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In 1988,
I edited the collection, Three Centuries of
Solo Mandolin Music for Plucked String Editions. It
contained 19 pieces, including 3 arrangements, and the
first publication of 5 contemporary works. This
revised and expanded edition includes 65 ORIGINAL
mandolin compositions. I removed all of the
arrangements and the contemporary pieces that I did
not have the rights to, and added more original music
from both the past and present. I regarded the earlier
book as just a sampler of the mandolin repertoire, but
while I was selecting pieces for this book, I decided
that a few samples were not enough when so much of the
repertoire was unavailable, and decided to expand it
into a primary source. Only 9 pieces from the earlier
edition are in this book, but there are 3 additional
pieces that had been published separately: 2 more sets
of variations by Leone, and Storm at Sea, by Aubrey
Stauffer. Composers new to this edition are Constantino Bertucci, George King, Raffaele Calace, George Muder, Will D. Moyer, Herbert Forrest Odell, Stellario Cambria, Leopoldo Francia, Luigi Paparello, William Place, Jr., J.Robert Morris, Bernardo de Pace, Demetrius C. Dounis, Carlo de Fillippis, Elizabeth Vercoe, Victor Kioulaphides, Benjamin R. Fuhrman, and myself. My longer compositions are published separately, but I had a number of short pieces that were not yet published, including my most recent mandolin solo, Variations on Arkansas Traveler (2014), which is also the most recent piece in the collection. Composers are in order of birth year, from earliest to most recent, and I tried to include pieces at a variety of difficulty levels. Some of the pieces are unreasonably difficult, but of great historical interest. Much of the book is of medium difficulty, but I also included a few less difficult pieces. I tried to find the best original sources that I could, but some of the copies had a lot of imperfections. For those pieces, I spent up to 2 hours per page cleaning them up in PhotoShop at the subatomic level, to provide a clean copy for players to read from. The last big change since the first edition is the binding. The earlier edition was only 66 pages, and with the saddle stitched binding, it would not lay flat on a music stand and was awkward to perform from This volume contains150 pages and has a metal spiral binding, which is more expensive, but makes the volume much more user-friendly for performers. To simplify ordering, I have been charging a flat rate for postage, which will generally cover two short scores or one medium sized score. If someone ordered three or more, it did not quite cover the postage, but I considered it to be a discount for making a large order. This book weighs more than all of my other publications put together (just short of a pound!), so the additional shipping cost is built into the list price. Catalog # NGP 1002
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