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Hello!I'm looking for following scores by O.Messiaen: Trois mélodies, Vocalise-Etude, Harawi, Chants de terre et de ciel, Pièce pour piano et quatuor à cordes.Is there somebody who can help me? I'll be grateful to you.

We can suggest a place for you to purchase, but that's about it.

A day after I post saying that the questions about composers born in the 20th century keep coming for some reason, here's another one. I wonder if someone is "testing" us to see if someone will actually post something like this. It's 2043 for Messiaen on this site, although Messiaen's latest works won't be free until the late 2080's (or later for those published after he died) in the US. Hope you're planning on living a long life.

madcapellan wrote: questions about composers born in the 20th century keep coming for some reason

I actually think this is a good sign for three reasons:
1. people are interested in these composers enough to look for their works
2. even though the IMSLP policy on PD works is not understood, they are looking to IMSLP as a reliable source of music, which is its purpose
3. once they have it driven into their heads that not everything that has been published or recorded is free, they may make the conceptual leap to understanding that originators of art (including their publishers) have a right to be paid for their labors (though not in perpetuity).

I myself have had to pay real money for my modest collection of Messiaen scores. And while I don't have any of the vocal works and only Vingt Regards among the piano pieces, i have managed to gather nearly all the organ music and about half of the orchestral works, including both the original and revised versions of the Turangalila symphony. But unless they come out in study-score form I don't think my budget will ever be able to afford scores of some of his last orchestral works, such as Des canyons aux étoile or Éclairs sur l'au-delà, much less a copy of his opera St. Francis, which goes for many hundreds of dollars. In contrast, there are many great 20th century composers whose copyrighted works seem to be reasonably priced, such as Varese and Copland. Somewhere in between fall composers like Boulez (though the score of his outstanding piece Repons, is only available on rental). Then there are those masters whose full and study scores have just about disappeared from the market at any price, such as Vaughan Williams and Walton, though this could be mainly an Oxford UP phenomenon.

--Sixtus

I think there needs to be a giant sticky at the top of this forum that clearly spells out the rules for making score requests. Before making score requests for a piece users should, at a MINIMUM, have to ask themselves: 1.) Has the composer been dead at least 50 years? (no=move on or make it clear in your post you're looking for information on how to purchase said score; yes=move to step 2), 2.) If this piece has words, has the librettist been dead at least 50 years? (same conditions apply), 3.) If this piece is an arrangement or transcription, or a notable edition, has the editor/arranger been dead at least 50 years? (same conditions apply). If all 3 of these conditions are met, post away and wait for a response, otherwise make it clear, and understand, that the piece PROBABLY isn't public domain, will not be posted to IMSLP, and/or that you are interested in paying for a copy. Following this formula would probably eliminate half of the posts in this forum.

sbeckmesser wrote:much less a copy of his opera St. Francis, which goes for many hundreds of dollars.

Try thousands. A full copy of that from Boosey is going for $2,700, and that's the cheap version. I know it's a long opera, but it's only about 1450 pages of music or so. That could've been published in two or three volumes, but instead it's put out in eight. It's the most ridiculously priced piece of music I've come across so far. And really, it's a shame a publisher is allowed to do something like this, because no one is going to lay out that kind of dough for one lousy score. It basically guarantees that a work will remain in obscurity (not necessarily the case here, but I'd say the work is less well known than others of Messiaen), and if no one's buying it, you're not making any money anyways. You'd better hope your library has it, and from what I can tell, most don't.

This is just another case of the "originators of art" not making a thing off of their work.

That's simply ridiculous. How do they expect any one to buy a copy? The raw print cost to issue a score of 2 volumes (1500 pages total) would be about $40-50 USD at 8.5 x 11 size in paperback. Of course all the retailers (Sheet Music Plus, DiAerzzo, Amazon, etc.) demand a hefty discount off the retail price to include anything in their online catalogs. Amazon's demanded discount is to pay only 45% of the list price, for example. Also, you have to factor in the cost of engraving 1400-plus pages of music (well north of $10,000 USD). Therefore, $400-$500 for a 2 volume set would be understandable when you add in the Messiaen estate's desire for royalties. But $2700? What did they do, print the score on gold leaf? That's just insane.

The length is bad; the number of parts is also something that makes it hard to publish probably.

And the estate probably wants libretto and score royalties

I had found a website that contained these, with along many other orchestral works of his. Mind you these chaps that are running the site are looking for trouble. Its lookable-upable but you have to browse at your own convenience. (Meaning you have to find the website)

I highly doubt someone scanned St. Francois d'Assise, although the site classicscores.narod.ru was brought up, which does have a number of Messiaen scores (not including the opera). These would of course be illegal to download in most countries of the world (with Russia apparently not caring), and won't be eligible for upload on this site for another 33 years. I apologize if you mean a different site that actually does have the opera up for download, but I'd only believe that when I see it.

I can possibly understand elevated prices if it is cost-recovery: the outlay for Bärenreiter to typeset the full score, vocal score and parts for the NBE Benvenuto Cellini is nowhere close to having been recouped, and the volumes of full score are over the €1,000 mark. According to Holoman each page of the parts averaged out to about USD 100, and the edition of the opera incorporated 3 distinct performing versions which might in practice have meant three distinct sets of parts, or a very long print to indicate the differences and options in each.

The elevated high price for the Messiaen opera could be on the grounds of the very large costs of typesetting and producing parts being amortised over a relatively small print run. However as Carolus pointed out printing 1450 pages at A4 is not that hugely expensive, and so doubling the print run should not have resulted in considerable extra expense; the net result would be to nearly halve the price. Perhaps the publishers are resigned to selling the work only to institutional buyers at a miniscule rate: the stock is dead money.

I have less sympathy for other publishers who charge large amounts of money for low-quality manuscript facsimiles when they have made no effort to have the material typeset, and the price is substantially higher than the labour costs of someone standing over a photocopier watching pages come out.

PML

pml wrote:
I have less sympathy for other publishers who charge large amounts of money for low-quality manuscript facsimiles when they have made no effort to have the material typeset, and the price is substantially higher than the labour costs of someone standing over a photocopier watching pages come out.

PML

True, but at least some publishers are feeling motivated to make said facsimiles. It is now possible to preform practically anything published before 1750 from the original edition.

perlnerd666 wrote: It is now possible to preform practically anything published before 1750 from the original edition.

Boy would I like to have a color facsimiles of as much of the Magnus Liber Organi that survives. And, to keep this on-topic, Messiaen probably would have liked such facsimiles too. And why haven't Hildegard von Bingen's MSS appeared here, or anywhere else? Certainly by now, almost a millenium later, they all should be out of copyright.

--Sixtus

I sympathize with both sides of the argument. However, the Saint Francois are not normal scores. They are larger than A3 size (so those wanting to scan would need an incredibly big machine), and they are beautifully engraved. Moreover, they are printed on extremely high quality paper. They are, in short, the most beautifully set scores I have seen of any work from any period. In setting these scores, this was self-consciously a showpiece project for the magnum opus by what the man then widely considered to be the world's greatest living (certainly most influential) living composer. The size is needed as, in places, there are up to 70 staves, and these scores are intended primarily for performance. While it would seem to make sense to have them in three volumes, this would actually make them impractical. In time, I suspect Leduc will provide a study score version, but, along with the other French publishers, they are not renowned for their market sense. The cost of the scores is entirely Leduc's responsibility and nothing to do with the Messiaen estate. However, while the French publishers have never understood economies of scale, it is worth noting that the initial investment in this work was absolutely vast (6 figure sums), and the care taken is reflected in the fact that Messiaen insisted in having three months to proof-read each volume of the score. If only Debussy had done the same with some of his works.

So is the question about how society supports composers and makes the product of their creativity available? I fear I open a much broader thread. How to organise Patronage? And whilst I love to see the pdfs, will I ever get over the thrill of holding the printed copy, especially when it has the composer's signature and a greeting on it? So if market economics price out the majority... maybe some rethinking is required. What would Messian have wanted? Sorry.. no answers.. only questions to ponder over?
Peter Dyson