Overview

The Edition Esser-Skala provides practitioners with reliable, Open Content modern editions of (mainly) 18th century sacral music. All scores may be freely downloaded in PDF format. Moreover, selected titles are available in print from Kindle Direct Publishing (at cost price). Our highlights include

  • various unpublished works by Johann Michael Haydn, many of which are collected in the Proprium Missæ project
  • passions and oratorios by Johann Heinrich Rolle as well as Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel
  • the first edition of the Missa Providentiæ by Antonio Caldara, which includes a Credo by Jan Dismas Zelenka (ZWV 31)
  • a bilingual (Danish/German) edition of Friedrich Ludwig Æmilius Kunzen’s Skabningens Halleluja (Das Halleluja der Schöpfung)
  • a selection of the works by Baldassare Galuppi kept in Dresden
  • Austrian “superstars” such as Joseph Leopold Eybler, Florian Leopold Gassmann, Leopold Hofmann, František Ignác Antonín Tůma, and Gregor Joseph Werner

Many of our editions base upon freely available manuscripts and prints, which are provided by an increasing number of archives and libraries.

To ensure high and consistent quality, we follow a set of editorial guidelines when preparing our editions. Moreover, we have implemented a largely automated engraving and publishing process. Briefly, this workflow encompasses

  • beautiful scores engraved by LilyPond,
  • prefatory material typeset with LaTeX, and
  • compilation of editions via GitHub Actions and a Docker container to ensure reproducibility.

Details on the workflow are available in the comprehensive technical documentation.