Caleb Simper Preservation Project

I'm not going to go into detail about this composer because several others have already done so. My focus is on the music he wrote, preserving what has been found. I have compiled a list of over 450 titles comprised of choral, hymns/carols, services, and organ works, and I suspect this list is still incomplete. For someone so prolific and well-sold (according to the publisher), the sheet music is very hard to find but I'm sure it's out there! Special thanks to those who have helped in this project, either through their own preservation efforts or in supplying scores to me.

• Stephen R. Beet has sent me over 100 scores through the mail, that have been scanned and put up here. His preservation efforts go back long before mine! Also included was a title list of Caleb Simper's works from a book. This list enabled me to add copyright dates, edition numbers, and verify many titles.
• Eby Mani has sent me many PDF's of scores that he has found.
• Various local churches that I have visited to search through choral libraries.

I was first exposed to his choral music in the church choir back around 1993 with the piece "Break Forth Into Joy". The director at the time was trying to find more of Simper's choral works but it wasn't easy. I recently gained access to the library at the church where our director was from. It contained about 15 original Simper pieces and I managed to get good scans of them. I've also found about 20 more pieces through general web searches.

About the list below... almost all of the titles were obtained by examining the lists of songs from the back pages of the choral works. Some others were obtained from book scans sent to me by Stephen R. Beet. It is not known if all the titles exist as I do not have many of them and cannot confirm their existence, nor can I be sure that this list is complete. Note that the Season and Type columns might not be very accurate. Many of the titles had multiple genres, so a Harvest song also was listed under General, Service might also be classified as General, and Whitsuntide/Pentecost is usually interchangeable with General. I also had to guess at some and so some listed as Choral might actually be Hymns. There can also be some duplication of titles.

There are 4 DOWNLOAD columns in the list below. The first is the original Choral score, second is the Tonic Solfa score, third is for works that have been re-engraved into a new PDF, and fourth is for works that have been re-engraved into MuseScore MSCZ format. If any of the DOWNLOAD columns have an entry then there is something to download, otherwise I don't have the piece yet. I would very much like to complete this list by adding new or better scans. Please, if you have Simper music that is not on this list, let me know if can it be arranged to have them scanned to my specifications and mailed to me. Just remember that most of the scans haven't been cleaned up yet as that is a process that will take years.

For more information on Caleb Simper, visit the following links...

Church Music Site article by Brian Clegg
Music & Vision article by Gordon Rumson (from Dec 13, 2003)
Eby Mani's scores page
Wikipedia page
ChoralWiki Choral Public Domain Library

Peter Schepers (schepers@uwaterloo.ca)

Choral Works (sorted by genre and name)...