Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Encyclopedia
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
era.
Exceptionally prolific and versatile, he produced compositions of the highest quality in several genres. His mastery in writing sacred vocal music, above all, was recognized and hailed by his contemporaries.
He was unrelated to Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier
Gustave Charpentier, , born in Dieuze, Moselle on 25 June 1860, died Paris, 18 February 1956) was a French composer, best known for his opera Louise.-Life and career:...
, the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth French opera composer.
Life
Charpentier was born in or near Paris, the son of a master scribe who had very good connections to influential families in the Parlement of Paris. Marc-Antoine received a very good education, perhaps with the help of the Jesuits, and registered for law school in Paris when he was eighteen. He withdrew after one semester. He spent "two or three years" in Rome, probably between 1667 and 1669, and studied with Giacomo CarissimiGiacomo Carissimi
Giacomo Carissimi was an Italian composer, one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque, or, more accurately, the Roman School of music.-Biography:...
. He is also known to have been in contact with poet-musician Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy
Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy
Charles Coypeau was a French musician and burlesque poet. In the mid-1630s he began using the nom de plume "D'Assouci" or "Dassoucy".-Life:...
, who was composing for the French Embassy in Rome. A legend claims that Charpentier initially traveled to Rome to study painting before he was discovered by Carissimi. This story is undocumented and possibly untrue. (At any rate, although his 28 volumes of autograph manuscripts reveal considerable skill at tracing the arabesques used by professional scribes, they contain not a single drawing, not even a rudimentary sketch.) Regardless, he acquired a solid knowledge of contemporary Italian musical practice and brought it back to France.
Immediately on his return to France, Charpentier probably began working as house composer to Marie de Lorraine, duchesse de Guise, who was known familiarly as "Mlle de Guise." She gave him an "apartment" in the recently renovated Hôtel de Guise — strong evidence that Charpentier was not a paid domestic who slept in a small room in the vast residence, but was instead a courtier who occupied one of the new apartments in the stable wing.
For the next seventeen years, Charpentier composed a considerable quantity of vocal works for her, among them Psalm settings, hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s, motets, a Magnificat
Magnificat
The Magnificat — also known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary — is a canticle frequently sung liturgically in Christian church services. It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn...
setting, a mass
Mass (music)
The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...
and a Dies Irae
Dies Irae
Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...
for the funeral of her nephew Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise
Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise
Louis Joseph de Lorraine Duke of Guise and Duke of Angoulême, was the only son of Louis, Duke of Joyeuse and Marie Françoise de Valois, the only daughter of the Count of Alès, Governor of Provence and son of Charles de Valois Duke of Angoulême, a bastard of Charles IX of France.-Biography:He was...
, and a succession of Italianate oratorios set to non-liturgical Latin texts. (Charpentier preferred the Latin canticum to the Italian term, oratorio). Throughout the 1670s, the bulk of these works were for trios. The usual trio was two women and a singing bass, plus two treble instruments and continuo; but when performance in the chapel of a male monastic community required male voices, he would write for a counter-tenor (himself?), a tenor and a bass, plus the same instruments.
Then, circa 1680, Mlle de Guise increased the size of the ensemble, until it included 13 performers and a singing teacher. (Étienne Loulié
Étienne Loulié
Étienne Loulié , was a musician, pedagogue and musical theorist.-Life:Born into a family of Parisian sword-finishers, Loulié learned both musical practice...
, the senior instrumentalist, probably was entrusted with coaching the newer instrumentalists.) Despite what is often asserted, during his seventeen years in the service of Mlle de Guise, Charpentier was not the "director" of the Guise ensemble. The director was a gentleman of Mlle de Guise's court, an amateur musician, Italianophile, and Latinist named Philippe Goibaut, familiarly called Monsieur Du Bois. Owing to Mlle de Guise's love for Italian music (a passion she shared with Du Bois), and her frequent entertaining of Italians passing through Paris, there was little reason for Charpentier to conceal the Italianisms he had learned in Rome. (Did Du Bois write the Latin libretti for all those Italianate oratorios?)
During his years of service to Mlle de Guise, he also composed for "Mme de Guise", Louis XIV's first cousin. It was in large part owing to Mme de Guise's protection that the Guise musicians were allowed to perform Charpentier's chamber operas in defiance of the monopoly held by Jean Baptiste Lully. Most of the operas and pastorales in French, which date from 1684–1687, appear to have been commissioned by Mme de Guise for performance at court entertainments during the winter season; but Mlle de Guise doubtlessly included them in the entertainments she sponsored several times a week in her palatial Parisian residence
During his seventeen-odd years at the Hôtel de Guise, Charpentier had written almost as many pages of music for outside commissions as he had for Mlle de Guise. (He routinely copied these outside commissions in notebooks with roman numerals.) For example, after Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's falling out with Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
in 1672, Charpentier had begun writing incidental music for the spoken theater of Molière. It probably was owing to pressure on Molière exerted by Mlle de Guise and by young Mme de Guise that the playwright took the commission for incidental music for Le Malade imaginaire away from Dassoucy and gave it to Charpentier. After Molière's death in 1673, Charpentier continued to write for the playwright's successors, Thomas Corneille
Thomas Corneille
Thomas Corneille was a French dramatist.- Personal life :Born in Rouen nearly twenty years after his brother Pierre, the "great Corneille", Thomas's skill as a poet seems to have shown itself early. At the age of fifteen he composed a play in Latin which was performed by his fellow-pupils at the...
and Jean Donneau de Visé
Jean Donneau de Visé
Jean Donneau de Visé was a French journalist, royal historian , playwright and publicist. He was founder of the literary, arts and society gazette "le Mercure galant" and was associated with the "Moderns" in the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns".Donneau de Visé was among the detractors...
. Play after play, he would compose pieces that demanded more musicians than the number authorized by Lully's monopoly over theatrical music. By 1685, the troop ceased flouting these restrictions. Their capitulation ended Charpentier's career as a composer for the spoken theater.
In 1679, Charpentier had been singled out to compose for Louis XIV's son, the Dauphin. Writing primarily for the prince's private chapel, he composed devotional pieces for a small ensemble composed of royal musicians: the two Pièche sisters singing with a bass named Frizon, and instruments played by the two Pièche brothers. In short, an ensemble that, with Mlle de Guise's permission, could perform works he had earlier composed for the Guises. By early 1683, when he was awarded a royal pension, Charpentier was being commissioned to write for court events such as the annual Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi (feast)
Corpus Christi is a Latin Rite solemnity, now designated the solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ . It is also celebrated in some Anglican, Lutheran and Old Catholic Churches. Like Trinity Sunday and the Solemnity of Christ the King, it does not commemorate a particular event in...
procession. In April of that year, he became so ill that he had to withdraw from the competition for the sub-mastership of the royal chapel. Speculations that he withdrew because he knew he would not win seem disproved by his autograph notebooks: he wrote nothing at all from April through mid-August of that year, strong evidence that he was too ill to work.
From late 1687 to early 1698, Charpentier served as maître de musique to the Jesuits, working first for their collège of Louis-le-Grand (for which he wrote David et Jonathas
David et Jonathas
David et Jonathas , H. 490, is an opera in five acts and a prologue by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier, first performed at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, Paris, on 28 February 1688. The libretto, by Father François Bretonneau S.J., is based on the Old Testament story of the...
) and then for the church of Saint-Louis adjacent to the order's professed house
Professed House (Paris)
The Professed House was a Jesuit professed house in Paris, built on the rue Saint-Antoine in Le Marais. Its site between rue Saint-Paul, rue Saint-Antoine and rue Charlemagne are now occupied by the lycée Charlemagne. It welcomed theologians and scientists and was in a quarter lived in by the...
on the rue Saint-Antoine. Once he moved to Saint-Louis, Charpentier virtually ceased writing oratorios and instead primarily wrote musical settings of psalms and other liturgical texts such as the Litanies of Loreto. During his years at Saint-Louis, his works tended to be for large ensembles that included paid singers from the Royal Opera. In addition, during these years Charpentier succeeded Étienne Loulié
Étienne Loulié
Étienne Loulié , was a musician, pedagogue and musical theorist.-Life:Born into a family of Parisian sword-finishers, Loulié learned both musical practice...
as music teacher to Philippe, Duke of Chartres
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
Philippe d'Orléans was a member of the royal family of France and served as Regent of the Kingdom from 1715 to 1723. Born at his father's palace at Saint-Cloud, he was known from birth under the title of Duke of Chartres...
.
Charpentier was appointed maître de musique at the Sainte-Chapelle
Sainte-Chapelle (choir)
The Sainte-Chapelle was also the name for the chapelle, the men of the clerical and musical institution which attached to the building, the Sainte-Chapelle , in Paris....
in Paris in 1698, a royal post he held until his death in 1704. One of his most famous compositions during his tenure was the Mass Assumpta Est Maria (H.11). That this work survived suggests that it was written for another entity, an entity that was entitled to call upon the musicians of the Chapel and reward them for their efforts. Indeed, virtually none of Charpentier's compositions from 1690–1704 have survived, because when the maître de musique died, the royal administration routinely confiscated everything he had written for the Chapel. Charpentier died at Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, and was buried in the little walled-in cemetery just behind the choir of the Chapel (the cemetery no longer exists).
In 1727, Charpentier's heirs sold his autograph manuscripts (28 folio volumes) to the Royal Library, today the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
. Commonly known as the Mélanges, or Meslanges, and now available as facsimiles published by Minkoff-France, these manuscripts were divided by Charpentier himself into two series of notebooks — one bearing Arabic numbers and the other roman numbers, and each notebook numbered chronologically. These manuscripts (and their watermarks) have permitted scholars not only to date his compositions but also to determine the events for which many of these works were written.
Music, style and influence
His compositions include oratorioOratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
s, mass
Mass (music)
The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...
es, opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s, and numerous smaller pieces that are difficult to categorize. Many of his smaller works for one or two voices and instruments resemble the Italian cantata of the time, and share most features except for the name: Charpentier calls them air sérieux or air à boire
Air à boire
Air à boire is a French term which was used between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries for a "drinking song". These were generally strophic, syllabic songs to light texts...
if they are in French, but cantata if they are in Italian.
Not only did Charpentier compose during that “transitory period” so important to the “evolution of musical language, where the modality of the ancients and the emerging tonal harmony coexisted and mutually enriched one another” (Catherine Cessac, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 2004 edition, p. 464), but he also was a respected theoretician. In the early 1680s he was analyzing the harmony in a polychoral mass by the Roman composer Francesco Beretta (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Réserve VM1 260, fol. 55-56). Circa 1691 he wrote a manual to be used for the musical training of Philippe d’Orléans, duke of Chartres; and circa 1693 he expanded this manual. The two versions survive as copies in the hand of Étienne Loulié, Charpentier’s colleague, who called them Règles de Composition par Monsieur Charpentier and Augmentations tirées de l’original de Mr le duc de Chartres (Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. n.a. fr. 6355, fols. 1-16). On a blank page of the Augmentations, Loulié in addition listed some of the points that Charpentier made in a treatise that Loulié called Règles de l’accompagnement de Mr Charpentier. Three theoretical works long known to scholars but that did not reveal much about Charpentier's evolution as a theoretician. Then, in November 2009, a fourth treatise, this time in Charpentier’s own hand, was identified in the collection of the Lilly Library
Lilly Library
The Lilly Library, located on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, is a large rare book and manuscript library in the United States.-History:...
at Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. Written during the final months of 1698 and numbered “XLI,” this treatise appears to have been the forty-first in a series hitherto not imagined by Charpentier scholars, a series of theoretical treatises that spans almost two decades, from the early 1680s to 1698.
Modern significance
The preludePrelude (music)
A prelude is a short piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece. The prelude can be thought of as a preface. It may stand on its own or introduce another work...
to his Te Deum
Te Deum (Charpentier)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed his grand polyphonic motet Te Deum in D major probably between 1688 and 1698, during his stay at the Jesuit Church of Saint-Louis in Paris, where he held the position of musical director...
, H. 146, a rondeau
Rondeau (music)
The rondeau was a Medieval and early Renaissance musical form, based on the contemporary popular poetic rondeau form. It is distinct from the 18th century rondo, though the terms are likely related...
, is well-known as the signature tune for the European Broadcasting Union
European Broadcasting Union
The European Broadcasting Union is a confederation of 74 broadcasting organisations from 56 countries, and 49 associate broadcasters from a further 25...
, heard in the opening credits of the Vienna New Year's Concert
Vienna New Year's Concert
The New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is a concert of classical music that takes place each year in the morning of January 1 in Vienna, Austria...
, the Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union .Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition...
and other Eurovision
Eurovision Network
The Eurovision Network is part of the European Broadcasting Union, itself founded in 1950 as a system of international broadcasting cooperation...
events. This theme was also the intro to "The Olympiad" films of Bud Greenspan.
Charpentier's works
Charpentier's compositions were catalogued by Hugh Wiley Hitchcock in his Les œuvres de Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Catalogue Raisonné, (Paris: Picard, 1982); references to works are often accompanied by their H (for Hitchcock) number.Operas
- Les amours d'Acis et Galatée, Lost, 1678?
- Les arts florissantsLes Arts florissants (opera)Les arts florissants is a short chamber opera in five scenes by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.-History:...
, H. 487, 1685–86 - La descente d'Orphée aux enfersLa descente d'Orphée aux enfersLa descente d'Orphée aux enfers is a chamber opera in two acts by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. It was probably composed in early 1686 and probably was performed either in the private apartment of the Dauphin that spring, or at Fontainebleau in the fall...
, H. 488; 1686–87 - Le jugement de Pâris, (1690)
- Philomèle, lost, 1690
- MédéeMédée (Charpentier)Médée is a tragédie mise en musique in five acts and a prologue by Marc-Antoine Charpentier to a French libretto by Thomas Corneille. It was premiered in Paris on December 4, 1693. Médée is the only opera Charpentier wrote for the Académie Royale de Musique...
, H. 491; 1693
Biblical tragedies
- Celse Martyr, Music lost; P. Bretonneau's libretto published in 1687.
- David et JonathasDavid et JonathasDavid et Jonathas , H. 490, is an opera in five acts and a prologue by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier, first performed at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, Paris, on 28 February 1688. The libretto, by Father François Bretonneau S.J., is based on the Old Testament story of the...
, H. 490, 1688. (Libretto by P. Bretonneau.)
Pastorales
- Petite pastorale eglogue de bergers, H. 479; October 1676
- ActéonActéonActéon is a Pastorale in the form of a miniature tragédie en musique in six scenes by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Opus H 481, based on a Greek myth.-History:...
, H. 481; 1684 - Il faut rire et chanter: Dispute de Bergers, H. 484; 1685
- La fête de Ruel, H. 485; 1685
- La couronne de fleurs, H. 486; 1685
- Le retour de printemps, Lost.
- Cupido perfido dentr'al mio cor
Incidental Theater Music
- Les fâcheux, 1672. Music lost (if indeed Charpentier did more than simply conduct the play a few times, as the records of the Comédie Française suggest), comedy by MolièreMolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
. - La comtesse d'Escarbagnas, H. 494; 1672 (comedy by Molière.)
- Le médecin malgré luiLe Médecin malgré luiLe Médecin malgré lui is a comedy by Molière.-Characters:*Sganarelle, a woodcutter*Martine, Sganarelle's wife*Géronte, a wealthy bourgeois*Lucinde, Géronte's daughter...
, four airs survive, date uncertain. (comedy by Molière) - L'Inconnu, music lost; 1675 ("galant play" by Donneau de Visé and Thomas CorneilleThomas CorneilleThomas Corneille was a French dramatist.- Personal life :Born in Rouen nearly twenty years after his brother Pierre, the "great Corneille", Thomas's skill as a poet seems to have shown itself early. At the age of fifteen he composed a play in Latin which was performed by his fellow-pupils at the...
) - Circé, H. 496; 1675. (tragedy with machines by Thomas CorneilleThomas CorneilleThomas Corneille was a French dramatist.- Personal life :Born in Rouen nearly twenty years after his brother Pierre, the "great Corneille", Thomas's skill as a poet seems to have shown itself early. At the age of fifteen he composed a play in Latin which was performed by his fellow-pupils at the...
; divertissements by Donneau de Visé) - Ouverture du prologue de l'Inconnu, H. 499; a reworking of the prologue d'Acis et Galathée, an opera written for M. de Riants in 1679
- Andromède, H. 504; 1682 (tragedy with machines by Pierre CorneillePierre CorneillePierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
) - Vénus et Adonis, H. 507; 1685 (a play with machines, by Donneau de Visé)
Comédies-Ballet
- Le mariage forcé (comedy by MolièreMolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
,1672) - Le malade imaginaire (comedy with machines by MolièreMolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, 1673) - Le sicilien (for the comedy by MolièreMolièreJean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
reworked in 1679)
Ballets
- Polyeucte, H. 498 (music for a performance of Pierre CorneillePierre CorneillePierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...
's play at the Collège d'Harcourt, 1679)
Divertissements
- Les plaisirs de VersaillesLes plaisirs de VersaillesLes plaisirs de Versailles is a short opera by the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. It was intended for performance at the new courtly entertainment known as les appartements du roi devised by King Louis XIV and held in his own apartments at the palace of Versailles in 1682...
, H. 480; 1682 - Idylle sur le retour de la santé du roi, H. 489; 1687
Interludes (Intermèdes)
- Le triomphe des dames (1676)
- La pierre philosophale (1681)
- Endymion (1681)
- Dialogues d'Angélique et de Médor (1685)
Sacred Music
- Messe, (H. 1)
- Messe Pour Mr. Mauroy (H. 6)
- Extremum Dei judicium (H. 401)
- Messe de minuit pour noël (H. 9, c. 1690)
- Missa assumpta est Maria (H. 11, 1698–1702)
- Litanies de la vierge (H. 83, 1683–1685)
- Te Deum (H. 146, c. 1690)Te Deum (Charpentier)Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed his grand polyphonic motet Te Deum in D major probably between 1688 and 1698, during his stay at the Jesuit Church of Saint-Louis in Paris, where he held the position of musical director...
- Dixit Dominus (H. 204)
- In nativitatem Domini canticum (H. 416)
- Noëls (3) (H. 531 c. 1680)
- Noëls pour les instruments (H. 534, c. 1690)
- Precatio pro filio regis (OffertoryOffertoryThe Offertory is the portion of a Eucharistic service when bread and wine are brought to the altar. The offertory exists in many liturgical Christian denominations, though the Eucharistic theology varies among celebrations conducted by these denominations....
) (H. 166) - Panis quem ego dabo (ElevationElevation (Liturgy)In Christian liturgy the elevation is a ritual raising of the consecrated elements of bread and wine during the celebration of the Eucharist. The term is applied especially to that by which, in the Roman Rite of Mass, the Host and the Chalice are each shown to the people immediately after each is...
) (H. 275)
Biography
- Cessac, Catherine. Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Translated from the French ed. (Paris 1988) by E. Thomas Glasow. Portland (Oregon): Amadeus Press, 1995.
- Cessac, Catherine, ed., Marc-Antoine Charpentier, un musicien retrouvé (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2005), a collection of pioneering works originally disseminated in the Bulletin Charpentier, 1989–2003. The bulk of the articles deal with his life and works: his family and its origins, Italy and Italianism at the Hôtel de Guise, his work for the Jesuits, the sale of his manuscripts, plus background information about specific works.
- Cessac, Catherine, ed., Les Manuscrits autographes de Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Wavre: Mardaga, n.d.), papers presented at the conference held at Versailles, 2004. The articles in this volume focus primarily on what scholars can deduce from the 28 autograph volumes that contain his compositions.
- Ranum, Patricia M. "A Sweet Servitude: A musician's life at the court of Mlle de Guise," Early Music, 15 (1987), pp. 347–60.
- Ranum, Patricia M. "Lully Plays Deaf: Rereading the Evidence on his Privilege," in John Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 15–31, which focuses on Charpentier's powerful contacts.
Music History and Theory
- Anthony, James R. French Baroque Music: From Beaujoyeulx to Rameau. Revised and expanded edition. Portland (Oregon): Amadeus Press, 1997.
- Hitchcock, H.W. Les Œuvres de Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Catalogue Raisonné. Paris: Picard, 1982.
- Thomas, Downing A. Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Tunley, David. The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata. 2nd edition. Oxford (UK): Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, 1997.
External links
- Charpentier, musicien du Baroque, a site in memory of the 300th anniversary of the composer's death
- Te Deum's Prelude in houndbite.com
- John Powell, editions (accompanied by discussions) of some of Charpentier's works
- http://www.baroque-versailles.com/reperes/Hitchcock-Charpentier.html
- Free scores at the Mutopia ProjectMutopia projectThe Mutopia Project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of free content sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenberg's library of public domain books.The music is reproduced from old scores that are out of copyright...