Choral Public Domain Library

Hey Folks,

One of my pet peeves is the style and design of covers for large scale vocal works, and how they appear in performance. Invariably, we end up putting these choral piano/vocal in some kind of ad hoc cover, like a black 3-ring binder, or some such.

For example, we will mount several performances of Messiah this year, using the Watkins-Shaw Novello edition. The cover to this is loudly orange, and, IMO, must be hidden.

Does anyone know of a source of easily slipped on opaque plastic covers for vocal/piano scores like this? I'm thinking a flat black would be great. When I went to school in Germany, years ago, we had these things called "Umschlagen", which were of various colors, that covered our "Hefts", i.e., the paper covered notebooks we used for our maths, penmanship, literature, and other homework assignments.

I need a source for these "Umschlagen", to cover this Watkins-Shaw in performance. Inexpensive, of course. Any ideas?

-Bruce

Hi Bruce,

This reply is far too late for your needs, but it may help in the future.
Years ago I sang in a choir using the selfsame orange Messiah edition. Our solution was simply to paste black construction paper on the covers (we were required to purchase our own copies of the score). The danger was that paper with the wrong kind of dye could stain sweaty hands.

I have seen similar Umschlagen occasionally, probably available from bookstores. I'm not sure how workable they would be, given the wide variation in sizes of music scores. Even the Watkins Shaw comes in more than one size.

Good luck with this,
David

Hi David,

Covering with paper is probably the way to go. We perform Messiah (Part 1) in two weeks, so I think I'll live with the existing cpver for that. In the spring, however, we'll do the whole thing, and I may make some kind of an issue out of this.

Would you believe that for one performance in the past (I think it may have been Mozart's Requiem), choristers were asked to cover their books in black, somehow. One creative soul took black shoe polish to his cover. ... not recommended, but I think it actually worked.

-Bruce