Choral Public Domain Library

Hi all,

After several years of using CPDL church music scores, I'd like to try my hand submitting something back.

I've had a few scans through the forums, and I'm not sure how to handle my first submission.

First a bit of history. Some time ago, I used Michael Wendel's arrangement of the Morales Magnificat Quarti Toni "Et Exultavit" http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Magn ... Morales%29 with my choir at an Evensong. We needed a Nunc Dimittis to go with it. What I did at the time was to take the Magnificat Quarti Toni "Anima Mea" and arrange three of the sections to give us a passable Nunc Dimittis in the same mode, and with music by the same composer.

We're doing the same combination again in a couple of weeks. Following that I'll have (hopefully) ironed out the bugs in the Nunc Dimittis, and I'd like to release it on CPDL under the same licence as Michael Wendel's Magnificat. The hope is that with a combined Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis available, choirs will be encouraged to perform Morales as part of an Evensong.

So what I'll have is a piece written by Morales, but with completely different words and substantially re-arranged.

I'd seem to have the following options :-

• Do I publish it as a variant of the Magnificat "Anima Mea", despite it not being a Magnificat?
• Do I publish it as a Morales "Nunc Dimittis", even though Morales (as far as I know) wrote no such piece?

The first seems quite attractive to me, as users are likely to come across it when browsing the Morales Magnificats anyway. I can also add a link from the page of available settings of the "Nunc Dimittis", and possibly the "Evening Canticles". Since I've not done this before however, I thought it best to ask before I did anything anyway. Any feedback will be much appreciated.

Hi, thanks for your offer to share your arrangement of the Morales' Magnificat!

If you had just replaced the original text in order to produce a contrafactum Nunc Dimittis, I'd say that there would be no problem in posting it to the Morales' page. But as you said it's substantially re-arranged, in my opinion it should go on a separate page titled "Nunc dimittis (Burt M...)" and inside it, a description text explaining the references used.

Regards,

Hi Carlos - thanks for the swift reply.

I'll be a bit clearer about the changes I've made (the 'substantial rearrangements') as I'd rather go with advice from you and/or others based on experience rather than just blundering on.

• The original Morales "Anima Mea" Magnificat setting which I've used as a starting point contains the odd verses from the Magnificat + Gloria. This is a total of 6 verses.
• The Nunc Dimittis (+ Gloria) is considerably shorter, needing only 3 verses. I've set even verses rather than odd, to make a better match for the "Et Exultavit" Magnificat.
• In all sections, some splits and merges of notes have been made to better fit the different words
• The "Et Misericordia eius" from the original becomes "Quia viderunt oculi mei". I've cut this section in the middle to cope with the shorter words, while preserving the cantus firmus.
• "Suscepit Israel" from the original becomes "Lumen ad revelationem gentium".
• In the Gloria, the "Gloria Patri" is now "Sicut Erat".

It's certainly not contrafactum, but perhaps substantially re-arranged is a bit strong. Opinions anyone?

I would not post it on the Morales Magnificat page, but rather as "Nunc dimittis (Morales)" with descriptions on what you did, and then add a link to this arrangement from the respective Magnificat page.

This way, choirs seeking a "Nunc dimittis" will easier find it.

Christoph

Nunc dimittis Quarti Toni (Cristóbal de Morales, adapt. Burt...) is most likely the correct way to go.

The work is an adaptation of one work to another text, different from a contrafactum (in which the music is basically unaltered). The word adaptation identifies it as a particular kind of arrangement.

By all means, links between this work and the Morales Magnificat page are most appropriate.

That's great - ta.

I take the point about using the word adaptation as identifying the type of the arrangement. Would this appear in the page title?

I can't find any examples of similar adaptations already on CPDL which surprises me; I was hoping to use something else as an example, or a template. Have I missed something obvious?

As ever, thanks for any feedback.

It happens from time to time, burtm, but not all that often.

The page title should always be "Work_Title_(Composer)" with the adaptation bit clearly included in the body of the page. This is to allow our categorisation system to work as easily as possible.

burtm wrote:I can't find any examples of similar adaptations already on CPDL which surprises me; Have I missed something obvious?

In http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Folksongs you'll find many examples of arrangements of Tradicional music that take the arranger's name between parentheses in the title, instead of "(Traditional)".

There are also many cases of works by one composer that later were re-arranged or modified by another composer:

http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ave_ ... t-Dietsch)
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Ave_ ... ch-Gounod)
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Duet ... o_Rossini)
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Less ... rian_Wall)
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/For_ ... hley_Hall)
http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Whil ... C3%BCngst)

For what it's worth, my feeling is that a dual composer title rather than just the modern composer title is more appropriate in this instance, such as is commonly used (on CPDL and off) for the Bach-Gounod, where Bach wrote the composition, Gounod wrote the vocal melody on top of it, and arranged sacred lyrics to fit it. I think this also communicates to people clearly in search results that the piece has something to do with the original composer but has been modified, even when not viewed through the composer's page but by doing a search on the text and seeing search results displayed there.

I'm leaning towards the dual composer/arranger idea proposed by Charles and vaarky. It's a clear indication of the pedigree of the piece (or lack of it!), which would certainly help the casual browser when trying to determine whether or not a particular piece would be a good fit for their own choir.

I've also got an arrangement of the Primi Toni which could go on the same page at a later date, when it's had another outing.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed to this thread.