The Marchmont Edition
The Marchmont Edition
Sylvia Marchmont (1889–1966) wrote three violin sonatas, a set of miniatures, and a concerto that survives only as a piano reduction. She taught harmony in Gloucester for forty years, published almost nothing, and was played almost nowhere after 1955. The folder that changed that sat misfiled in a county archive under her married name.
The Marchmont Edition publishes her violin music as performing editions — engraved, sourced, and priced so that students actually buy them. One sonata a year, each launched with a recording and a tour of the small halls she wrote them for.
The principle
Editions are arguments. Where the manuscripts disagree, the edition says so on the page and lets the player choose — the footnotes are short, the alternatives are printed in full, and nothing is regularised for being unusual.
Get involved
The concerto reduction needs a second pair of eyes, and the Edition runs on subscribers. If you play, teach, or simply want the fourth volume to exist, write — subscribers get each volume early and their names in the back.
“The most quietly consequential editorial project in English string music.”
The Long Interval