As you may have gathered from yester­day’s announce­ment, I am now a published composer. Semi-published, at any rate: six of my pieces are avail­able from the new edition Project Schott New York. I’m excited for this not because I put great stock in “being published”(after all, Andres & Sons Bakery is a very reputable imprint) but because of just how PSNY is going about it.

I’m writing this, as usual, on my iPad, which has also become my preferred score-reading device. The problem is, it can be diffi­cult to buy scores in digital form. Most public domain (“old”) music is easy to download, thanks to imslp.org, but perversely, the music of living composers is often only avail­able through old-fash­ioned, ugly, messy, slow, expen­sive rentals. PSNY is the first well-done attempt I’ve seen to move music publish­ing into the present, and it’s incred­i­bly simple: a list of composers, each with a selec­tion of DRM-free PDFs to purchase and download—that’s it. Each piece has a score preview, and most have record­ings (flash is, sadly, required). Right now I’m listen­ing to Greg Spears’s inge­nious string quartet Button­wood. You can also order printed mate­ri­als, though only in the US. Most of the reper­toire is for solo and small chamber combi­na­tions, which is what makes the most sense to order digi­tally. Orches­tral scores are tall and unwieldy and they’re going to need to make a much bigger iPad for that. 

The website itself is quite nice as well. No clutter, no ads, simple navi­ga­tion and struc­ture. I do wish these search fields lined up perfectly (or even better, if there were just one search field that you could specif­i­cally narrow down). As it turns out, the PSNY identity is the work of David Rudnick, who I’ve known since he started the quite aesthet­i­cally pleasing Volume magazine in college. 

I’ll be watching with great interest to see how PSNY fares. It’s a great step forward in making contem­po­rary music more accessible.