I had never heard this setting before and stumbled across it today. I think this is one of the more beautiful settings of the hymn that I have ever heard.
The work was written and copyright in 1943 by the composer, and the copyright was transferred to Boosey & Hawkes in 1963. Kodaly died in 1967, which makes his work PD in Canada (50 years after death). My understanding is that the work is likely still in copyright in the USA (for which the term is 70 years after death).
The Italian choir, Corale Roberto Goitre has the partitura on their website with the footer P&LL$oft on page 1 as perhaps a hint to its provenance? They have obviously sung it as they have a YouTube recording on their site and also link to a beautiful version at https://youtu.be/xRi1GDoaQu4
I sang it about 15 years ago in a local NZ choir when we only had 1 tenor and sang a lot of SAB/SABar music. I tried to get our church choir to tackle it but our organist took one look at the composer's name and said it was beyond us!
PS Is linking to freely available score pdfs permitted here? Not encouraged? I sing in a primarily early/renaissance music choir and am its librarian, so my use of search engines to locate public domain score pdfs is extensive!
Chuck, does that mean if you acquire a copy in Canada and cross over the border you have to turn it back in to the "authorities" (yes there's a little sarcasm in my answer there)?
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