About Us
Our History
In 2008, after a week of rehearsals that consisted of regular questions such as "Where is your N? Okay, my N is different.", "Do you have measure numbers?", as well as constant questions on notes and the flailing of bows as the string sections scrambled to turn pages in the middle of active passages, we asked ourselves - does it have to be like this?
Based on those experiences, Performer's Edition was founded in late 2008 to provide modern, easy to read editions of standard classical works, as well as select new releases. Our philosophy is that the music we play from should be designed with the performer in mind and make it easy for the performer to read and rehearse the music so you can focus on performing.
In 2010, we introduced Performer's Reprints in partnership with IMSLP. These reprints of scanned historic parts and scores provide you with access to thousands of works, whether well known or obscure and out of print, at extremely low prices.
About Our Editions
All of our editions feature clean, modern typesetting of the music. Parts and scores are created from scratch for each edition - none of our editions are reprints or scans of historical parts.
We use a variety of source materials to research our editions, including first editions and composer's manuscripts whenever available. When editing the parts, we believe in minimizing extraneous markings and avoid adding our own interpretation. Fingerings, bowings, and other articulation marks are left to the performer as part of their interpretation.
Our parts and scores feature a number of consistent features:
- Measure numbers in all parts and scores for easier rehearsals
- Customary rehearsal numbers and letters in all parts and scores
- Logically designed page turns for easier performance
- English translations of non-standard Italian markings, as well as most markings in other languages
Additionally, only Performer's Edition offers an Accuracy Guarantee which replaces your printed music if you find a notation error.
About Our Publications
Each of our Editions is available both as printed music and as a downloadable PDF.
Our printed music is all printed on demand using digital printing technologies. By using these means, we are able to keep our costs significantly lower by eliminating costly offset printing jobs and inventory storage which results in publications that are much more affordable to you - in most cases, the cost to you is comparable to photocopying and binding your own parts. This also allows us to carry a range of more obscure music that would otherwise not be published due to the high overhead costs. More information on our printed music options is available here.
Our downloadable music uses the same source music files as our digitally printed music, but formatted for home or institutional printers. Each downloadable file is in standard letter size paper (8.5" x 11") allowing you to print at full size with no stretching or scaling of notes, which reduces the quality of the print. More information on our downloadable files is available here.
About Our Reprints
Our Performer's Reprints are created in conjunction with the International Music Score Library Project. Each of these publications is a reprint of a scanned copy of historic editions that have entered the public domain. Through this program, we are able to provide you with access to obscure and rare titles at a very reasonable cost.
As these documents are scans of historic documents, it is important to realize that there will be occasions where the original documents may have blemishes, fading, or yellowing, which cannot be corrected by our systems. We do, however, work to straighten scans, crop out unnecessary white space, and layout existing pages for effective page turns. Other corrections to parts, such as misprints, adding measure numbers, and other items are not possible. Thus, our accuracy guarantees for Performer's Editions are not applicable to Performer's Reprints. We strongly encourage you to view the original file by following the link on each reprint page prior to ordering.
