Do descendants of famous classical composers such as Mozart receive their earnings?
no, the written music for famous composers like mozart isn’t under copyright past 50 years of the writer’s death. record companies record the music but it’s only the particular recording by the company under copyright and so the company gets the money, but the actual written music for the song is free and nobody gets the money.
In the U.S. for the basic sheet music copyright law remember the date 1923! Works published from 1922 and before are PD . Works published in 1923 and after that year are under copyright and still protected. 1923 publications cannot be reprinted until 2019. The year of a composers death is not a consideration. Notice the copyright for sheet music depends on the year of publication not the year it was written. This work is PD in the U.S. – Mozart: Symphony No.41, K.551 http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.41,_K.… This work published in 1934 is under copyright: Rachmaninoff – http://imslp.org/wiki/Rhapsody_on_a_Them… The composer and his heirs do not receive royalites on PD sheet music sales but the publishers who print the music stay in business by selling the paper product. The EU
