Our Choir would like to sing Bizet's Carmen at our summer garden concert. Our local library has only 20 scores available and we are a choir of 100 plus. Does anyone know the cheapest way to hire scores or does anyone have a set available?

I have seen a book described as Carmen chorus part - Does anyone know if this is the same as the vocal score or something different?

many thanks

Chorus score is by definition the choruses only, printed without any of the solo passages and without the piano reduction accompaniment you would expect to see in a vocal score. Choirs don't like them because they have to count bars' rest instead of following the accompaniment for a cue of the next entry. However, they can be cost-effectively unavoidable if, say, vocal scores cost ?20.00 and chorus parts ?3.50!

If your library has only 20 copies and you need 100, why can't it enquire about interloan availability for the other 80? You need too to be aware that there are held in library stocks a number of different and incompatible editions with different translations, paginations, versions (eg. "full" or "concert" version).

To see what's held in UK music libraries, look at Encore!, the UK catalogue of sets of performance music in libraries. The web address (suggest you lock it into your favourites!) is:

http://webhotel.mikromarc.no/encore/eng/mi.../main.idc?dbAli

Regards,

Roger Taylor