The lower level of the motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa Mound, Wisconsin, is an immense circular structure that contains literally a small city—an auditorium that seats 500, a labyrinth, private studios for harp, piano, and voice, a choir room that seats 100, business offices, and several rooms devoted to Alliance Publications, Inc. Sister Anita Smisek has devoted more than fifty years to teaching ministries in her community, with the last twenty-five focused specifically on the publication of music of all genres: solo instrumental, choral, orchestral, band, and ensemble music for voice and instruments. Her publication of contemporary solo pieces as well as ensemble music for organ, harpsichord, and piano has made cutting-edge works by some of today’s greatest composers accessible.
I learned about Alliance Publications when I first played in Sinsinawa Mound’s organ recital series in 2010. After the recital, Sister Anita gave me a box of organ music and told me she thought I might enjoy sight-reading through some new scores from “the” press. I was intrigued by the new revised edition of Jiří Ropek’s Variations on Victimae Paschali Laudes, his Partita on Adoro Te Devote, and beautiful scores of other Czech composers. I was further drawn to Alliance Publications when I heard Karel Paukert’s brilliant premiere performance of Jiří Teml’s riveting work Three Pieces for Organ at Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan’s Organ Conference in 2013. Karel had conveniently brought some Czech music published by Alliance, and I was able to purchase Teml’s score then and have been playing it to captivated audiences at every opportunity. When I played in the Sinsinawa Organ Series in 2015, I bought more scores by Teml: Fantasy for Organ (Homage to Buxtehude), Toccata, Chorale and Postlude (Homage à J. S. Bach) and Rhapsody for Organ (all dedicated to Karel Paukert), and I had to see where and how these scores and those by many other composers are morphed from manuscript to printed pages by Sister Anita.
One could not help but be aware that she is of Czech origin. She is surrounded by photos of her Czech great-grandfather holding his tuba alongside other band members in the village of New Prague, Minnesota (see photo above), of herself and her mother, Rose Smisek, wearing Czech folk dress while singing a Czech vocal concert in 1979 (see photo on next page), a print of Antonin Dvořák, the statue of the Infant of Prague (see photo), and Czech pottery Wise Men (see photo) that watch over her as she works.
Her knowledge of the Czech language has enabled her to be in contact with some of the most innovative and inspired Czech composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Petr Eben, Jiří Ropek, Jiří Teml, Zdeněk Lukáš, Jiří Strejc, Zdeněk Šesták, and Jiří Laburda.
Marijim Thoene: Let’s start at the beginning. What role did your family and home life play in shaping your life that directed you on the path to music and publishing?
Anita Smisek: Music is the food I grew up on, it is in my DNA. I experienced a Bohemian-Czech community that sang and danced and made their own entertainment for generations in church, school, and at social events in Veseli, Lonsdale, Faribault, and New Prague, Minnesota. My mother was the singer and pianist who taught us children to sing together in harmony. From fourth grade on, we sang in the church choir at Immaculate Conception in Lonsdale, Minnesota. My piano skills helped me when I began to learn to play the organ. During my years at Bethlehem Academy in Faribault, Minnesota, and college years at Rosary College, I enjoyed learning to play the pipe organ for church services. I loved it and took organ lessons from Rosilla Gross, Miriam Murphy, and Robert Luther. This allowed me to play with greater proficiency in my ministry as church music director.
I grew up the eldest daughter of four children on an all-purpose farm in Rice County, Lonsdale, Minnesota, learning to do housework and gardening, and to assist my dad with the animals and drive a tractor when he needed me. For eight years, 4-H clubwork was an important educational component of my life. We learned to keep records, manage projects, design and set up booths and posters, select, design, and sew clothing. We learned to interact with public officials and do business, etc. All these skills merged beautifully within me as API evolved into the large music-publishing house that it has become, with more than 350 composers from many countries under contract, yielding over 3,000 titles in a diversified catalog.
You are such a gifted singer and organist. What influenced you to go into publishing?
I wanted to publish my master’s degree research project, which I completed at the University of Minnesota under Dr. Johannes Riedel, 1976—a collection of 19 Czech Christmas carols that my ancestors brought to the United States and which are still in current usage. In 1972 the best I could do was to make handwritten scores with type-and-paste lyrics and then go to a new copyworks store. Ten years later, I wanted to publish a hymnal of new English hymns from Czech tunes and worked on it over 15 years, going through all the stages of hand notation and applying texts in Czech and English, and then came the computer! I decided to invest in one and learn to use the Finale program to notate my own scores. This way I was able to make masters and then take them to a printer and have it professionally done.
I met a fellow American Czech musician, Joel Blahnik from Fish Creek, Wisconsin, who was able to assist me in improving my arrangements and with whom I began to give musical programs. Being an idea man, he suggested we start a publishing company ourselves. What an adventure! What a daring idea! Well, it was the era of encouraging entrepreneur endeavors and so we were off. I did the legal legwork, got the computer program, and started. That was in 1987.
Would you please describe the process of how a written score becomes a printed one and how it is marketed?
Once a submitted score has been accepted for publication, a contract is issued. It is catalogued, filed for future engraving, and when that has been done, it is formatted, proofed, sent to the composer for proofing (once or twice), a biography of the composer and background notes for the piece are written, a cover is designed, a barcode assigned, and then printed up for re-proofing. When it passes this last test, it will go to print. Word will go out about its availability via displays at conventions, catalog lists, Facebook announcements, etc.
How long is the process from manuscript score to publication?
This totally depends upon the length of the piece, the genre, and difficulty of the music, e.g., children’s unison song or a band work. So, some works can be done in a week or some in several years.
Who are your assistants?
My business partner is available for proofing and articulating instrumental music, the bookkeeper and financial advisors assist me in keeping good records, and several retired Sisters assist me with small projects, mailing, display, and stockroom needs.
How did you establish contact with contemporary composers of organ music?
My visits to the Czech Republic after 1989 particularly enabled me to meet and visit them in their homes as well as hear them in concert or on CD performances. Others came through the suggestion of other satisfied composers.
Of the large corpus of sacred choral music you’ve published, are there any anthems or Mass settings that you think are particularly suited for a small volunteer choir—say, a choir that reads well and has between twenty to twenty-five singers?
Within our large choral catalog of secular and religious music titles, API has titles for many uses and types of choirs. For small church choirs, I suggest any of the works by Cecil Steffen, Magdalena Ezoe, JoAnn Timmerman, Marcia Holthaus, Warren Gooch, Vera Kistler, Tim Knight, Vivian Dettbarn, or James Marchionda. For more challenge, titles by Bob Ashton, Christopher Frye, Amy Dunker, Paul Paviour, Bryan Beaumont Hays, Sten Halfvarson, James Machan, Jiří Laburda, Henry Alviani, David Westfall, Kevin Duggan, Robert Dvorak, R. Paul Drummond, Peter Putz, Charles L. Byrne, Gregory Dennis, and John Harmon would be richly rewarding to use. Individual titles are difficult to cite as it depends upon type of music needed, difficulty level, voicing, use, and style of music used within a church community. I can verify the quality of the above composers’ music, but the individual director needs to look them up online to check for appropriateness and usability.
What new organ scores are you about to publish?
Five Movements for Organ by Antonín Tučapský; Esultazio by Zdeněk Pololáník; and two works by Jiří Strejc, Invocation on C-H-E-B, and Novela for organ, timpani, bells, and 3 trumpets. Invocation on C-H-E-B took first prize in the new organ composition competition called by the city of Cheb in 2008 in the Czech Republic. Judges were Luboš Sluka, Jiří Teml, Irena Chřibková, and Jan Hora. Nineteen compositions were received in the competition, each of which used the theme of C_H_E_B!
This will make 80 organ titles that we publish. Two Invocations, a remarkable concert work, is the title that we commissioned from Petr Eben for trombone and organ, which is published by United Music Publishers.
You publish scores of many genres—instrumental solos, band pieces, Masses, vocal solos, Requiems, etc. How many composers have you published and what are their nationalities?
We have published works by 350 composers. They are from the United States, Canada, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Georgia, Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, Hungary, and Italy. We have some composers who are Americans by birth but have been raised in Polish, Czech, Slovak, or other ethnic communities, such as the Filipino and Argentinian communities, and are inspired by their musical traditions. A number of composers have written vocal solos, choral and instrumental music based on Native American tunes (such as titles by Henry Alviani and Jim Scheuer) or are inspired by Native American culture, for example, many titles by John Harmon.
You have published many organ scores by Czech composers, and composers from other countries as well. What nationalities are represented?
We have sixteen Czech composers, one English, and eight others are Americans from Japan, Argentina, and Sweden.
Who are the Czech composers for the organ?
We began with Václav Nelhýbel who befriended us and from whom we commissioned a work for trombone and organ based on the Svatý Václave Chorál, Prelude and Chorale on Svatý Václave. It became a very useable work, and so we made it available for many different instrumental solos. At my request, he wrote organ preludes based on twelve Czech hymn tunes, which were from my new hymnal, Give Glory: New English Hymns from Czech Tunes. Then we commissioned Petr Eben to write a piece on that same theme, hence Two Invocations for Trombone and Organ was composed; it is published in England by United Music Publishers. Thirdly, an organist in Prague, Karel Hron, wrote his expression of this theme giving us Chorale for Trumpet or Trombone and Organ.
Former organist at St. James Basilica in Prague, Jiří Ropek, met us and cooperated in preparing most of his repertoire for organ with API, becoming a special friend. This gave him an opportunity to revise older works to his satisfaction. He encouraged his friend, Bedřich Janáček, who had immigrated to Sweden, to contact API, and consequently we experienced another working relationship getting all of his remaining unpublished organ works done to his satisfaction. (Karel Paukert performed some of his works and knew him as well.) He taught me a lot, as he was most particular in proofing my engravings. His wife persisted in working with me after his death, and so we now have them all published.
Enjoying opportunities to attend organ concerts in my travels to Prague over thirty years ago, I heard Jiří Strejc perform a recital at St. Voršila Church, which led me to meet him and learn about his own compositions for organ, choir, and piano, and to learn about his music ministry through those difficult years before 1989. His is a fresh innovative voice for organ, and I love to hear his works performed. Befriending the family enabled me to get to know and hear his organist son, Martin Strejc, perform several of them in more recent years.
Other Czech composers writing for organ offered me their works for publication and became special friends through the process as well: Jiří Laburda, Ctírad Kohoutek, Zdeněk Lukáš, Zdeněk Pololáník, Zdeněk Šesták, Jitka Snížková, Jiří Teml (a good friend of Karel Paukert’s for whom he wrote several titles), and Antonín Tučapský.
Who are the non-Czech composers for organ that you’ve published?
We have one English composer, and others who are Americans—Lee Burswold, G. Winston Cassler, Magdalena Ezoe, OP, Michael Elsbernd, Christopher Frye, Martin Hotton, Ejnar Krantz, Sebastián Modarelli, Cecil Steffen, OP, and William Dean Tinker.
What keeps you going?
My commitment to these artist-composers energizes me because of the trust they gave me with creative work. I want to match their dedication, artistic craft, and genius with my own work of publishing a high-quality product that will give wings to their music and make it available for generations to come.
My great wish is that each organist reading this article would venture to order a title for their use, whether it be for services, teaching, or for concert use. Our catalog contains a vast array of organ music for all levels. Most of the composers are organists themselves, serving in both capacities—playing for services and performing concerts. Works can be viewed and ordered online at www.apimusic.org. Thank you for your interest and support.
Thank you, Sister Anita, for describing your life and work and for making the world of church music and organ music the richer. Thank you for capturing those little black dots that make it possible to fill churches, concert halls, and schools with new and glorious music.
