dtobenski

I think that Arvo Part may require a certain frame of mind, like any other composer. However, what I find interesting about his work is the theory behind it. Part uses his religious beliefs as the basis for his compositions, and has created a system which he calls “tintinnabuli”, i.e., “the ringing of bells”. Most of his works use either two or three voices symbolizing God/God’s Love and Man/His Ability to Err. The God Line is a stationary line – a single note sounded throughout, intended to show the immutability and permanence of God, typically an A (most of Part’s work is in A minor). The line symbolizing Man moves diatonically step-wise toward or away from God – insert your own commentary about sin and redemption etc here. When a third voice is present, it outlines the tonic triad, almost invariably the pitch in the triad closest to Man. If I remember correctly, this line is God’s Love, although I’m not sure. A full analysis of Part’s works can be found in Paul Hillier’s book on the composer (which I read probably 6 or so years ago now, so my memory's a little bit fuzzy on the full details). I don’t go in for the religion, but I appreciate that there’s a system, however simple. And I find the seeming simplicity of his music to be very refreshing. I really like his choral music – the Magnificat and And One of the Pharisees are gorgeous and make really affective/effective use of the tintinnabuli technique.

Hi Nikolas, thanks for the welcome! I do a lot of reading about self-publishing ebooks, and I feel that the similarities (aside from the sheer volume of sales) between that world and our own is uncanny. One of the arguments - often put forward by authors themselves - is that publishing needs gatekeepers, someone to vet novels and short stories to make sure that only the best are made available. And yet many of the top-selling ebook authors are self-published. The cream has somehow managed to rise to the top without a corporation telling us that it's good and that we should buy it. Instead, readers have taken chances on reasonably-priced books with good covers and good descriptions, enjoyed what they read, and recommended those books and authors to others. Consequently, authors like Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking are selling hundreds of ebooks daily, and making in excess of $20,000 a *month*. Which is a long way to say that I think that reasonably priced (who can say that anything out of a big publishing house these days is anywhere near reasonably priced?) scores that are presented well - no mean feat, that, and something we're not often taught how to do - will rise to the top. There will always be crap out there, noise that many feel drowns out the good stuff, but the good stuff still manages to get heard and appreciated. Like these self-pubbing authors, we can and should bring our scores to our friends and colleagues as proofreaders. We can't always catch collisions or unclear notation ourselves because we're too close to the material. What's to stop us from hiring proofreaders to look over our work before we send it out to be our representative in the world at large? To let our music out into the world, to set it down in front of professional performers, and have it look anything less than completely professional does us and our music a disservice, and yet many of us still do it. I think that those who do should be knocked lightly on the head and sat down to learn about basic professionalism and courtesy to performers. Engraving in particular is a hobby horse of mine that I love to ride. One thing I do with the NewMusicShelf is to require that all scores be engraved to a certain level of professionalism. It's a subjective thing, absolutely, but it does enforce a minimum level of presentational quality. It's also a form of gatekeeperism, but one that allows the music to speak for itself. I don't reject people completely - I ask that they clean up their scores before they (please) resubmit. At this point, I wouldn't dream of giving my scores away to a publisher. I have far too many friends who have been badly mistreated by their publishers – major publishers, to boot. And these aren't no-name composers, either – they have Pulitzers, are members of the Academy of Arts and Letters, have sat on Guggenheim and Pulitzer selection panels. And their publishers still treat them poorly. Not the way to run a business. Before I blather on for too too long, I should end by saying that I don't think that composers being inept at engraving and presentation shouldn't ba reason not to self-publish – it should be a reason to educate composers better in those areas.

I'm a major proponent of self-publishing. Going with a traditional publisher seems like a bad deal to me. They take forever to release your works, slap on a generic cover, ask *you* to do the engraving (or have it done at your own expense), and do zero real marketing. It used to be that publishers like Boosey & Hawkes would take a young composer like, say, Britten, and push his scores onto conductors and performers. They were instrumental in kick-starting his career. Publishers took on composers they believed in, and put their name and resources behind them. Now, even top composers are unlikely to get more than a press release sent out about their latest piece that has been published. The idea is that publishers offer distribution and marketing in exchange for ownership of the rights to the score, plus a significant portion of the profits. Which was totally fair when they did all the work but the actual composing. A composer could spend his time writing, and leave the marketing of his works up to the publisher. But now publishers offer such poor service and pass off so much of the work back to the composers themselves that it just doesn't pay. Even the carrot of distribution is laughable at this point, thanks to the good ol' inter-wubs. A publisher used to be able to get X amount of music into brick-and-mortar music stores, and performers could find it there, or make a special order through the store’s catalogs. Now, independent music stores are either cutting inventory to the bone and stocking only Easy Piano songbooks of themes from the latest Disney release or Easy Piano/Vocal songbooks of hits by Nickelback or Shania Twain, or they’re disappearing entirely (RIP Patelson’s), leaving distribution almost solely web-based. The only difficulty with self-publishing, as I see it, is getting noticed. But that’s always a difficulty, period. We can put our works up for sale (or free) on our own websites, but people have to know who we are in order to find our sites, unless we’re really lucky. At the same time, it’s hardly likely that Joe Q. Concertmusician would find you on Sheetmusicplus - or any traditional publisher’s website, for that matter - unless they were looking specifically for you! I think the question today is less “to self-publish vs. to bash your head against the wall trying to get a crappy deal from a failing corporation that couldn’t care less about you and takes more of your money than they earn” and more “how to create, maintain and embiggen a performer and audience base over time”. If a publisher is going to put more of the onus of their business on us, we might as well do all the work ourselves and take the profits with us.