IMSLP:Community Projects/Merton Project

See also: Merton Parts

Contents

History/Description

Theo Wyatt retired from the British Civil Service in 1977 having devoted most of his private life to playing string quartets with his violinist wife Kitty and teaching and organizing courses for adult recorder players. In 1983 he found a way to realize a long-standing ambition to publish recorder music very cheaply, scanning hand-written music on a primitive rotary scanner, printing it on a primitive duplicator and selling it by mail order at 3p. per page. Oriel Library flourished and in twelve years had sold 3 million pages of music.

In 1996 a health scare persuaded him to transfer the business to his daughter, a decision regretted as soon as the scare passed. He turned his attention to string chamber music, starting Merton Music to put back into circulation some of the vast number of works that had been allowed to go out of print. The technology available to the back-room publisher had advanced enormously but the cheeseparing business methods that had made Oriel Library successful were unchanged:

The lowest price that would avoid a risk of the project eating into his pension; No royalty payments, so no copyright music: No advertising; so nothing more than a plain home-made catalogue backed by word of mouth recommendation among the close-knit chamber music community; No discounts, no retail sales. All orders posted direct to the customer. Overseas a team of enthusiastic amateurs on minimal commission forwarding orders and banking cheques. In 14 years the catalog has grown to 1300 items, easily the largest catalog of string chamber music in the world.. And - what is truly miraculous – its acquisition has cost nothing. Every original used has been donated or freely lent.

As he approached his 90th year Theo judged it prudent to look for a successor and was fortunate to find John Harding who was developing plans for his own Ourtext music publishing venture. By the end of 2010 John will have taken over the whole business. He has already embarked on a programme of improving the presentation of Merton titles, many of which were hurriedly scanned in the early days from old editions with many imperfections, and has plans to move the operation to join Ourtext on the Internet.

The discovery of IMSLP with objectives so closely aligned with their own, enabled them to add an extra layer of security to the future of their work.. When the Merton Music Project is complete and all its working files are on the wiki Theo and John will have the comfort of knowing that if no successor can be found when John needs to retire, their labours over the past 14 years and the generosity of the friends who provided the original material will not be wasted but preserved for future generations of chamber music lovers.

Former Members

Project Leader: Carolus
Active: KGill
Inactive: Perlnerd666

Templates

To be inserted in the "Misc. Notes" field

  • {{WyattProject}} — used for a set of parts of string chamber music without piano (String Trios, String Quartets)
  • {{WyattProjectPF}} — used for a set of parts of string chamber music with piano (Piano Trios, Piano Quartets)
  • {{WyattProjectSC}} — used for study scores

Status

Complete.

Printing Instructions

For miniature scores

Print landscape on A4 (297 x 210mm) in duplex fashion (even pages on back of odd). Last page is for cover. On other paper sizes center text with printer control options. Staple and fold to form booklet.

For works with piano (Merton catalog number with 7 as second digit)

Print landscape on A3 (420 x 297mm) in duplex fashion (even pages on back of odd). Last two pages are for covers. On other paper sizes center text with printer control options. Fold string parts separately. Piano part is in separate fascicles; when folding have regard to sequence of page numbers.

For all other works

Print landscape on A3 (420 x 297mm) in duplex fashion (even pages on back of odd). Last page is for cover. On other paper sizes center text with printer control options. Fold string parts separately to form booklets.

Il est possible d'obtenir une impression recto-verso lisible même lorsque l'on ne dispose que d'une imprimante A4 . Marche à suivre : utiliser Adobe Acrobat version 10 , imprimer le fichier en prenant garde aux points suivants: dans le cadre "Gestion des pages"/liste déroulante "Mise à l'échelle" choisir l'item "Juxtaposer toutes les pages" , dans le champ "Echelle de la mosaïque" , diminuer le chiffre jusqu'à ce que la vignette en partie droite de la fenêtre ne comporte plus que 2 pages (dans mon cas j'ai du descendre jusqu'à 96,5%), mettre à 0 le champ "Chevauchement"; dans le cadre "Etendue" / liste déroulante "Jeu partiel" choisir d'abord "Pages impaires" ; lancer l'impression ; récupérer la pile de papier imprimé et permuter les feuilles 2 à 2 (c.a.d. : la 1ère devient la deuxième , la 2ème devient la 1ère , la 3ème devient la 4ème , la 4ème devient la 3ème ...); replacer la pile de papier ainsi retriée dans le bac d'entrée de l'imprimante et relancer l'impression de la même manière , mais en choisissant cette fois les pages paires.