Category Archives: New editions

by | July 15, 2019 · 6:00 am

Villancicos from Mexico City

 

In 2019 A-R Editions issued Manuel de Sumaya: Villancicos from Mexico City, a critical edition of all 34 villancicos with music by Sumaya conserved at the Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de María in Mexico City.

Recognized as the most significant composer from New Spain in the early eighteenth century, Manuel de Sumaya oversaw musical activity at the Cathedral during a time of stylistic change. Locally born and ordained as a priest, Sumaya wrote music that mixes the counterpoint and rhythmic vigor of seventeenth-century Hispanic music with more modern Italianate gestures prescient of international taste in the eighteenth century.

Scored for one to 12 voices with basso continuo and sometimes violins, these pieces communicate theological, doctrinal, and historical ideas about St. Peter, St. Rose of Lima, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Christmas, Corpus Christi, and other celebrations of the Catholic Church. Complete translations of the Baroque texts into English and commentary on historical performance practices included in the edition aim to facilitate revival of this key repertoire of colonial music.

Above, the composer; below, Hoy sube arrebatada, one of the works included in the edition.

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by | July 1, 2019 · 6:00 am

Christian Cannabich’s “Les Fêtes du sérail”

 

In 2019 A-R Editions completed its series Ballet Music from the Mannheim Court with a critical edition of two ballets by Christian Cannabich: Les fêtes du sérail and Angélique et Médor, ou Roland furieux.

Les Fêtes du sérail was probably based on Jean-Georges Noverre’s Les jalousies, ou Les fêtes du sérail, as described in his Lettres sur la danse. The ballet features several movements with “Turkish” instruments and the exotic setting of a harem.

Above, a portrait of Cannabich by Egid Verhelst; below, a suite from Les fêtes du sérail.

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by | May 20, 2019 · 6:00 am

Michele Pesenti: Complete works

 

In 2019 A-R Editions published Michele Pesenti: Complete works, a critical edition produced by an editorial team including a musicologist, a linguist, and a musicologist-performer.

While earlier musicologists assumed continuities between frottola and madrigal, more recent scholarship has refuted this idea: they were two different genres, cultivated in different centers of patronage, by different composers, and for different audiences.

Pesenti, however, composed in both genres thanks to changing professional circumstances. He composed frottole while working in Ferrara, and later, when he secured an appointment at the court of Pope Leo X, he (or someone acting for him) refashioned several of his frottole as madrigals: Textless lower instrumental lines are provided with text, converting a composition for a vocalist with instrumental accompaniment into one for an ensemble of four vocalists.

This pioneering edition of Pesenti’s complete works offers parallel editions of compositions existing in both these forms, as well as compositions for solo voice and instrumental consort that were later arranged for voice and lute. It further seeks to clarify the procedures used in expanding the abbreviated presentation of the frottola’s texts and music into readily performable forms.

Above, a page from an early edition of Pesenti’s Dal lecto me levava; below, a recording of the work.

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by | February 28, 2019 · 6:00 am

“Shuffle along”

 

In 2018 A-R Editions published a new critical edition of Shuffle along, which premiered on 23 May 1921 and became the first overwhelmingly successful African American musical on Broadway.

Langston Hughes, who saw the production, said that Shuffle along marked the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. Both black and white audiences swarmed to the show, which prompted the integration of subsequent Broadway audiences. The dances were such a smash that choreographers for white Broadway shows hired Shuffle along chorus girls to teach their chorus lines the new steps.

The editors have assembled the full score and libretto for this critical edition from the original performance materials, and the critical report thoroughly explains all sources and editorial decisions. The accompanying scholarly essay examines the music, dances, and script of Shuffle along and places this influential show in its social, racial, and historical context.

Above, a publicity photo from 1921; below, a recording from the production that includes the show’s breakout hit I’m just wild about Harry.

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by | February 7, 2019 · 6:00 am

John Eccles: The judgment of Paris

 

In 2018 A-R Editions issued the first critical edition of John Eccles’s opera The judgment of Paris.

The work was one of at least four operas on the same libretto (written by William Congreve) composed for the 1701 Prize Musick competition sponsored by London’s Kit-Cat Club with the aim of promoting native English, all-sung opera; it won second place in the competition, after John Weldon’s setting, though it later became the most popular of the settings composed for the competition.

Scored for soloists, chorus, strings and continuo, with individual movements featuring transverse flute, recorders, and trumpets and timpani, the opera unfolds within a single act and depicts the mythological story of Paris and the three goddesses. Below, the opening of a 2016 performance by the Columbia New Opera Workshop.

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by | December 3, 2018 · 6:00 am

John Hartford’s mammoth collection of fiddle tunes

 

John Hartford’s mammoth collection of fiddle tunes (Franklin, TN: StuffWorks, 2018) comprises 176 of Hartford’s original compositions. Most of these tunes are previously unpublished and unrecorded, taken from Hartford’s personal music journals.

Compiled and narrated by the fiddler Matt Combs, John’s daughter Katie Harford Hogue, and the musicologist Greg Reish, the book illuminates Hartford’s creative process through original tune compositions, his own reflections on the fiddle, and interviews with family and fellow musicians.

The volume includes more than 60 of Hartford’s personal drawings—ranging in theme from steamboats and the river, to fellow musicians, home and everyday life—as well as several never-before-seen photographs.

Above, a page from the book: Hartford’s Annual waltz as part of a holiday card and invitation to his 1980 wedding; below, the composer performs the song and tune.

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by | October 15, 2018 · 6:00 am

Amy Beach: Grand Mass in E-flat Major, Opus 5

 

In 2018 A-R Editions issued a new critical edition of Amy Beach’s Grand Mass in E-flat Major, the first large-scale choral and orchestral work to be premiered in the United States by an American woman composer.

Despite a successful premiere in 1892, the piece was never published and has been relegated to obscurity save for a small number of performances since the 1980s. Its performance materials have been housed in the New England Conservatory of Music and exist in manuscripts that are difficult to use in performance. This critical edition is the first to establish in print the corrections Beach made for the 1892 premiere and to correct errors that are present in the original source materials.

Below, an excerpt from the work.

Related article: Amy Beach’s Gaelic symphony

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by | August 20, 2018 · 6:00 am

Walter Porter: Collected works

In 2017 A-R Editions issued Walter Porter: Collected works; the volume brings together, for the first time in a critical edition, the complete works of the English composer Walter Porter.

One of a small number of English composers in the first half of the 17th century who embraced progressive Italianate methods of composition, Porter is further worthy of mention in histories of music for two reasons: he was the composer of the last book of English madrigals, and he claimed to have been the pupil of Claudio Monteverdi.

Porter’s works survive primarily in two printed collections: Madrigales and ayres (1632) and Mottets of two voyces (1657). Six of the 1657 Mottets also appear in York Minster Library, MS M. 5/1–3(S). One strophic song and three catches that may also be attributed to Walter Porter are included in an appendix. The collection is edited by Jonathan P. Wainwright.

Below, one of the works included in Madrigales and ayres.

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by | June 30, 2018 · 6:00 am

Jheronimus Vinders: Collected works

Issued by A-R editions in 2018, Jheronimus Vinders: Collected works, part I is devoted to the composer’s motets and secular works.

Jheronimus Vinders is best known as one of the three composers who wrote a lament on the death of Josquin des Prez. This limited reputation does not do justice to Vinders, whose works bear comparison with those of his more famous contemporaries.

As one of the rather small group of Flemish composers that links the Josquin generation with that of Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crecquillon, Vinders blended old and new compositional approaches, with some works paying respect to earlier traditions and others falling more in line with the musical developments that led to the pervasive imitation of the 1530s and beyond.

Below, one of the works included in the edition.

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by | March 19, 2018 · 6:00 am

Arie a voce sola de diversi auttori (Venice, 1656)

Issued by A-R Editions in 2018, Arie a voce sola de diversi auttori (Venice, 1656), a collection of secular monodies for voice and basso continuo, complements the edition of the contemporaneous sacred collection Sacra Corona (Venice, 1656), which A-R published in 2015. It contains short arias by various composers, some of whom had also contributed to Sacra Corona.

As in Sacra Corona, distinct Venetian and non-Venetian groups of composers can be identified within Arie a voce sola, and the printers, compilers, and dedicatees of both anthologies occupied similar social and economic milieus.

Arie a voce sola can be seen both as a continuation of the early seventeenth-century vogue for strophic arias, which were published in quantity in booklets during the first two decades of the century, and as the forerunner of the trend toward shorter operatic arias, observable in Venetian operas a few decades later.

Below, Maurizio Cazzati’s Mi serpe nel petto, one of the arias in the collection.

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