The Nanterre judicial court ruled on Friday in the copyright case linked to one of the most performed pieces of classical music in the world.
The Nanterre court on Friday dismissed the claim of the heirs of Maurice Ravel and the Russian decorator Alexandre Benois, who had asked the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (Sacem) to recognize the latter as co-author of the famous Boléro. The court “rejected the requests of the rights holders of Maurice Ravel and Alexandre Benois concerning Boléro, one of the most performed and broadcast works in the world”detailed the court in a press release, the work “therefore remains in the public domain”.
Concerning the hypothesis of co-authorship of Alexandre Benois, the court considered that “the documents provided did not demonstrate his quality as author of the argument (short summary, editor’s note) of the ballet”The thesis of another injured co-author, the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, was also dismissed by this judgment, the artist having not “never appeared on the documentation of the Bolero as co-author.
“It is a very well-argued decision, which took care to examine all the elements brought to the attention of the court and which validates Sacem both in its approach (…) and in its position regarding safeguarding the interests of its members”reacted to the AFP Yvan Diringer, who defends Sacem with Josée-Anne Bénazéraf.
“The action of estates and publishers (also parties to the case, editor’s note) is rejected by the court, we calmly analyze the decision before responding to the press”for his part declared to AFP Gilles Vercken, lawyer for the Ravel estate.
The Benois estate, the Ravel estate and the companies in the Netherlands and Monaco through which the rights to Maurice Ravel’s works pass are jointly ordered to pay 100,000 euros to Sacem and the costs of the proceedings. Maurice Ravel’s heir, Evelyne Pen de Castel, is also ordered to pay one euro to Sacem “in compensation for his damage resulting from the abuse of the author’s moral rights”, details the decision. This judgment ensures that at this stage, the Bolero remains in the public domain as it has been since 2016.
With this decision, the courts have put an end to a legal saga that led the Ravel estate and the beneficiaries of Alexandre Benois to request that the work no longer be considered in the public domain: if the designer was recognized as co-creator, it is his date of death, which was later, and not that of Ravel’s death (1937) that should have been taken into account.
During the hearing on February 14, the artist’s beneficiaries argued that refusing to recognize their ancestor as co-author of this global success is not a right that Sacem can claim. “The music of Bolero was created especially for the ballet”had asserted Édouard Mille, lawyer for the Benois estate. On the Ravel estate side, it is also believed that the Bolero is a “work of collaboration” with the Russian decorator, with historical arguments to support this. These arguments include in particular the presence of the name Benois on the argument of two ballets performed on the evening of the premiere of Ravel’s work in 1928, the statements of Louis Laloy, secretary general of the Paris Opera, who wrote in Le Figaro that Alexandre Benois was the«auteur» of the three shows, or even a letter from a legal director of Sacem in the 1980s mentioning the collaboration with the ballet choreographer, Bronislava Nijinska…
Protected for 78 years and four months
For Sacem’s lawyer, Josée-Andrée Bénazéraf, the plaintiffs’ claims fell within the “historical fiction”. Recognizing co-authorship would imply “having to tear up the 1929 declaration form signed by Ravel who claims to be the sole author of Boléro in order to replace him, (which) infringes the moral rights (of the composer) who has always considered himself the sole author”she pleaded at the hearing.
The Bolero was protected for 78 years and four months: in France, the rights to a work expire 70 years after the death of the author – 1938 in the case of Ravel. But the law provides for extensions that aim to compensate for the loss of earnings of French artists during the two world wars, which extended the protection until May 1, 2016. If the rights generated represented “for a time millions and millions of euros” annual, according to information provided to AFP by Sacem’s lawyer, Josée-Anne Bénazéraf, the amounts reached on average 135,507 euros per year between 2011 and 2016.
