Dover Publications

[zippi]

Hey,

why is the sheet music from Dover Publications that cheap ?
Is anything wrong with their editions ?
I thought about buying these two books:

https://www.amazon.de/Piano-Transcriptions-French-Italian-Operas/dp/0486242730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373042916&sr=8-1&keywords=opera+transcriptions+from+french

https://www.amazon.de/Sonata-Minor-Other-Works-ebook/dp/B00A44CTWY/ref=sr_1_8?s=books-intl-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1373042945&sr=1-8&keywords=dover+publications+liszt

[outin]

Some are better, some are not quite as good.
Why are they cheap? Big company, not just music publishing, bulk stuff, they reprint old editions instead of making new ones. Also mine mostly have cheap paper and cheap printing.

[g_s_223]

I have found the spine of their thicker volumes do not flex well, and so they don't stay comfortably open on the music stand - YMMV.

They are an economical way to acquire the sheet music for some pieces you might want to play through occasionally, but for serious and intensive study of masterpieces of the repertoire a proper critical/urtext edition is advisable.

[indianajo]

Dover books hold up well: my Beethoven sonata books are > 30 years old. The covers are still on, unlike the stapled G. Schirmer book which were the only alternative in the middle.   I feel Urtext is some sort of a german invention to charge more. Fine if you are competing at university, silly if you play at home.   I don't actually play out of the Dover books after I chose a piece to practice. I like to have 6 pages on the music rack at once, but that is not a problem since the cheap copy machine went from negative to positive about 1964.  It is a pleasure to actually see books in a store: I may never have taken on Moonlight movement 3 if I had to order something from NYC. Estimating freight charges, or writing a letter to get a written estimate, writing a check, typing an order so they could actually read it, all that hastle of mail order before debit cards and the internet. Probably would have just read a magazine.  I tripped over the Dover books in Westron Wynde in Manhattan KS, which is pretty unlikely but a great relief after hearing nothing but country music and pop on all the radio stations and at the local dances, gospel at the church, etc.  Even the education TV stations from Wichita were mostly old movie re-runs.  I bought a piano and started my own classical program.  

[quantum]

Quality of Dover books depend on when they were printed.  Dover used to pride themselves with signature binding and opaque paper that does not brittle with age.  However, more recent prints seem to have undergone cost-cutting measures.  When the founder of Dover died in 2000, the company was acquired by another entity.  It is also around this time when one did see a declining quality of manufacturing process: switching to glue (or "perfect binding") as opposed to sewing in signatures.  

The most recent prints have shown a tendency to return to signature binding.  Glad to see them move in this direction.  


You have to keep in mind Dover does reprints, they do not manufacture editions from scratch.  The quality of the actual edition is dependent on the edition they choose to reprint.  As the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.  Dover has reprinted scholarly editions in the past, and I would not consider such any less scholarly because it is a Dover reprint.  For example: at one time the Chopin Paderewski was available as a Dover reprint (not the case currently).  


I've been very satisfied with the print quality of my older, pre 2000 Dover prints.  Good paper, good binding.  However, if considering a new Dover purchase I like to check the printing date.  If it came from that period in the early 2000s with glue binding, I may opt not to buy it.