Choral Public Domain Library

Hi everybody! I've just submitted a score to the wiki, hopefully correctly. Is there a way to tell when someone has downloaded it, so that I can tell if people are finding the things I post, (or are finding them interesting)? No sense in putting up all the a cappella arrangements if 99% of music directors need things that come with a piano accompaniment. Anybody have thoughts about what they download, or don't bother with, so I can make sure I'm doing my due diligence to keep things convenient and searchable and all that good stuff?

I'm so excited to have discovered this site! Hello to you all, and thanks Bobby, if you're out there on the forums today, for telling me about this! I'm now going to get no actual work done all day as I daydream about picking all of your brains on questions of music theory and searching for arrangements for four alto singers.

What a great resource!
Maggie Furtak

Hi Maggie,

Unfortunately ChoralWiki is significantly plagued by bots, i.e., automatic scripts that somebody launches and travel the entire website (several thousands pages) to download everything they find on their way. This causes two negative effects:

1) the number of real downloads made by humans may be masked by the number of downloads made by bots;

2) counting the number of downloads for all scores would significantly increase the server load, and therefore hosting costs, when probably only few contributors will check the number of times their editions are downloaded.

Technical solutions can be adopted to solve the above problems, such as counting downloads selectively (i.e., only for editions "monitored" by the contributor) and/or adopting measures (e.g., CAPTCHA) to identify human users with respect to bots. However, this will increase the complexity for contributors (that will have to somehow "flag" the editions that they want to be monitored) and/or for users (that will have to solve the CAPTCHA or something like that to download the monitored scores). I'm not sure about pros vs. cons.

Max

Maggie, other composers sometimes add a note to the edition asking to be informed of performances. Here are two examples:

http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ador ... H._Giffen)
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Dorm ... uc_Jakobs)

Note that one of them directs people to his talk page (available only to registered users) while the other provides an email address.

By the way, please know that in general a cappella works are very commonly used, as many choirs have no budget for accompaniment.

Thanks for the replies, guys. Just curious. My husband's a programmer, so I'm familiar with the balancing of features vs cost for a website. We all like to think that the internet is free, other than the cost of paying for your internet bill every month, but that's not quite how it works, is it?

And I'm glad to hear a cappella arrangements are popular! I know that many singers who are a little less confident will mumble their way along shyly, or trail off into silence if asked to sing in parts a cappella, so I was curious whether a piano reduction, at least for rehearsal purposes, was something people would be looking for. Personally, I love a cappella music, and I never took piano lessons, so I really have no idea how to write a piano part that is kind to the pianist.

Thanks for the idea to put a note on a piece for feedback and performance notification. Good thought! When John Rutter emails me, I'll be delighted to hear from him. (:

Thanks for the warm welcome,
Maggie

Hello, Maggie, and welcome to CPDL!

Indeed, a great many of the choral works at CPDL are a cappella works, and, while not all of the editions have keyboard reductions for rehearsal (or gentle accompaniment) use, many (perhaps most) do not include a keyboard reduction of the choral score. It's usually a matter of taste by (or inconvenience to) the editor. When keyboard reductions are supplied, my guess is that, for the most part, they are just that - reductions, not pianistic arrangements.

One thing that ameliorates not including a keyboard is the inclusion of a sound file (either .MP3 or .MID), which usually isn't difficult if your engraving program generates these automatically. That way, singers can at least listen to an approximation of how the work should sound.

A piano reduction can definitely be useful. It helps a choir director keep the piece from falling apart while people learning their notes.It also allows a director to play to get sense of the integrated parts for the piece when evaluating it for repertoire selection (if a MIDI-type rendition or choral recording, is not available).