Artescripta is a publishing company of musical facsimiles : scores and parts, methods, manuscripts, etc. It was created in 2020 by French historical horn player Nicolas Roudier, actively pursuing a career in the Early Music world as an orchestra musician and soloist. Nicolas is based in the Netherlands, while the collection is kept safe in France. A lot of the music there is rare or even unknown.
In 2019 Nicolas started compiling an inventory for a private collection of original music sheets dated from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. Located in France, the collection gathers over 1000 titles, among them rare or unknown works and composers. The unquestionable value of these treasures convinced Nicolas to acquire them and to share them with the early music world in accessible yet beautiful facsimiles that will enlarge our repertoire and knowledge of late-classical and romantic music.
Facsimiles are hand-made in The Hague on order. They are based on quality scans of the originals that will be digitally cleaned on demand, and a simple cover made of a typical Dutch rag paper (zaansch bord), with title fonts inspired from the originals. The music is printed on a beautiful 100g laid paper, the same that was used during the 19th century. A basic binding method is then used to guarantee affordable prices : a glued tape of linen, or a simple ribbon binding for items with less than 10 pages.
Your options
When ordering a piece of music, two choices are offered to you :
Digitally treated scan
Once the music is scanned, you can choose to have it as it is, or ask me to digitally clean it and correct the perspective (as it is not always easy to scan the original music flat). A normal scan will significantly reduce the cost and your waiting time (unless it has been cleaned already), but will show all the spots/stains/impurities, and perspective flaws. A treated scan will be clear and much easier to read, especially if the music is a bit worn out, and every page will stand parallel and square. Note that Cleaning can take a LOT of time depending on the number of pages, their state and the nature of the music. I will not offer to treat the scan if there is over 60 pages.
Separate parts
When relevant, you can choose to have the different parts (different instruments) of a piece all together in one single binding, or have them bound separately. For instance if you are interested in a trio and want to be able to perform out of my facsimiles, then you can choose to have each 3 parts in 3 separate bindings. If you don’t need that, you can opt for a single volume with all 3 parts together.
For more information about Artescripta’s status, orders, policies etc, read thehouse rules.