The Oldman Prize is awarded by IAML (UK & Irl) to an author or joint authors of a work deemed to have made a significant contribution in the area of music bibliography or musicology in the year prior to its being awarded.
The winner of the 2024 award was announced at the branch AGM on 30 April 2025.
Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope, by Jonathan Del Mar (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2023). ISBN: 978-1-78327-732-2. 714pp.
This publication focuses on around one hundred mainstream orchestral works chosen by the author. Each entry includes a useful quick-reference resource for librarians and researchers giving a brief historical and contextual introduction, noting salient composition and early performance information, followed by a useful summary and guide to the sources and different editions. The works are given extensive analytical documentation of the errors, continuity of errors, omissions and confusions, and misinterpretation of the various earlier publications and editions.
The volume amounts to a cautionary alert that even modern Urtext editions can contain errors, or be based on questionable assumptions; in the Preface the author discusses the nature of sources, briefly noting the practicalities of the ‘science’ of what to use as initial starting points for modern editions, whether manuscripts (autograph or other earliest such sources), or the earliest editions of either scores or orchestral parts.
The 714 pages of immensely detailed and thorough editorial work revealed a painstaking compilation of information. The committee noted in the Preface that the author is aware that editions are seemingly a never-ending process and that this volume does not necessarily give a final answer but allows for “unfinished business” in the editorial process.
The committee considered this publication to be an excellent resource for conductors, researchers, and students who want to produce or perform a ‘definitive’ version of a composition. It is a thorough reference resource for conservatoires, orchestral libraries, and universities with teaching areas which include score editing and music analysis, especially if they have access to manuscript facsimiles (printed or online) and a variety of printed editions. Although the “mainstream” and amateur performance world might find this volume rather daunting, and therefore continue with available (or cheaper) editions which they might be using, or that such performers might “think” this volume overly fussy, the committee realises that new and/or correct editions are incredibly expensive, and subject to further copyright; it is hoped that Del Mar’s detail could lead many to better critical musicological perception. We realise that users will find the amount of data observed will be astonishing and rather unwieldy to use; also the physical size of the volume is rather hefty especially if you want to keep it propped open in order to read and transfer information to scores/parts. We hope that the network of conductors will get to grips with engrossing themselves in these editorial changes and corrections. We wonder if there will there more work like this which covers further orchestral repertoire.
The committee commends this volume for the C. B. Oldman award for the year 2024.