an Artistic Score Engraving update from November 2023
Dear all,
Welcome to the first update for Fall 2023, live from Italy, where we came back to at the end of September.
I apologise for not sending updates during September and October, but after the events of the beginning of July, I didn’t feel the usual drive to write. Seeing my work, kindness, and friendship being so deliberately abused by people I respected and believed in filled me with discomfort and obliged me to take some time for myself to regroup and start again. In addition, since coming back to Italy, my health had several hiccups, which I’m taking the time and care to solve to my best.
Without further ado, then, let’s begin.
NEWS
What would you like to see?
I would like to begin today’s update with a request: would you please help me help you? Allow me to explain: ever since starting this independent engraving and publishing journey, I have been planning the next move based on what I believed you were looking for. I, though, am just one, and I cannot assume to know what you all would prefer to see. I therefore kindly ask you to either comment here below this post—or reply to the email if you got it from Gumroad—, or contact me directly using the form on this website. In your comment/message, please let me know any of the following:
- What kind of instrumentation you would like me to work on or, even better, if you have a specific piece in mind, go ahead!
- What subject of cello pedagogy you feel is missing from the current offering
- What aspect of the notational software you use is making you struggle, or what rule of notation is giving you headaches.
In this way, I will be able to plan ahead for blog posts, new templates, and new editions. You see, I have over 300 editions planned in front of me, but the order in which they are being pushed out is based on my interests. It is very possible that you would like to see something else first.
I thank you in advance for taking the time to contact me with your musical wishes, or even just to say hi!
CONFERENCE!
On October 7th, at the Conservatorio Superiore di Studi Musicali “Niccolò Piccinni” in Bari, Italy, I held the most awaited seminar on the “Genesis of Cello Schools – from Duport to Kummer”.
It was a success beyond every possible expectation I could have had! The audience’s warmth, their constant interest—for three hours!, their detailed questions, and, most of all, the diligent preparation of the students, all contributed to an unforgettable event. Most of the cello duets by Dotzauer that I provided were performed for the first time in more than a century!
At the end, the audience was so enthusiastic, that they even asked for a comeback, since many of the planned topics had to be left out due to time constraints. I was most touched by one review left by one of the students who played (I translated it from Italian):
It was amazing! Having experienced it as a teenager, I can say that, unlike my expectations, it completely caught my attention, teaching me plenty of things I didn’t know about the history of the cello. The only thing I regret is that the time available prevented the teacher from expressing himself in the best possible way by illustrating the topics he covered in a complete and as detailed way as possible. It was a wonderful experience, congratulations to the teacher again. I sincerely hope for a return.
As Yo-Yo Ma once said, this is what we do art for, to leave a positive mark on those around us. Many of you asked me on Facebook if the event would have been broadcast or recorded. Sadly, I could not record the event because of small prints in the contract with the Conservatory—in short, I could not use any of the event outside their walls.
In any case, my heartfelt thanks go to the Conservatory for organising all this and to everybody who attended for being such a stunning audience!
PUBLISHING NEWS
A learning journey
The cadence of new releases for 2023 has been quite slow, and much slower than I expected. The first six months of the year have been focused on printing and distributing editions, and this has coincided with the whole sector passing through a general crisis where even big publishers are struggling to make ends meet. While I learned a lot during the process, the emotional and economical bleeding has forced me to slow down and concentrate on promotion. It is of no use to offer great editions if few know they exist.
All this restructuring is requiring a lot of time, patience, and energy, but I am confident it will bring something. To begin with, I opened two more online distribution channels: the first is Stretta Music, a massive and world-renown reseller, while the second is nkoda. Nkoda is a mobile app for both iOS and Android where you can browse basically every available edition in the world. You look for it, add it to your library, and can then practice or even perform (under certain conditions) from it2. All this for a rather small monthly fee. Something else is coming, and I will let you know when it’s ready3.
New editions
Arrangements
As I had teased in the previous update, a new work for 8 cellos is out, and it is the arrangement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84, by Brazilian maestro Raïff Dantas Barreto. It was a joyful collaboration and, to inaugurate the first edition of the “Arrangements” series, I have chosen this orange colour for the cover.
This edition is available for digital purchase here, while you can listen to M° Dantas Barreto performing all eight parts together in this video. It was a great honour to collaborate on this project, and I look forward to the next one. Please find the expanded editorial notes article here.
While this is not the 50th published edition, it occupies n° 50 in the catalogue; this is to show you that, even if I’ve not released much lately, I have been working very hard behind the scenes. So much is cooking at the moment!
La Bergamasque!
Here’s an entirely different edition, instead, sparked from a new, great collaboration with M° Fabrizio Capitanio, curator of the Biblioteca Musicale “Gaetano Donizetti” in Bergamo. If you’ve got your copy of Piatti’s Capriccio sulla Niobe at hand, you will find his contribution in the preface.
This piece, though, is on a wholly different level! It is the first modern edition of Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) Piano Concerto n° 1. He called it “Concerto per il cembalo”, which, at the time, in Italy, meant basically any keyboard instrument you could find available (it was most likely a fortepiano). Besides the full score in the main booklet, you will find thorough musicological research on this piece, on such a detailed level that left me deeply impressed while working on it. The performance material will come in a dedicated folder when printed, and will be available for hire4. Later this year, a reduction for two keyboards will also be released.
With this edition, the new Bergamasque collection is born; it will be dedicated to composers & compositions that were closely related to the city of Bergamo. The design of the cover reflects this using the official city colours.
You can find this new, gorgeous edition here, and listen to how it sounds here.
Revised editions
I have completed the revision of Dotzauer op. 63 and 156 on the cello, so they will be the next two to be updated. Something else has recently sneaked its way in, and I will take care of that first!
Blog Posts & more…
Several blog posts have been added in the past two months, specifically:
- The Engraving Best Practices series got its first season completed, with episodes 5 to 13 of “How to engrave an opera in Sibelius” finally available. You can find them here:
- Ep. 5: Notational conventions (Part 1)
- Ep. 6: Notational conventions (Part 2)
- Ep. 7: Notational conventions (Part 3)
- Ep. 8: Notational conventions (Part 4)
- Ep. 9: Front Matter(s)
- Ep. 10: Building the Front Matter
- Ep. 11: Building the Front Matter (Part 2)
- Ep. 12: Building the Front Matter (Part 3)
- Ep. 13: the vocal score
- My recount of An Italian cellist’s journey into the Serbian Language, got several new lessons, and I am quite happy about how I have been able to use my musical background to fuel my learning. Lessons 4 to 9 are now available here, with more hopefully resuming soon: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
I hope to get back to writing soon, it has just been a crazy time.
In addition, on Twitter, LinkedIn, and on my Facebook Page, I’m continuing my marathon of sharing wisdom-pearls from J. J. F. Dotzauer. As I write this, we’re reaching episode 90! You are welcome to follow me there. Also there, you may find my new threads called Engraving of the Day, Proofreading of the Day, and Edition of the Week. The first one, every Monday, shows an excerpt of one of the works I had the honour of engraving, alongside details about the composer and what challenged me. These are non-promoted links, I am doing this in gratitude to the composers who decided to give me the honour of travelling alongside their music. Then, on Sunday, I show one page from a proofreading session, giving you a glimpse of the (maniacal!) care for detail that goes behind every edition. Finally, every Wednesday, one of the editions from my catalogue is featured, alongside a hefty 23% discount code, valid only for that week. And, good news, as soon as we pass 52 editions in the catalogue, there will start being two featured editions per week!
Promotions
I was quite surprised that the Back to School promotion didn’t gain much traction, and for the second year in a row. This means something in the wording of the offer or the offer itself was not appealing enough. Also my recent Birthday promotion, which discounted the whole catalogue for one week, had a quite disappointing response. One thing I noticed is that readers do not like having to go browse a catalogue to see if they find something interesting. That’s enlightening! The message literally said: “EVERYTHING OFF 30%” with a link to go to the catalogue, and it was (mostly) ignored! Fascinating, isn’t it? Who needs a business school when there is life out there—only half-kidding?
The offers that appear to work well are short, focused ones that immediately tell what product is on sale at the moment. I have already planned a Black Friday initiative, and it’s different from what has not worked so far. You will tell me how it goes, as it should come out in a few days!
Adopt an edition!
While I already have a membership program that allows you to support me with monthly donations connected to juicy rewards, I am the first one who doesn’t like to have too many subscriptions to keep up with. Some among you, though, have asked me how they could support the score-creation process in a more direct way.
Introducing … ADOPT AN EDITION! Through this initiative, you will be able to directly support the creation of more editions, fuel the printing and distribution process, and get rewarded at the same time—remember: there’s no team behind us, here. It’s just me and my partner doing our best to learn our way forward. So, you’re not going to support a mega-corporation, but a small, passionate couple of human beings that want to keep the humanity of this alive.
Here’s how it works: on a very basic level, you contact me or simply send a donation here leaving a message containing your intention to adopt a certain existing score (from the catalogue, yes, sorry, you need to browse that…). In time, I will also add an “Adopt a Score” product to Gumroad, or a version of each product, I’ve not decided yet—suggestions welcome! At the start of every month, I will gather the donors’ names and add them to a dedicated page in each digital edition (something like “This edition has been realised with the generous contribution of: <list of names>). If you allow me, I will also mention you in the next newsletter after your donation.
Upon reaching certain milestones, you will get rewarded with the same perks you can find in the ASE+ program linked above.
What about new, upcoming editions? If you are part of the mailing list, you will receive a direct message about the next edition one week before it is released, also providing you with access to an “Early Bird” launch price. Once the time expires, the edition will be released to the public with the name of the donors gathered until then.
I hope this non-recurring, free-will, and non-binding way of supporting what I do will be a win-win for all of us.
ENGRAVING NEWS
While summer is usually a quieter period, I was able to work on several smaller tasks, which all contributed to my constant strive for improving and becoming more efficient. Something I had wanted to do for a very long time was creating a chart to monitor how much what I do costs to the client—there’s a reader who inspired all this, so… thank you!
Gone are the days when you got asked about your hourly rate, and then you did your best to keep things balanced between speed and quality, building trust in the process.
Now, everything is a shop, and engraving a score is considered at the same level as “how much for 2.5 kg of apples?”. Just, then, some suddenly remember they wanted 3 kg of apples instead, but then protest about the extra cost. Every so often, I even get asked for a quote without seeing a score. As much as divination is my favourite school of magic in Dungeons & Dragons, I am incapable of reading minds (yet!). Imagine going to the grocery and asking:
How much does it cost to buy an indeterminate amount of the products I’ve not yet decided about?
Jokes aside, here are some of the compositions I have been working on during the past two months:
What’s next?
As said above, I plan to do some revisions and to continue with the planned Dotzauer’s editions. The Piatti Opera Omnia is also progressing well, just I am working on a collection of pieces, and it will not be revealed until it is all ready. Thank you for your patience!
In coincidence with Jean-Baptiste Bréval’s birthday, on November 7, I released a bundle version of the three Sonata collections, for those who want to dive head-first into his music! You can find it here.
Bottom Line
I believe that’s it for today! Thank you for reading through this lengthy update. If you got to the end of this, you have all my gratitude!
You can join my mailing list here, browse my digital editions in the catalogue, and check what’s available for print in the HNE Store.
My YouTube channel contains video renditions of most of my editions, check it out, it would mean a lot to me.
If you want to actively support what I do, be sure to check out my Gumroad Support Program: it starts at a couple of coffees a month, and it gives back much more than it takes.
I wish you a colourful autumn, wherever you are, and plenty of good music!
Until next time, thank you.
Michele
- Sadly, you will not find that text anymore because, immediately after receiving that message, I edited the text of the published version. ↩
- What you cannot do is record the screen, take screenshots, print, or download the score. If you do, your account will be blocked, so there is some sort of protection for publishers and composers. ↩
- At the moment of writing, while I have uploaded everything already, ASE editions are not yet visible. They will be in the next few days, I’m sure. ↩
- Check the product page for all details on getting parts for this title. ↩
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