Vince Guaraldi
This music in in the public domain. Nothing from 1876 is still in copyright.
no
Yes; materials in the public domain do not require any licenses.
An extensive list of songs in the public domain (in the US) is linked below. It's much harder to find public domain recordings, as the copyrights for sound recordings are especially convoluted.
No! Carl Orff died in 1982 - his music will not come in to the public domain until 2052
When music has a copywrite, it means that the company has the rights to everything that happens to that music. When it's public domain music it means that the copywrite date has expired. Copywrites work just like pattens.
You most likely will not find much popular music for free on the web, because it will be copyrighted. Music is automatically considered copyrighted until the composer has been dead for 100 years. After the composer has been dead for 100 years, the music is then considered to be in the public domain, which means it can then be used for free. Music like Christmas carols or church hymns are in the public domain, and should be available for free. The one catch with public domain music, is that if someone makes an arrangement of a public domain piece of music, their arrangement is considered as being under copyright, so that arrangement is not in the public domain, even though the original melody was.
yes
One reliable source for public domain midis is the website musopen.org. This site offers a collection of free and legal midi files of classical music that are in the public domain.
The website Wikipedia carries lists of public domain music, and there are more specialist sites such as choral wiki which carry certain types of music, for example sheet piano music.
It will be difficult to find free sheet music for popular music, because most of it will be copyrighted... music is copyrighted until the composer has been dead for 100 years. After the composer has been dead for 100 years, the music is then considered to be in the public domain, which means it can then be used for free. So, music like Christmas carols or church hymns is in the public domain. However, if someone makes an arrangement of a public domain piece of music, that arrangement is now considered copyrighted by the arranger, and that arrangement is not in the public domain until the arranger has been dead for 100 years.
Without a license, you would be limited to public domain recordings of public domain music, or Creative Commons-licensed recordings of Creative Commons or public domain music. However, performance licenses are based partially on square footage, so fees should be fairly reasonable.