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Antico Edition

Founded in 1972, Antico Edition is a publisher of early music. We publish medieval, renaissance and baroque music including Hildegard of Bingen, Marbriano de Orto, Martin Peerson, John Milton, the Use of Salisbury, and fifteenth- and sixteenth-century church music including the works in the Peterhouse Henrician partbooks (Peterhouse MSS 31, 32, 40 and 41).

Our publications of early music are practical, reliable and reasonably priced. Edited by specialists in the appropriate periods and repertoires, they are designed both for performance and for study. The music is laid out with ease of use in mind, and the volumes contain informative introductions, suggestions for performance, text translations and editorial and critical commentaries. We mainly publish vocal music—the medium most admired before the seventeenth century—but many compositions for voices can also be performed instrumentally. A great deal of the music in our catalogue is otherwise unpublished or available only in expensive and hard-to-find musicological series, not all of which are considerate to performers. Nick Sandon, the general editor of Antico Edition, was Professor of Music at University College, Cork, between 1986 and 1993, and Professor of Music at Exeter University from 1993 until his retirement.

Our editions are grouped into various series according to their content. The original series (prefix AE) covers secular music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; Medieval Church Music (MCM) explores sacred music dating from before c. 1400; Renaissance Church Music (RCM) is devoted to sacred polyphony of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; Liturgy and Chant (LCM) presents plainchant in its liturgical context; and Antico Baroque (AB) focuses on music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Subscription terms and discounts for multiple copies are available for any or all of these series.

New ordering arrangements and a link to our distributor’s online shop are now on our ordering information page.

Go to Music Catalogue

Download Music Catalogue File (Right click, ‘Save Target As’ to save file) (PDF format, approximately 1.86 Mb, dated Spring 2024)

Please see our Corrections and emendations page.

Sample pages from many of our editions are now available on this website: click on the link immediately following the volume description. The images have been reduced in size for use on the web and may not look as good as the printed pages.

Antico Edition congratulates Blue Heron and its director Scott Metcalfe on winning the early music category of the 2018 Gramophone Classical Music Awards for their fifth CD of music from the Peterhouse Henrician partbooks, which they perform from Nick Sandon’s completed editions published by Antico as RCM101–140. Blue Heron are the first non-European vocal ensemble to receive this accolade, and the reviewer for The Gramophone called this music ‘one of the discoveries of the year’. The first five of the group’s Peterhouse CDs are now available as a boxed set entitled The Lost Music of Canterbury.

New and recent publications

Robert Fayrfax: Missa Tecum principium (RCM82)

John Taverner: Missa Corona spinea (RCM83)

John Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi trinitas (RCM84)

John Taverner: Missa O Michael (RCM85)

Robert Fayrfax: Missa O bone Jesu (RCM86)

Robert Fayrfax: Magnificat and votive antiphon O bone Jesu (RCM87)

Robert Fayrfax: Missa Regali ex progrenie (RCM88)

All volumes of the Peterhouse series (RCM101-140) are now available in revised editions.