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  1. August 19, 2020

    In Praise of Performance Parts

    By David C. Birchler

    Performance parts are often overlooked or placed last in a list of sources. It is understandable that an extant autograph score is considered to be the primary source for a symphony, concerto, mass, or opera; or that a copyist’s score or published score, particularly one prepared under the composer’s supervision, would be chosen as primary source if the autograph is lost or presents an earlier or indeed superseded version of the work. But parts have a strength of their own in that they are specifically tailored to meeting the needs of individual players for the realization of the work in performance. Taking careful account of available source parts as you are preparing your edition will often provide details of notation that are only implied in the source score and make your job that much easier.

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  2. July 29, 2020

    Michele Pesenti: Between Frottola and Madrigal

    By Anthony M. Cummings

    The thesis implied in the well-known phrase “from frottola to madrigal” has long been contested: Frottole and madrigals were different genres, with fundamentally different stylistic characteristics; they were cultivated by different composers, at different times in history, and in different centers of musical patronage and activity. But the profile of one composer, Don Michele Pesenti da Verona (ca. 1470–1528), complicates our current understanding. Unlike the vast majority of his fellow frottolists, Pesenti composed both frottole and madrigal-like compositions. He stood at a moment of transition between genres, and his career and creative output illuminate the complex dynamics of the moment. Along with my two distinguished co-editors, I am pleased to be able to present Pesenti’s complete surviving oeuvre in modern edition for the first time.

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  3. June 29, 2020

    Critical Notes 101: Some Dos and Don’ts

    By Esther Criscuola de Laix

    What are critical notes? Well, many of our editions say that “critical notes describe rejected source readings” or “differences between the source and the edition” that are not otherwise covered by the editorial methods. It sounds straightforward enough. Yet many volume editors find this to be one of the most fiddly and confusing parts of the editing process. So, here are some dos and don’ts to help dispel the confusion.

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  4. May 27, 2020

    Considering Antonio Rosetti and His Passion Oratorio

    By Sterling E. Murray

    Many years ago, while searching for a dissertation topic, I came upon a volume of five symphonies by the Bohemian composer Antonio Rosetti (ca. 1750–92). I had never heard of Rosetti, and I was quite surprised at the high quality of these works. This discovery served as the topic of my dissertation (“The Symphonies of Anton Rosetti,” University of Michigan, 1972). But more than that, it initiated what was to be a lifetime of research devoted to this composer and his musical world.

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  5. April 06, 2020

    Music under Quarantine: Two Views from Milan, 1576 and 2020

    By Remi Chiu

    In March 2020 Raffaele Kohler, a Milanese trumpeter quarantined at home on account of COVID-19, found internet fame when a video of him playing his instrument at his window began circulating. Kohler explains that he played in order to instill hope, to cheer up and lend strength to his city. He also notes Milan has never faced such complete disruption before, not even under the bombardment of war. In fact, Milan has met with and overcome similar circumstances before. In one well-documented case—an especially devastating outbreak of plague in Milan between 1576 and 1578—the city also ground to a halt. And the Milanese, under a strict quarantine, even adopted a similar musical response.

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  6. March 25, 2020

    Protip: Best Practices for Naming Electronic Manuscript Files

    By A-R's house editors

    Did you know that you can help your copyeditor by submitting judiciously named electronic manuscript files? A-R’s production staff works directly with electronic files as they prepared editions for publication. Our copyeditors must therefore supply them with vetted files and clear directions for assembling the files into the edition, and that starts with naming the files accordingly. By using the tips given here, you can save your copyeditor time by assisting in this process.

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  7. February 27, 2020

    The Forerunner in the Race: Struggles of a Victorian Woman Composer

    By Ian Graham-Jones

    It was nearly thirty years ago that a collection of manuscripts, together with a few printed editions, of the music of Alice Mary Smith (1837–84) came into my possession following the death of the composer’s grandson. They were in a haphazard state—some had been kept in an old garage, others, more damaged, in a leaking garden shed. Besides a number of full scores, there were bundles of complete sets of orchestral parts, miscellaneous drafts and scraps of manuscript, and even harmony and species counterpoint exercises. But it was not until after my retirement that I was able to spend time assessing the worth of the collection and realizing that Smith was the first British woman composer to have any success in writing in larger-scale forms and, moreover, in having her works performed.

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  8. January 22, 2020

    Fond Farewell, Warm Welcome

    We bid a fond farewell and offer many thanks to Rufus Hallmark for his many, many years of counsel and collaboration as series editor for Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. And we warmly welcome a new series editor, Francesca Brittan. 

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  9. December 11, 2019

    Looking Past the Scottishness: William McGibbon’s Sonatas

    By Elizabeth C. Ford

    William McGibbon (1695–1756) was once described to me as the best-known Scottish composer no one had ever heard of; I believe that’s a reasonably accurate assessment. When I first encountered his name in David Johnson’s monograph Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, I was left with the impression that his music had faded into well-deserved obscurity. At the same time, I noted that Henry George Farmer in A History of Music in Scotland (1947) spoke highly of McGibbon’s flute duets (published around 1748), though most musicians I spoke to only knew of McGibbon’s collections of Scottish tunes and the one trio sonata of his that has been published a few times in “greatest hits” collections (no. 5 from his set of 1734, headed “In Imitation of Corelli”). I knew that this wasn’t quite good enough for my studies on the flute in eighteenth-century Scotland, so I wanted to see what the rest of his music was like, and if he deserved the reputation he had. This edition is the result.

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  10. November 07, 2019

    Page Counts and Dollar Amounts: What is Value in Music Publishing?

    By Alexander Dean

    The cost of each A-R edition is figured very finely, even down to hours per page, at each stage of the editing and production process, and the editions are priced as low as possible while still allowing the company to stay in business.

    Our editorial department comprises Ph.D. musicologists who deal with difficult but necessary copyediting tasks: shepherding the creation of something as complex as a historical edition of music requires full-time, trained employees. The work that comes our way is high quality, presented to us by leaders in the field, representing artistic and scholarly creations that could be of lasting benefit to society, and A-R’s editorial department ensures that the editions we produce will fulfill that promise.

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