A-R Editions Online Music Anthology (review)

The A-R Editions Online Music Anthology has now been available for at least seven years and continues to grow and develop. The Online Music Anthology, hereafter referred to as the Anthology, now contains over 600 scores, ranging from Greek songs of antiquity to music of the twentieth century. Scores by living contemporary composers are not represented in the Anthology. If printed out on standard 8.5 x 11.5-inch paper (21.59 cm x 27.94 cm), the scores in the Anthology would amount to over 7,000 printed pages. Most of the selections in the Anthology are available in their entirety, not just as brief excerpts, and all are newly edited and typeset for ease of use and clarity.

The Anthology is searchable through the use of pull-down search menus by 'period', 'musical genre', 'composer', and 'title'. The user may combine search terms using multiple search menus, for example, Baroque from the 'period' menu, Cantata from the 'genre' menu, and Strozzi from the 'composer' menu, or choose to use a single pull-down menu. The 'Quick Search by Composer' feature is useful, but yields better results if the 'period' and 'genre' pull-down menus are set to 'all'. The pull-down search menu for genre contains over eighty possible search terms and will likely contain terms that are unfamiliar to a first-year undergraduate. A button to clear the search menus would be a useful addition to the current search functionality.

All of the scores in the Anthology may be printed; however, the files may not be saved and used in an offline environment. Available globally, the Anthology is available as an individual subscription to students at a cost of $60 for six-month access. Educational institutions may also initiate a site license for $2,500 per year. This license is set up by IP range and allows for unlimited use by faculty, staff, students, and library patrons, accessing the resource from a recognised IP address. Students at institutions with site licenses do not have to purchase individual subscriptions.

The Anthology has been tested in several Internet browsers including Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari. The Anthology does work in the Firefox browser, but may need manual adjustment of the printer settings to print properly. The Anthology works on desktop, laptop, iPad, and smart phone platforms. Smart phone users should be aware that if their device is not connected to Wi-Fi, the phone will incur significant data usage when downloading the Anthology.

The Anthology does feature several pre-set courses that can be used 'as is' by an instructor or modified as needed. The pre-set courses range from the Medieval Era to Early Modernism and each course contains an introductory survey article and representative selections of music. The pre-set courses are suitable for use in music history, music theory, and form/analysis courses.

At the present time, there are substantive topical essays, varying in length from twenty to thirty pages, on Medieval Music, Music in the Renaissance, Music in the Baroque Era, Music in the Classical Era, Romantic Music, and Twentieth-Century Music. Each essay has numerous musical examples in the text, links to scores in the Anthology, a bibliography, and a music list of works for further exploration. The user may easily toggle between a linked score and the text of the essay. The essays are the work of professional music historians, are scholarly and well written, and provide good introductions to the musical eras. The essays are most suitable for use in undergraduate music history survey courses. While most of the links provided in the music lists at the end of each essay point to a work in the Anthology, there are some links that take the user to platforms outside of the Anthology, such as the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP...