As a chord progression with nothing to identify it to a particular tune then you could in theory. This is where it gets tricky. Say somebody put together a book of The 20 Greatest Hits of 1901. All the tunes would be in the public domain but, in the context of that copyrighted book the phrase Reproduction of this material is prohibited by..yada..yahda..yahda would apply. That means no scanning, copying, pics etc directly from the book. it is kind of a mute point because it would be difficult to prove specifics unless there was some blemish that established that an exact copy had been made.
So not only does a tune have to be public domain, it has to be IN the public domain.
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