This photo was taken at our Nottingham Chamber Singers 40th anniversary party in July. Here we’re singing the first movement of Handel’s Dixit Dominus. There seems to be some mischief going on with our first sopranos!
You can see that the four of them have the same edition copy – Novello. Sourcing music for a choir can be a challenge. Being part of Music for Everyone means we can draw on the MfE library at no cost. Choir members usually own a few regularly used items such as European Sacred Music, 100 Carols for Choirs and English Romantic Part Songs.
At times we have to hire music, which we do through the Nottingham Performing Arts Library and other lending services or choirs. Charges are rising, so this can affect what we can afford to borrow and the duration of the hire. Hiring is still cheaper than buying 40+ copies, though sometimes by not a lot. Members might choose to buy scores for music they particularly like or works that reappear in our repertoire. They can then write in them liberally!
Several publishers can have the rights to a particular work – Novello & Co, Bärenreiter-Verlag and G. Schirmer all publish Dixit Dominus – so we can end up with multiple editions. Some scores use section letters, others bar numbers and often the pagination is different between versions. Navigating multiple editions takes up valuable rehearsal time. And then there are pencil markings and rubbings out in copies, but more of those another time!