Frédéric Chopin (Wikimedia Commons)

Frédéric Chopin passed away more than 160 years ago -- sufficiently long ago that today all of his compositions belong to the public domain.

Yet, despite this, if you wanted to make a movie with Chopin's Nocturne in C-Sharp minor playing in the background, chances are you'd have to pay royalties to do so. Why is that?

The reason points to a little wrinkle in the public domain, one that commonly plagues classical works: While the music is technically in the public domain (and you are free to play it, perform it, record it however you like), recordings of these public-domain works tend to be copyrighted. (You can thank this little wrinkle for all the terrible "hold" music you've been subjected to over the years.)

A Kickstarter project, "Set Chopin Free," aims to do exactly what its name suggests: Release Chopin recordings from their copyright cell.

Here's how it works: If the project successfully meets its fundraising goal ($75,000 by Sunday, October 20), it will hire musicians (some of the best Chopin pianists in the world) to record and release to the public under a CC0 license the entirety of Chopin's life's work, some 245 pieces. Then, if you're making a movie (or writing a Wikipedia page, or a blog post, or whatever else you might be doing) and looking for that particular Nocturne, you'll have a place to turn to.