Matt Lepain didn’t even know Orchestra Librarian was an actual job when he was a young musician earning a degree in trumpet performance at the University of Windsor. There is little in the way of formal education for the role, but being a trained musician with a mind for organization is a good place to start.
“People just kind of happen into the position,” Lepain chuckles while detailing his path to the Windsor Symphony Orchestra library in its unique home beneath the Capitol Theatre stage.
Prior to arriving at the WSO Lepain was playing in the Windsor Regiment Band based at the Major F.A. Tilston Armoury (he still plays with them) and was serving as the regiment’s assistant librarian before becoming the head librarian for the ensemble.
Then, in the winter of 2020, the performance of live music around the globe came to a sudden halt. Theatres and concert halls around the world sat empty as the Covid-19 pandemic forced orchestras, including the WSO, to move their performances to an online platform in order to broadcast them to an audience watching from the safety of their homes. The WSO needed help in the Fall of 2021 as the digital concert series really took off and Lepain’s experience as a music librarian made him a good fit for the role of Music Sourcing & Preparation Coordinator, handling the licensing for the concert series.
“Normally, when you perform live music in a concert setting you need a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) license,” Lepain explained. “But to do the audio-visual element of a digital concert series you need to seek permission from the copyright holders and acquire additional licensing to do that type of production.”
Which is where things can get tricky. Long-time WSO patrons and casual orchestral music fans alike may not realize the amount of legwork and the cost of properly licensing a piece of music. It is not simply a matter of searching for the piece online, downloading it, and printing up enough copies for everyone in the orchestra. As a professional performing arts organization, the WSO cares about licensing music responsibly and ethically, which is where having an orchestra librarian — the role Lepain took over full-time when long-time WSO orchestra librarian Beth Hebert retired in 2022— is indispensable.
Securing the rights and sheet music can be a wild goose chase depending on who the intellectual property holder (of a piece of music) is at the time,” Lepain said. “Sometimes the copyright holders aren’t around any more, or the copyright has changed hands a few times — one day it may have been owned by EMI music publishing, and maybe it gets handed over to Sony music publishing, then maybe Warner Bros. or Disney picks it up… so, you’re following the trail and doing some detective work to see who actually owns the copyright.”
Which is why it is important to keep the sheet music (purchased through a company like Bärenreiter music publishers in Germany) safe, dry, and well organized. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 was one of the first pieces added to the WSO library in the 1950s. The WSO’s most recent performance of the that piece in 2022 used the existing sheet music in the library. But music director preference, and the publishing of newer, more scholarly editions of a piece over time, means the WSO may choose to update their sheet music. A new edition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 for the full orchestra, for example, can cost over $1,000.
Performing music by living, contemporary composers comes with an even bigger price tag. The WSO strives to cater to the needs of the community by performing music from diverse, living artists, with a focus on Canadian composers. But contemporary orchestral music publishing costs need to be profitable. As a result, orchestras are usually only allowed to rent the music for a specified period. The cost associated with performing music from contemporary composers can be upwards of $10,000 for a pop series.
There is no set way to organize or shelve the existing music collection,” said Lepain. It is an ever-evolving work flow stored in file folders, banker’s boxes, and stacks of sheet music on the libraries hand-cranked rolling shelves. Making sure the current season of music as well as pieces in the collection are easily accessible when WSO musicians, the concert master, music director, and assistant conductor stop by the library, is all part of the librarian’s job.
Why isn’t such an important archive fully digitized? The process has begun, but scanning the music in and cataloguing it into a searchable database is extremely time-consuming, and costly.
“That would be a bucket list project, digitizing as much of the collection as possible within copyright,” Lepain said, citing a burst pipe in the library in Spring 2024 that made the ongoing digitization that much more important. “Sometimes we are lucky enough to occasionally get a summer intern through the Canada Summer Jobs program, but definitely more hands in the library makes light work and would help us check-off some of the other archival projects, including old photos and materials that comprise the symphony’s history.”
Preserving the marks of history
Another role of the librarian is the painstaking task of transferring all of the conductor and player markings (the performance-based annotations made by conductors and musicians, such as the bowing markings that are pencilled in so all the string players move in unison) onto the new sheet music from the older versions when an updated edition is added to the collection. The markings on every part are then checked by the librarian for accuracy before every concert.
“I wouldn’t consider myself an archivist compared to some of my colleagues,” Lepain said, “but it’s good to have the collection backed up because when we have a pipe leak in the library, if the music is just living in its physical form, the markings, the work our conductors, musicians, and librarians put into those parts, could be lost forever. Those things are irreplaceable. You can’t put a monetary value on those marks of history.”
You can play a role in preserving and ensuring some of the greatest musical compositions ever written remain in the WSO’s collection. If you wish to contribute, click here or contact us at 519-973-1238.