and in all probability Dad's output will be of little more than academic interest to a very small number of people but its part of our family's heritage and I'm concerned that my Mother (who is 94 and thoroughly compos mentis but very trusting) should be handing over even copies of unpublished musical compositions to anyone without ensuring she and the family have legal ownership and control over publishing and performance rights. Its not about money because I'd be vastly surprised if it would ever be worth any. Its very expensive to put sheet music into print and the market is minute but if it does have any commercial value I would like Mother to benefit from it and I don't want to see Dad's work disappear into and become claimed by the musical academic world. It belongs to the family. My question is, does my Mother, as his spouse, dependant and chief beneficiary of his estate automatically possess legal ownership/copyright over his work or does she have to register the fact in some way? I don't want her to hand anything over to anyone without knowing her legal rights and status. Just wondering how we should proceed.
They cost money and the ones we use for family matters are not experts in this area. Just hoping for some basic pointers about where to start before running up legal bills.
Would you feel comfortable revealing your dad's name Gimlet? I only ask as I have been a professional classical musician (violinist) all my working life and wonder if I have ever come across him.
