Katy Hamilton

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I am a deeply old-fashioned kind of person. This is, I realise, a rather ironic statement with which to begin a blog post, brought to you all via social media – the power of a democratised means of publishing which has so revolutionised the ways in which we interact with each other. But, at the risk of sounding like a bit of a luddite, I have read about a brand new sheet music app this last week and it worries me. So I thought if I outlined my concerns, you could all comment, tweet, or otherwise upbraid me for being such a stick-in-the-mud.

An email arrived in my inbox a few days ago from Henle Verlag, that distinguished music publisher of so many fine scores, collected editions, and other high-quality volumes. The message announced that the company is “redefining sheet music”, via a nifty new app called Henle Library, available on iPad this month and via Android from June. Clicking on the links in the email, I was directed to a smart webpage with an introductory video, a mass of testimonials, and an outline of what the app actually provides. Basically, it is a tool with which you can draw together a heap of different sources and editions, in a variety of languages, annotate it yourself, and carry it anywhere on your tablet. You can buy individual parts of multi-part works, customise the score layout, and so on. And, of course, it’s particularly super-special because it’s Henle high quality scores – “the most reliable Urtext editions in the world.”

There is no doubting the quality of many Henle editions, and the material that they are making available via this digital platform (fingerings from the later nineteenth century onwards, for example) is fascinating. Still, even leaving aside for a moment the very knotty problem of “reliable Urtext editions” (there’s another blog post here if anyone wants me to write it…), I would like to provide a gentle reminder here of what pre-“redefined” sheet music, at its best, offers musicians:

• Clearly-engraved, professionally edited scores
• Careful decisions regarding layout, placing of page turns, and quantity of editorial information
• Full scores and parts to allow cross-referral for all players
• Two-page at a time viewing: that is, the open book
• A format that can be carried anywhere, at any time, without the need for a power source, built to last for decades, without requiring upgrades of any kind

Consider the digital age of music engraving thus far. Any of us with access to the right software can write our own music at home. We will do so without the professional eye of a trained engraver; the software will put the page turns where it likes unless we know to tell it otherwise, the paper size will be whatever our printer spits out, and the layout will be what will be, without a lot of time and effort to fix it. The psychological impact of a score layout on a performer is huge – I say this as a performer myself, and as someone who has worked for many years with professionals and amateurs who have remarked upon this. But unless you have a lot of spare time for formatting, and the right paper size and binding facilities to hand, you’re going to end up with potentially weirdly laid-out bits of A4 in a folder, or taped together.

I refer you, at this point, to the promotional points and testimonials of the new Henle Library.

View it on a tablet! Great. One page at a time, then? Or printing it out in A4 and taping it together?

See the score in a kind of high definition far greater than that of the printed page! Er… I can’t recall anyone ever telling me that their sheet music wasn’t high res enough to read what Beethoven wrote.

Alter the format at will! I see, of course, that this has some great access advantages. But for the majority of us, that will only involve messing with page turns and careful layouts that have already been planned with care and thought.

Add and adjust your own annotations! Yes. I believe they already had a thing that did that. Pencil and rubber, weren’t they called?

Carry all your scores anywhere! This is the Kindle argument, and frankly I was baffled by that one as well. It is a rare person indeed who requires so many volumes wherever they go that it would be beyond their physical abilities to carry everything they actually needed (or access copies on their travels via libraries or bookshops).

The bottom line is, of course, that printed sheet music does not sell in sufficient quantities to make music publishers any kind of decent income. A digital resource ticks all the ‘updating the business’ image boxes, and makes the gamut of a company’s scores available instantly, and without the additional cost of printing and binding, to whoever would like them. But I worry that this is very much a part of the ‘good enough’ theory of business modelling. It’s good enough to get away with making it available, despite the shortcomings I’ve pointed out (and there are surely others). It’s also a guarantee that an individual will carry on looking at Henle scores above all others, having bothered to get the app and having been given the impression of a wide choice of editions – all, of course, within the Henle back catalogue. (IMSLP, by contrast, and due to its reliance on out-of-copyright scores, provides a far wider variety of sources.) And it’s yet another reason to sit at home and have the scores come straight to you, rather than going to the library and browsing the shelves. There, you might compare editions available. There, you might find pieces you didn’t even know existed. And you might also come to notice that actually, for all that they don’t allow HD viewing, finger-tap zoom, or a backlit image, the form of technology which remains the most flexible, enduring, professionally-produced and democratic is, ladies and gentlemen… the book. And there are many libraries already in existence, non-company-specific and both hugely deserving and in need of our time and care. Please don’t forget them.