Editorial/Music Submissions

Submitting music to C. L. Barnhouse Co. for publication consideration

The C. L. Barnhouse Company does accept unsolicited music submissions from composers who are seeking a publisher.

If you have music that you feel might fit our needs, please send the following:

A cover letter with your name, address, phone, fax, and email address, also listing the title(s) of the music you are submitting.
Full score file, in Finale or Sibelius format, for each title you are submitting. Please do not send any parts.
Recording of each title you are submitting. A “live” performance in MP3 format is preferable; synthesized renditions created from Finale or Sibelius are also acceptable.

Materials should be sent to editorial@barnhouse.com. Please do not submit materials via any other delivery method.

Our production cycle is annual, with long periods of peak production which make it impossible for us to review unsolicited manuscripts between March and August. Please be patient if you submit music to us for publication consideration, as we receive many submissions and the review process is time consuming. Be assured, however, that we do review all submissions received and that we will return all materials for which we are not interested.

If you are a composer and would like to submit music to Barnhouse for publication consideration, please review the following editorial policies and guidelines.

We are a publisher of instrumental music intended primarily for the educational market. As such, we are most interested in works similar in style, content, difficulty, duration, and instrumentation to new publications currently being produced at the C. L. Barnhouse Co. If you are unfamiliar with our new products, please acquaint yourself with them to help determine if your music might be of interest to us.
Your instrumentation should conform to that of current Barnhouse publications, in one of our established series: concert band, “Command” series for middle school/junior high band, “Sound Foundations” and “Rising Band” series, or jazz ensemble series. If you are unsure as to these established instrumentations, you may request further information from our editorial department.
Difficulty for regular Concert Band submissions should be in the Grade 3 to Grade 4 area. While we do occasionally publish works harder than this, we are mostly interested in concert band works of “medium” to “medium-difficult” levels. Difficulty for “Command” series submissions should be in the Grade 2 to Grade 3 area. Difficulty for “Sound Foundations” and “Rising Band” series submissions should be in the Grade ½ to Grade 2 area. Difficulty for jazz ensemble submissions should be in the Grade 2 to Grade 3 ½ area. Also, difficulty level should be balanced throughout the instrumentation; that is, works with Grade 5 clarinet parts and Grade 2 brass parts are not publishable.
The duration of submissions must be reasonable to the grade level and programming uses of that piece. A seven-minute grade 2 piece or a 1 ½ minute grade 4 contest piece would eliminate most sales of those numbers; therefore, we would probably not be interested in them.
Style of music should approximate works similar to our current new releases. We are not interested in atonal, experimental, or non-melodic/harmonic music. While works in less-traditional styles may be quite impressive, it is usually not of interest to our customers and therefore not of interest to us. We are interested in publishing music that directors will find useful as teaching material, students will enjoy learning from and performing, and to which audiences will enjoy listening.
We do not produce new publications at this time for marching band, orchestra (string or full), choral music or vocal solo. Please do not send submissions of this kind of music.
We are not interested in arrangements of copyrighted works owned by others. Please do not send music of this nature to us.

Please understand that our decision to accept or decline a work for publication is based upon many factors, of which musical value is only one. Because the educational band marketplace is a very crowded one, with many publishing companies producing many new products each year; and because the number of potential customers is largely stagnant, the number of works that we accept for publication is quite limited. In addition to musical value and content, and also potential usefulness to educators as teaching material, we can only publish works which we feel have the sales potential to recover and surpass our expenses of production and publication. If you submit music to us which we do not accept for publication, please understand that our decision is based upon all of these factors. There are many works that could be published; however, we must limit ourselves to those works with which we feel as though we might be successful.