Public Domain Music
Copyright and the Public Domain
Music written before 1928 has, in most cases, entered the Public Domain in the United States. What does this mean for you, a band director looking for show ideas? It means that you can commission someone to arrange a marching band show for you, using music from before 1928, without paying any licensing/arrangement fees.
Typically, if the work is still under copyright, you would have to contact the copyright holder, secure permission to arrange (and in some rare cases, composers and publishers are not willing to give that permission), then pay a fee for the right to arrange. But that fee only pays for the right to arrange; if you should ever want to record your work, you would need a separate license fee. Not so with Public Domain music.
Click here for a list of previously arranged marching band music (and more)…
Some things that people consider to be in the Public Domain are actually not, for example, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story are two works that are guarded stringently by the estates of their creators, and are most definitely NOT in the Public Domain (and won’t be for quite some time).
It is always a good idea to double check any music you wish to have arranged, because copyright infringements can be a very serious matter, with legal and financial repercussions. To that end, I have compiled a list of Public Domain music that would be suitable for a marching show. If you would like any of this music arranged for your marching band, don’t hesitate to contact me. This list is by not comprehensive: there are thousands of works that are in the Public Domain now, but it should give you an idea of what is out there for you to consider.
Music that IS in the Public Domain
† Indicates that I own a score, meaning that the process of arranging would be immediate. All other scores would have to be purchased or secured, therefore taking a little longer to arrange.
- 1812 Overture (Pyotr Tchaikovsky)
- Academic Festival Overture (Johannes Brahms) †
- An American in Paris (George Gershwin)
- Bartered Bride (Bedrich Smetana)
- Boléro (Maurice Ravel)
- Capriccio Espagnol (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)
- Carmen (Georges Bizet)
- Coriolan Overture (Ludwig von Beethoven)
- Danse Macabre (Camille Saint-Saens) †
- El Amor Brujo (Manuel de Falla)
- Enigma Variations (Sir Edward Elgar) †
- Finlandia (Jean Sibelius) †
- Firebird, The (Igor Stravinsky) †
- First Suite in E-Flat (Gustav Holst) †
- Grohg (Aaron Copland)
- Helgoland (Anton Bruckner)
- La Boheme (Giacomo Puccini)
- La Mer (Claude Debussy)
- L’Arlessiene Suites No. 1 & 2 (Georges Bizet) †
- Madame Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini)
- Marche Slav (Pyotr Tchaikovsky)
- Moldau, The (Bedrich Smetana) †
- Orpheus in the Underworld (Jacques Offenbach)
- Peer Gynt Suite (Edvard Grieg) †
- Peter and the Wolf (Sergei Prokofiev) †
- Pictures at an Exhibition (Modeste Mussorgsky/orch. Ravel) †
- Pines of Rome (Ottorino Respighi)
- Planets, The (Gustav Holst) †
- Poet & Peasant Overture (Franz von Suppe)
- Polovetsian Dances (Alexander Borodin) †
- Prince Igor Overture (Alexander Borodin)
- Rhapsody in Blue (George Gershwin)
- The Ring Cycle (operas by Richard Wagner)
- Rite of Spring (Igor Stravinsky) †
- Romeo and Juliet (Pyotr Tchaikovsky) †
- Russian Sailor’s Dance (Reinhold Gliere)
- Scheherazade (Nikola Rimsky-Korsakov) †
- Songs of a Wayfarer (Gustav Mahler) †
- Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The (Paul Dukas)
- Symphonie Fantastique (Hector Berlioz) †
- Symphony No. 2 (Gustav Mahler)
- Symphony No. 4 (Gustav Mahler) †
- Symphony No. 5 (Pyotr Tchaikovsky)
- Symphony No. 6 (Pyotr Tchaikovsky)
- Symphony No. 8 (Antonin Dvorak)
- Symphony No. 9 (Ludwig van Beethoven)
- Symphony No. 9, “New World” (Antonin Dvorak) †
- Tapiola (Jean Sibelius)
- Toccata and Fugue in D minor (J.S. Bach)
- Turandot (Giacomo Puccini)
Public Domain Composers
In addition to the above list of popular compositions, keep in mind that ALL of the works of the following composers are in the Public Domain at this point, as long as one is working from the original score, and not an updated edition or revision, which CAN be copyrighted:
- Albeniz, Isaac
- Bach, Johann Sebastian
- Beethoven, Ludwig von
- Berlioz, Hector
- Bizet, Georges
- Brahms, Johannes
- Bruckner, Anton
- Chopin, Frédéric
- Debussy, Claude
- Dvořak, Antonín
- Elgar, Sir Edward
- Fauré, Gabriel
- Franck, César
- Grieg, Edvard
- Haydn, Josef
- Ives, Charles
- Janacek, Leos
- Liszt, Franz
- Mahler, Gustav
- Mendelssohn, Felix
- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
- Nielsen, Carl
- Price, Florence
- Purcell, Henry
- Ravel, Maurice
- Rossini, Gioacchino
- Saint-Säens, Camille
- Schubert, Franz
- Schumann, Robert
- Scriabin, Alexander
- Sousa, John Phillip
- Strauss, Richard
- Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Illych
- Verdi, Guiseppe
- Vivaldi, Antonio
- Wagner, Richard
Again, just because a work is in the Public Domain does not mean you can arrange any published version of it. There may be newer editions, revisions, and other situations in which a certain version of a Public Domain work is indeed under copyright. In order to be safe, an arranger should work from a copy that is old enough to fall into Public Domain. For example, if I wanted to arrange Stravinsky’s The Firebird, I would need to work from his original music (1909) or his first two suites (1909 and 1911) but NOT his “final” interpretation of the suite, written in 1945.
Need a custom arrangement of something in (or out) of the Public Domain? Be sure to check out my Custom Music Arranging services, or to see a list of previously arranged music available for sale, click here.