Category Archives: New editions

by | October 8, 2021 · 6:00 am

Ethel Smyth: Serenade in D

In 2021 A-R Editions issued a new critical edition of Ethel Smyth’s Serenade in D major for orchestra (1889 and possibly early 1890). Premiered at a Crystal Palace concert on 26 April 1890, the work was received well by the audience and garnered positive notices in the press.

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was a member of the women’s suffrage movement, and was alternately praised and panned for writing music that was considered too masculine for a “lady composer”; yet when she produced more delicate compositions they were criticized for not measuring up to the standard of her male counterparts. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1922, becoming the first woman composer to be awarded a damehood.

This critical edition is based on a photocopy of the autograph manuscript, now in the Royal College of Music Library, with reference also to a fair copy of the score, now in the British Library. The extensive critical notes by John L, Snyder document the changes made by the composer, as well as editorial and performance suggestions made by both the composer and August Manns, who conducted the premiere.

Below, a performance of the work from 2018.

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by | August 26, 2021 · 6:00 am

A work admired and performed by Bach

In 2020 A-R Editions issued a critical edition of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel’s Die leidende und am Creutz sterbende Liebe Jesu, edited by Warwick Cole.

Stölzel was a highly respected musician and composer who contributed works in all major 18th-century musical genres. His first Passion, Die leidende und am Creutz sterbende Liebe Jesu, was performed widely during his lifetime, including by Bach in 1734—the same year he composed his Christmas Oratorio, which imitates various aspects of Stölzel’s style.

Several characteristics of Stölzel’s Passion demonstrate the composer’s unusual approach to the genre, including a lack of named protagonists, texts couched in the present tense to heighten the immediacy of the drama, a balance between recitatives and arias, and the employment of primarily 17th-century chorales with plain harmonizations that may have encouraged the participation of the listening congregation.

Evidence of the work’s popularity includes the existence of a truncated and adapted mid-18th century score, several excerpts of which are included in the edition’s appendix.

Above, the Schlosskirche in Gotha, where Stölzel’s Passion was first performed in 1720. Below, an excerpt from the work performed by Cole’s group, Corelli Concerts.

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by | April 23, 2021 · 6:00 am

Vivanco’s Liber magnificarum

In 2020 A-R Editions issued Liber magnificarum (1607), a critical edition of Sebastián de Vivanco’s 18 Magnificat settings, as well as two settings of Benedicamus, based on five different surviving manuscripts.

Vivanco (ca. 1551–1622) was born, like his revered contemporary Tomás Luis de Victoria, in Avila. Having secured prestigious cathedral and university posts at Salamanca, Vivanco saw through the press, between 1607 and 1614, three luxury choirbooks containing 18 Magnificats, 10 masses, and 72 motets, spread over a total of more than 900 printed pages.

The first of these choirbooks, all of which were printed by the Fleming Artus Taberniel and his wife Susana Muñoz, is a cycle of Magnificats providing polyphony for the odd- and even-numbered verses in all eight tones, plus one extra Magnificat in each of the much-used first and eighth tones.

If Vivanco has been eclipsed for too long by his great contemporary and compatriot, it is in the complexity and ingenuity of the many canons to be found in these Magnificats that Vivanco outshines even Victoria.

Above, a likeness of Vivanco on the original cover page of his Liber magnificarum; below, one of the works included in the edition (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-11142).

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by | February 5, 2021 · 6:00 am

Giovanni Stefani’s song anthologies

In 2020 A-R Editions issued Giovanni Stefani’s song anthologies (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-14972), which brings together for the first time all three of Stefani’s anthologies in modern transcription, allowing performers to play either from the original alfabeto notation or from a modern realization, given both in modern guitar chord symbols and harmonies in staff notation, making it possible for all instruments to participate in the continuo band.

The three song anthologies of Giovanni Stefani survive as the most abundantly printed seventeenth-century songbooks with the chordal guitar notation known in Italy as alfabeto. Printed in multiple editions from 1618 to 1626, Stefani’s books anthologize nearly one hundred songs, many of which appear copied in numerous other manuscripts, attesting to their widespread appeal in early modern Italy.

While beginners will be drawn to their simplicity, experienced performers will delight in the improvisational opportunities made available by songs built on the spagnoletta, folia, ciaconna, and romanesca.

Above, the cover of Stefani’s first anthology, Affetti amorosi; below, Costanza amorosa as it appears therein.

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by | October 29, 2020 · 6:00 am

Alice Mary Smith: Short orchestral works

In 2020 A-R Editions issued Alice Mary Smith: Short orchestral works (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-1965), which presents three of Smith’s orchestral compositions for the first time in print.

One of the most prolific women composers of her time, Alice Mary Smith produced the greatest number of publicly performed large-scale orchestral and choral works of any of her gender.

The Andante for clarinet and orchestra, Smith’s orchestral transcription of the slow movement of her Sonata for clarinet and piano (1870), was greatly admired by the English clarinetist Henry Lazarus, who performed it multiple times.

The other works included comprise the complete orchestral music from Smith’s grand choral cantata The masque of Pandora, a setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem. Designed as independent instrumental movements, Smith fully orchestrated them for a performance in 1879 by the New Philharmonic Society.

The introduction to the edition includes a brief biography of Smith and reproduces numerous reviews and program notes from the various performances of these three works.

Below, the Andante for clarinet and orchestra featuring Angela Malsbury.

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by | August 6, 2020 · 6:00 am

Songs in times of plague

Plague, an indiscriminate and deadly disease, was an important aspect of European intellectual and cultural life during the Renaissance. Perennial outbreaks throughout the period, both small and catastrophic, provoked changes and reactions in religion, medicine, government, and the arts—from literature, sculpture and painting, to music.

In 2020 A-R Editions published Songs in times of plague, an anthology that brings together, for the first time, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century motets and madrigals, for three to six voices, written in response to plague (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-4123). These pieces, with texts commemorating outbreaks and addressing holy figures and secular patrons, reveal how music was imbricated in the wider concerns of societies habitually caught in the grips of pestilence.

Above, The triumph of Death, a 1503 depiction of the death of Petrarca’s Laura; below, one of the works included in the edition, Roland de Lassus’s setting of Petrarca’s Standomi un giorno.

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by | July 23, 2020 · 6:00 am

Serenatas for Dublin

Johann Sigismund Kusser (or, as he was known in England and Ireland, John Sigismond Cousser) was a Hungarian-born musician who, after a varied and successful career in the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire, settled in Ireland in July 1707.

In Dublin Kusser composed and directed the performances of at least 21 festive serenatas that marked important state occasions in Dublin between 1709 and his death in late 1727. Presented before the elite of local society in semistaged productions featuring costumes, stage machinery, and dancing, these works functioned as something of an operatic substitute in the city’s cultural life.

In 2020 A-R Editions issued Kusser: Serenatas for Dublin (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2020-1963), a critical edition comprising the three serenatas for which music remains extant. Two of these can be proven definitively to be of Kusser’s own composition, and the third, due to its musical style, overall structure, and subject matter, is almost certainly his creation as well. These works provide remarkably rare musical evidence of a key component of the artistic offerings of Dublin’s viceregal court during the early decades of the eighteenth century.

Below, “Come, lovely peace, the conqu’ror calls” from An idylle on the peace, one of the works included in the volume.

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by | June 4, 2020 · 6:00 am

The Chanterelle guitar anthology

In 2019 Schott issued The Chanterelle guitar anthology: 40 classical guitar miniatures from Sor to Segovia (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2019-16967), which presents 40 miniatures (studies, character pieces, caprices, etc.) from the Classic and Romantic eras through the 20th century. Most of the charming little pieces by well-known composers are from the catalogue of the renowned publisher of guitar music Chanterelle.

The selected pieces are of medium difficulty, ideal for music lessons, performances, and private music-making; the edition contains a detailed English preface with performance instructions for each individual piece. All pieces have been recorded by Alberto Mesirca on the accompanying audio CD.

Below, Fernando Sor’s Leçon op. 31, no. 21, one of the pieces included in the edition.

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by | September 10, 2019 · 6:00 am

Restoration music for three violins, bass viol and continuo

 

In 2018 Stainer & Bell issued Restoration music for three violins, bass viol and continuo, a critical edition of a small yet distinctive corpus of instrumental music at the Restoration court of Charles II and in the Catholic chapel of James II.

Introduced to England by the German violinist Thomas Baltzar, the genre was adopted by John Jenkins, whose ten fantasia-suites for three violins, bass viol, and continuo, together with five sonatas for the same group of instruments by Gottfried Finger (above), constitute the bulk of this volume.

Below, Finger’s Sonata in D major, op. 1, no. 9, one of the works included in the collection.

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by | August 19, 2019 · 6:00 am

Livre d’airs et de simphonies mélez de quelques fragmens d’opéra

 

In 2018 A-R Editions issued Livre d’airs et de simphonies mélez de quelques fragmens d’opéra, a critical edition of a collection of works by Pierre Gillier that was first published in 1697.

The appetite for amateur music making in late seventeenth-century France led to an unprecedented demand for published chamber music. Gillier’s volume, comprising 64 small-scale vocal and instrumental works with basso continuo accompaniment, was one of a number of publications designed to meet this demand.

The collection is unusual in offering a variety of genres and is especially noteworthy for Gillier’s strategy of organizing the pieces “in order to make small chamber concerts out of them.”

Below, an excerpt featuring the voice of Sara Macliver.

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