Sheet Music Publishers Editing and Proofreading Services

Bar 47 of the slow movement carries a slur in this edition and no slur in the edition the pianist learned the piece from. Nothing on the page indicates which reading the editor chose or on what grounds. The critical commentary runs to nine pages of continuous prose ordered by movement, and the performance notes offer two paragraphs on the composer's late style. A pianist with a recital in three weeks has to read all nine pages to settle one slur, and most pianists will instead decide the edition cannot be relied on.

The documents we edit for Sheet Music Publishers

Performance notes and prefaces, critical commentaries and source descriptions for scholarly editions, and editorial policy statements distinguishing composer markings from editorial additions make up the apparatus by which a serious edition is judged, and they are what we edit for music publishers. Program and liner notes, composer biographies and work introductions, translated performance directions and multilingual front matter, teaching and method book text, and grade and syllabus material for examination boards come to us as well. Licensing and permissions documentation, hire library material and orchestral part notes, catalog and retail copy, and rights and reproduction notices are handled here too. Our editors work to your house conventions and to the notation and terminology traditions of the repertoire.

What the editing involves

The editorial policy statement decides whether a scholarly edition is trusted, and it is routinely reduced to the single line "editorial additions appear in brackets" and nothing further. Performers need considerably more. A usable statement names every source consulted and gives each one its status. It says which source the edition follows where two of them conflict, and on what principle. It states how the editor's additions are distinguished from the composer's in each category of dynamics, articulation, accidentals, and fingering.

The critical commentary carries the same weight, and its usual fault is arrangement rather than content. Commentary set as continuous prose and ordered by movement has to be read through from the beginning. Commentary keyed to bar numbers can be consulted in the twenty seconds a rehearsal allows, so a player who wants bar 47 finds bar 47, reads one entry, and returns to the music. A statement should also record what has been silently normalized, because every edition normalizes something, and a player who finds an unmarked normalization stops trusting the volume.

Performance notes fail in a different way. They tend to record what the editor believes about the piece rather than what the player is to do with it. A note explaining that the wedge over the chord at bar 12 indicates a shortened and accented attack rather than a modern staccato gives a performer something usable at the music stand. Two paragraphs on the composer's aesthetic development give the performer nothing at that moment, and they belong in the preface, where a reader has time for them.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including unpublished editions, commissioned works, and licensing correspondence. We are editors, not musicologists or engravers, and we offer no opinion on source evaluation, editorial decisions, or performance practice. What we can do is make the apparatus clear, consistent, and quick to consult.