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 A great deal of the music in our catalogue is otherwise unpublished or available only in expensive and hard-to-find musicological series, not all of which are considerate to performers.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. There are subscription terms and discounts for multiple copies, and licenses to print single items from some volumes are also available (see Licences to print below).

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)

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

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)

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

Licences to print

Antico Edition can now offer licences for customers to print multiple copies of single items from volumes containing several works. Please contact us by email at earlymusic@anticoedition.co.uk, putting the word licence in the subject box, to say which volumes and items interest you and how many copies you would like. In reply we will normally send a message with an attached quotation, a copy of our terms and conditions, and an invoice requesting payment by bank transfer. If for any reason we cannot offer a licence, we will tell you. To accept the quotation please return a signed copy of it and pay the invoice in full. When we have received your acceptance and payment we will send the licence and the pdf file or files as email attachments.

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.

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