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The British-American Repertory. Compiled by Kate Van Winkle Keller and Carolyn Rabson under a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the sponsorship of The Sonneck Society.
An original publication by University Music Editions, New York, 1980. Issued on microfiche with an 108-page printed User's Guide. Foreward by Irving Lowens; Introduction by Arthur Schrader. Guide text by Rabson and Keller.
The NTI/1 is intended to assist musicologists, folklorists, performers, historians of dance, drama and social culture of the 18th century and others involved in American and British studies. It provides access to 38,500 tunes gleaned from 520 scattered sources under six broad categories and their subdivisions: 1) American Music Imprints to 1800 (all available sources); 2) Musical Theatre (all ballad operas and all major British theatre works); 3) Country Dances (British dance collection and all known editions of Playford's Dancing Master - 1651-1728); 4) Airs without words (British instrumental collection); 5) Manuscripts (music manuscript compilations); 6) Songs (British song collections and British song sheets).
Access to the information for these categories is provided by
five large cross-referenced indexes: I. Text Index: Title,
first-lines, tune names and refrains.
II. Music Index: Incipits, in Scale Degrees.
III Music Index: Incipits in Stressed Note Sequence.
IV. Music Index: Incipits in Interval Sequence.
V. Source Index: Full bibliographic information and contents of
cited sources.
SPECIFICATIONS:
The Fiche and Fiche Binder: The five Indexes are published on 78
standard 4" x 6" microfiche (diazo film, negative
image), housed in a UME fiche binder provided with printed
fiche-by-fiche Contents Guides, the latter readable without a
viewer. The fiche themselves are readable with viewers equipped
with 18x to 24x, and 42x lenses. There are approximately 3,600
item citations per fiche making the NTI the equivalent of 15,000
pages of book format.
The User's Guide: 108pp, soft cover, 81/2" x 11" format, perfect bound.
The Guide gives complete details on the organization and the extent of data to be found in the NTI. It offers suggestions on how to proceed with one's research from any point of information - song, text, tune incipit, melodic contour, author, compiler, composer, genre, or source.
All the indexes published on the microfiche are diagrammed and explained in the Guide which also provides researchers with unique and valuable lists: a classified bibliography of sources, an index to the bibliography itself, and convenient Quick Reference Indexes to shorten access time. In sum, the Guide is valuable as an unusual bibliographic tool in its own right and is available for separate purchase.
Before publication of the NTI, scholars working in the area of British-American 18th century secular music, dance, theatre, and song had to work against imposing odds. The materials are widely scattered, and once located present difficult problems of identification and correlation. Attributing music to text or titles, and vice versa, has been a formidable task, mainly because of the free-for-all attitude by which texts were set to any handy tune, and tunes and songs circulated with many titles. The massive concordance that is the National Tune Index finally diminishes the task of research in this repertory with a format that is modern, accessible, and economical.
NTI/1 is the equivalent of about15,000 pages of printed book material.
Complete Microfiche Edition with Fiche Binder & User's Guide............$385.00
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