Music Online

Rave review of Classical Scores Library

The March 2010 issue of CHOICE features a rave review of Classical Scores Library, written by A.J. Adam. After highlighting the collection's playlist functionality and search, browse, and print options, Adam says, “A number of smaller pay-per-view and free collections are available from other providers . . . but the Alexander Street site is by far the largest and most comprehensive product on the market to date. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All users.”

CHOICE subscribers can read the full review here.

For more information on Classical Scores Library, or to request a trial or price quote for your library, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Free Download: Schumann's Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22

Robert Schumann wrote this sonata for piano as a reworking of his Concert sans orchestre (1836). The final movement was revised in 1838 after Schumann decided he wasn't satisfied with the original.

This recording is performed by Abdel Rahman El Bacha, pianist.

Download this work now through March 2, 2010 at http://musicdownloads.alexanderstreet.com/promo/

Classical Music Library currently contains over 125 works by Schumann. Subscribers can view these works here.

New music content uploaded

New content has been added to several of our music listening and music reference collections. Subscribing customers can access the new additions immediately within the following collections:

• African American Music Reference: 1,317 pages in 15 titles from Chelsea House Publishers,
  Hampton Institute Press, and David McKay. New titles include:
  
  • Traditional Black Music Series (13 volumes) by Jerry Silverman (sheet music including spirituals, slave songs, songs of protest and civil rights)
  • Sheet music of hymns and religious folk songs published by
    Hampton Institute Press
  • Echoes of Africa in Folk Songs of the Americas (Beatrice Landeck)
  • African American Music Reference now totals 34,112 pages
• American Song: 912 tracks from 40 albums of traditional folk songs, rural blues, gospel hymns, and more. Highlights include:
  
  • 9 volumes of traditional folk songs recorded specifically for American Song by folk singer Jerry Silverman. These folk songs were collected and published in his Folk Song Encyclopedia. These are the recordings that complement the sheet music in the Encyclopedia. Liner notes for the songs include a description of the folk song plus the complete lyrics.
  • Country/rural blues from Takoma Records
  • I'm Going Down to North Carolina - The Complete Recording of the Red Fox Chasers, 1928-31, from Tompkins Square Records
• Classical Music Library: 3,528 tracks from 258 albums from Bridge Records, Celestial Harmonies, and Mark Custom Records, We’ve added 1,300 new compositions to the collection, including wind ensemble/wind symphonies, choral music, contemporary music by Luciano Berio, David Rakowski, and more. Examples of new albums include:
  
  • David Rakowski: Etudes, Vol. 3
  • Three Quartets: The Apollo Saxophone Quartet
  • Theme and Variations: Improvisations On Children's Songs
  • H. Kling: 40 Characteristic Etudes for French Horn
  • Susan Levitin, Gerald Rizze: 20th Century American Duos for Flute & Piano
  • The American Impressionist Organ
• Jazz Music Library: Additional indexing has been completed for over 1,000 albums in Jazz Music Library. We released new fields, including complete instrumentation, subgenres, and biographical data for these albums.
• Classical Scores Library: 9,716 pages from 205 scores from Faber Music, Ltd., and Universal Edition. New scores include compositions by Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, Alban Berg, Victoria Borisova-Ollas, Anne Boyd, Arcangelo Corelli, Colin Matthews, Robert Schumann, Peter Sculthorpe, Carl Vine, Carl Maria von Weber, and more. Classical Scores Library now contains 14,757 scores and 318,263 pages.

Music Online now contains:

• 254,372 tracks (US/Canada customers) / 219,704 tracks (non-US/Canada customers)
• 17,644 albums (US/Canada customers) / 15,155 albums (non-US/Canada customers)
• 62,029 pages of text reference
• 16,764 scores (318,263 pages)
• 407 videos

To request a price quote or free trial to Music Online, or any of the individual music collections, please email sales@alexanderstreet.com.

Music Online to triple in size!

All of our music listening (in streaming audio) collections will nearly triple in size over the course of 2010, growing from our current total of nearly 263,000 recordings to more than 720,000 by December of this year.* Online collections that will see huge increases in numbers of recordings—without a price increase—include:

• Classical Music Library (http://clmu.alexanderstreet.com) will grow from roughly 64,000 to  approximately 155,000 recordings
• Jazz Music Library (http://jazz.alexanderstreet.com) will grow from roughly 60,000 to approximately 122,000 recordings
• American Song (http://amso.alexanderstreet.com) will grow from roughly 69,000 to approximately 114,000 recordings
• Contemporary World Music (http://womu.alexanderstreet.com) will grow from roughly 28,000 to approximately 196,000  recordings
• Subscribers to the entire Music Online Listening package (which includes the four collections above as well as Smithsonian Global Sound® for Libraries) will see their number of recordings increase by an additional 140,000 popular music recordings. New popular music content will include a wide mix of genres, from children’s music, to new age, film soundtracks, hip-hop/rap, electronic, and rock with artists such as Tonya Tucker, a Flock of Seagulls, Donna Summer, Edith Piaf, Chicago, Iggy Pop, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, Liberace, and many more.

Other planned improvements to Music Online Listening collections in 2010:

• Improved bit rates and sound quality levels. Going forward, every recording added to Music Online will be available at 320 kbps; by 2011, this higher level will be available for every recording in Music Online.
• Mobile access to all Music Online listening collections: Later in 2010 we’ll release iPhone and other applications that let users stream Music Online listening content on the go!
• Lower prices for several individual online listening collections will make it easier for small libraries who can’t afford package subscriptions to purchase the individual collections of most interest to them. We’re also offering special pricing to all first-time Music Online customers. Contact sales@alexanderstreet.com for a price quote.

* Number of recordings available to US and Canadian customers will differ from those available to customers in the rest of the world. Contact us for more information.

Free Download: Skryabin's 8 Etudes for Piano, Op. 42

Aleksandr Skryabin (Scriabin) composed this set of etudes in 1903. Skryabin was a talented pianist and composed many works for keyboard in his compositional output.

This recording is performed by pianist Nicole Afriat.

Download this work now at http://musicdownloads.alexanderstreet.com/promo/

Classical Music Library subscribers can browse all of Skryabin's works here.

New MARC record sets available

We've just released new item-level MARC record sets for Jazz Music Library, American Song, and Classical Music Library.

• Jazz Music Library - This is the first item-level set released, and it includes 1,892 records representing 1,965 albums in the collection. Records have been made available in both MARC8 and UTF8 formats, and supplemental MARC record sets for the remaining albums will be released later this year.
• American Song - This is the first item-level set released, and it includes 898 records representing 1,065 albums. Records have been made available in both MARC8 and UTF8 formats, and supplemental MARC record sets for the remaining albums will be released later this year.
• Classical Music Library - This is the third supplemental set released, and it includes 400 records representing 439 albums in the collection. Records have been made available in both MARC8 and UTF8 formats, and additional supplemental sets will be released later this year. To date, we have released 1,177 records representing 1,413 albums.

All MARC record sets and the new schedule of releases can be downloaded at http://marc.alexanderstreet.com.