EMS website

Page from table of contents

A new product, the Orchestra Musician's CD-ROM Library, offers parts for 90 orchestral works for a variety of instruments including trumpet. Volume 1 is now out and volumes 2 and 3 are expected by the winter of 2004. Each instrument-specific volume costs US $19.95 or €22. Volume 1's surprising table of contents (viewable on the website) includes all the Beethoven symphonies, many other Beethoven orchestral and choral pieces, all the Schubert symphonies, and more works by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Weber and Rossini among others. The library is produced by EMS music, who were established in 1979. The company supplies orchestras and music dealers with orchestra materials and has offices in Wallhausen, Germany and in the USA.

EMS Music adds: "The CD-ROM may be used with a PC or an Apple Macintosh computer. The user may view the parts on their monitors and then decide whether to print the complete part. These parts can be used for teaching, practicing, and auditioning. With the aid of the CD, one is able to examine the exact context of an orchestral passage or to print out a lost part within seconds. No special software or entry codes are required. Adobe Acrobat Reader, contained in the CD, is the program used as the product’s basis."

Initial reaction from trumpet players and teachers, as evidenced in online communities, seems to be positive. One TPIN comment was "most things that sound too good to be true usually are" but EMS seem to have either read this or seen it coming: the website avers: "It's not too good to be true because it is true!" Another university trumpet teacher comments: "Yes, I have my copy, and I'm making ALL of my students buy it. It is an unbelievable deal ... It sure beats carrying around ten pounds of excerpt books that you then have to wade through to find specific excerpts."

By the time the whole project is finished it is hoped that about 600 works will be available in this form. This might suggest that the number of volumes at the conclusion will perhaps be somewhere between six and ten, at a total cost for the whole library of up to maybe US $200 or €220 although this is necessarily speculative as the website does not yet confirm the finished number of volumes nor the density of pieces per volume. What is clear though is that, compared to buying separate parts, or obtaining all of the music in excerpt books (even if that were possible) the series constitutes a real bargain. It will be interesting to see how players' and teachers' use of it develops as more volumes are issued.

Website:
Orchestra Musician's CD-ROM Library (in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish)