A Performer's Guide to Transcribing, Editing, and Arranging Early Music

A Performer's Guide to Transcribing, Editing, and Arranging Early Music provides instruction on three important tasks that early music performers often undertake in order to make their work more noticeable and appealing to their audiences. First, the book provides instruction on using early sources-manuscripts, prints, and treatises-in score, parts, or tablature. It then illuminates priorities behind basic editorial decisions-determining what constitutes a "version" of a musical piece, how to choose a version, and how to choose the source for that version. Lastly, the book offers advice about arranging both early and new music for early instruments, including how to consider instruments' ranges and various registers, how to exploit the unique characteristics of period instruments, and how to produce convincing textures of accompaniment. Drawing on methods based on early models (for example, how baroque composers arranged the music of their contemporaries), Alon Schab pays tribute to the ideas and ideals promoted by the pioneers of the early music revival and examines how these could be implemented in an early music field revolutionized by technology and unprecedented artistic independence.

Alon Schab is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Haifa and a committee member of the Purcell Society. A musicologist, composer, and recorder player, he focuses on English music and has published extensively on the music of Henry Purcell.