Musica and ChoralNet are pleased to announce the merger of the two most important choral music repertoire reference tools on the Internet into the newly configured " Musica Virtual Choral Library ".

After months of cooperative work, the ChoralNet Resource Site (CRS) has been completely merged with the Musica database to create this new resource.

A committee composed of representatives of both Musica and ChoralNet including Dolf Rabus, Robert D. Reynolds, Michael Shasberger, Allen Simon and Jean Sturm was charged with completing the formal details of this merger following a joint meeting of the ChoralNet and Musica Boards in May, at which the concept of the merge was endorsed by both entities. Yannick Bertho and Allen Simon were charged with the redesign of the Musica search interface to insure that it would be easily understood and navigated by those who have relied upon the two different repertoire resources for many years. Jean Sturm and the staff of Musica, assisted by many volunteers at Musica workshops, worked diligently over the summer and fall to integrate the files supplied by Allen Simon from the CRS. After much effort to prepare the files for merge and eliminate duplicate entries in the two systems, their work has resulted in an almost 50% expansion of the repertoire cited on the Musica site.

The increasingly sophisticated Musica resource has grown far beyond its original design as a simple database of published choral music. To recognize that development, the merge committee endorsed the new name for the site, the Musica Virtual Choral Library. This name aptly describes the expanded resources available to choral musicians, including numerous recordings, sample score pages, composer and author biographies, publishers' descriptions, pronunciation files, texts and their translations in several languages and other resources that are available for thousands of the pieces listed. These features, along with many other resources, are in constant development by the Musica staff, the members of Musica International association, and committed volunteers who participate in Musica workshops around the world.

The new resource on-line describes now more than 135,000 titles of all genres, styles, countries, centuries, as well as about 26,000 composers, 11,000 authors of text and 1,800 publishers.

This enhanced resource is readily available to all choral musicians in 4 languages via the Musica website: http://www.musicanet.org and via a link from the Choralnet repertoire resource page that is easily accessible from the ChoralNet webpage: http://www.choralnet.org. In its current form, basic information on all
scores in the Musica Virtual Choral Library is included in the web based search engine, and is thus available to all without cost, in order not to do any discrimination by money between developed and developing countries. Additionally, Musica offers a CD ROM version of the resource that has expanded reference information for most entries and a software allowing more possibilities. It is available for sale through the Musica website. ChoralNet will continue to provide its extensive repertoire and composer forums, archive of literature discussions from ChoralList, and extensive lists of repertoire sorted by various topics and interest areas to provide a valuable complement to the Musica virtual library.

Every choral musician in the world is invited not only to use this exceptional resource as the first point of inquiry about choral repertoire, but also to contribute cooperatively to its enhancement by sending any missing information for upgrading it. All publishers of choral music are requested to check their citations, and to get in touch with the office of Musica (muse(at)musicanet.org) to become comprehensively listed in the Musica virtual library.

For Choralnet, Inc - Michael Shasberger, president - James D. Feiszli, secretary

For Musica International - Jean-Claude Wilkens, president - Jean Sturm, executive director