Arias, Ensembles, & Choruses

Book excerpt: Conductors John Yaffé and David Daniels have created a one-stop sourcebook for orchestras, opera companies, conductors, and librarians who research and/or prepare programs of vocal excerpts—such as solos, ensembles, and choruses—for concert performance. In this book, readers will find detailed information on a vast repertoire of vocal pieces commonly extracted from operas, operettas, musicals, and oratorios—more than 1,750 excerpts from 450 parent works. Modeled on Daniels’ Orchestral Music, Arias, Ensembles, & Choruses includes basic historical details about each parent work as well as extract titles, subtitles, voice types, keys, durations, locations in the original work (with page numbers in both full scores and piano-vocal scores), and exact instrumentation. It also lists the publishers that make available the orchestral materials for just the excerpt being programmed, independent of the full parent work. Until now, conductors and orchestra librarians commonly had to first leaf through full scores, searching for one elusive three-minute aria after another, only to then consult multiple publishers' catalogues to compile crucial information on all the excerpts proposed for a concert or recording. This book constitutes a single source for finding that information. In many cases, the individual entries include valuable insider information on common performance practice, including start- and stop-points, transpositions, and conventional cuts. Searching for repertoire is made easy with the detailed title index and appendixes devoted to ensemble excerpts, all categorized by personnel (e.g., duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, choruses) and language (Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian). This book is the ideal tool for the working conductor and orchestral librarian, as well as music program directors at colleges and conservatories, opera companies, and symphony orchestras. As of October 2015, a new printing of this book has occurred to correct errors in the index. A PDF version of the new index is available to previous purchasers of the volume. Please contact Rowman & Littlefield's music editor for assistance.