Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

For MUSIC REQUESTS and QUESTIONS about availability, including Copyright issues
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

Hi all!

The music school where my wife teaches and where I'm a chorist have a big project: performing King Arthur next year, with some other amateur choirs in the neighbourhood.

I've therefore typeset, with LilyPond, the full score available on the ISMLP in order to provide a full "matériel d'exécution" in a modern way (my fellow altos and tenors don't read the C clef).

I would like to upload my work on the CPDL, once I've no doubt on copyright concerns. I still have some spacing issues to clean up.
What would be best:
- full score only (pdf with enclosed tarball of the sources) ?
- full score and individual parts ?
- adding separately a notice indicating how you can localize the table of contents as well as the character and instrument names and indications?

TIA,
Jean-Charles
pml
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Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by pml »

Performance material derived from the public domain source (viz, the 19th century edition by Taylor) would be most welcome. The current situation with respect to King Arthur is that one well-known worldwide publisher claims a partial royalty in the form of grand performance rights for the work, on the basis that the only readily available performance edition is a comparatively recent one by Philip Ledger and is under their copyright management. Some choirs in recent years have done exactly what you’ve done – to cut and paste or typeset their own performance parts which may be legally derived from the freely available sources – and told the said publisher in more polite terms to kindly naff off. I’m aware of a choir in my local district that has done this for the exact work you mentioned. None of the performance material has made its way to CPDL as yet, though. You would be doing an immense service to musicians everywhere by publishing a viable alternative to the Ledger edition. It is not as if the composer Purcell nor the poet Dryden, or any of their near relations, are still around to lay claim to their original work.

A vocal score in addition to the full score would be valuable, even if this only includes the vocal parts and the instrumental bass line alone (rather than a keyboard realisation). Parts are obviously valuable, and many CPDL pages host editions comprising full score and parts as well as vocal scores.

In short, for such a large work, if you were able to sensibly aggregate your PDFs using the various free Split-and-merge utilities (e.g. pdfsam) that would be much more preferable than either dozens of separate PDF files, or a tarball of the collection. For an opera in five acts you should be producing continuous playable instrumental parts without divisions: perhaps the full score and vocal score (or keyboard realisation if there is to be one) might be split into separate acts, but page numbering should be continuous from beginning to end. Those would be my preferences for typesetting, though on some points the other contributors here might beg to differ.

Cheers, Philip
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

Thank you Philip for clarifying my concerns about copyright.

I would like first to explain some of the reasons why I decided to typeset King Arthur.

When my wife and her colleague Virginie, the Harpsichord teacher, told me about their project to perform King Arthur, I searched on the net some material about it and found the 1848 edition on ISMLP.
This being a pedagogic project evolving many of the music school attendants and amateur chorists, I decided to typeset it for several reasons:
the rental cost for the performance material (800 Euros for one year), keeping in mind that it might last over the next,
an overwhelming habit of my fellow chorists to highlight their own voice on the score,
and special request of Virginie to have a supplementary staff for the continuo, in order to develop motives for her pupils who don't read figures.

Until now, my distribution will contain:
- the conductor's full-score (yet 2.07 Mo, but I would like to add some end-notes about a couple obvious mistakes I noticed in the original)
- one score per instrumental group (violins, viola, oboe, trumpets)
- one vocal score, the soloist parts being "italicized", including a piano reduction based on the continuo and strings,
- one score for the continuo, with this supplementary staff and a reduction of the vocal parts with breath signs.

Each booklet will contain a table of contents.
The table of contents, character an instrument names will be in French.
I've constructed the sources in such a way that obtaining this material in English or any other language will be of no pain: just generate you particular language file and specify it in one general place and in each booklet. You'll then just have to recompile those books.

Glad to be of any help to the chorists' universe,

Cheers,
Jean-Charles
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

Just a follow-up.

I'm now almost ready with all scores. Just some nitpicks with the "passacaille" where oboes and violins get combined (I might end with separating them), and spacing issues I'll deal with as the last task.
Virginie has still some corrections to report (have to wait she comes back home).

So everything should be ready before September.

Cheers,
Jean-Charles
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

I will be ready to sheep everything once all tempi have been adjusted in the midi files.

I will provide:
- Arthur-Choeur.pdf: the vocal score with piano reduction (based on violins and continuo),
- Arthur-Conducteur.pdf: the conductor's score,
- Arthur-Instruments.zip: tarball containing the different instrumental parts,
- Arthur-MIDIS.zip: tarball containing all midi files that can be reworked and burned on CD for private practice (thanks Timidity),
- Arthur-Sources.zip: tarball containing the sources of my contribution.

If everything goes as I expect, delivery on Sunday, after having correctly understood how to upload.

Cheers,
Jean-Charles
vaarky
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Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by vaarky »

A major undertaking!

Sounds like you'd want to submit a separate from for the conductor's score versus the vocal score, so they get assigned two separate CPDL edition numbers?

If you run into any snags, let us know. Thank you for contributing it to CPDL.
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

vaarky wrote:
Sounds like you'd want to submit a separate from for the conductor's score versus the vocal score, so they get assigned two separate CPDL edition numbers?
I did not think about this. I considered it might have been interesting to have both of them independently. The vocal score (1.4 Mo) weights 91 pages recto-verso, and the full score 145 pages. Full instruments zipped in about 6 Mo with conductor and 4.1 without.

Nevertheless a single edition number might be preferable in order to make a clear distinction with what is already available on King Arthur's dedicated page?
vaarky wrote: If you run into any snags, let us know. Thank you for contributing it to CPDL.
I wont forget! I cannot imagine for now how to layout this page.

Cheers,
Jean-Charles
CHGiffen
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Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by CHGiffen »

Thank you SO MUCH for the King Arthur editions! The choral and conductor's scores should indeed be assigned separate edition numbers - as well as the (collective) instrument scores. All this should go on the same works page, though.
Charles H. Giffen
CPDL Board of Directors Chair
Admin at & Manager of ChoralWiki
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

I've successfully uploaded, submitted new editions and received an email for each one.

Conductor's score: CPDL#24338
Vocal score: CPDL#24339 and CPDL#24340
Instruments collection: CPDL#24341

I really don't know what happened, I might have made a mistake, but I get two edition numbers for the vocal score.
How may I correct this before editing the work's page?

TIA
Jean-Charles
CHGiffen
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Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by CHGiffen »

Hi Jean-Charles,

Just use one of the edition numbers for the vocal score. If you want to have the three editions numbered consecutively, it would be okay you might move the instrumental edition number to the second vocal score edition number. In any case we will recycle the unused number. Many thanks for submitting this work in such complete form!
Charles H. Giffen
CPDL Board of Directors Chair
Admin at & Manager of ChoralWiki
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

CHGiffen wrote:
[...] it would be okay you might move the instrumental edition number to the second vocal score edition number.
My question: how?

Glad to contribute.
Jean-Charles
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

Lilyfan wrote:
CHGiffen wrote:
[...] it would be okay you might move the instrumental edition number to the second vocal score edition number.
My question: how?
Just guess what happens when I think? I might find an answer!

"Affect to the instruments the second vocal's ID on the work's page."

Am I right?

Jean-Charles
Lilyfan
Posts: 12
Joined: 05 Jun 2011 13:30
Location: Manosque, South of France

Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by Lilyfan »

Hi all!

Just a follow up to inform that amended versions of my work are available, as well as an "urtext" version.

Cheers,
Jean-Charles
CHGiffen
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Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by CHGiffen »

I saw that, thanks!
Charles H. Giffen
CPDL Board of Directors Chair
Admin at & Manager of ChoralWiki
anaigeon
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Re: Purcell, King Arthur from ISMLP

Post by anaigeon »

Thank you so much, Lilyfan !
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