Starting in April 2009The Muse will be featuring the compositions of Americus Records founder and owner, Dr. John DesMarteau. They will be available in highest quality (320 kbits/sec) and free of digital rights management (DRM). Most will be accompanied by PDFs of the score, which are also free of DRM. At times the music may appear before the score because finalizing music notation is a time-consuming process.

Since the music and the scores are free of DRM, this means you can download them to your heart's content and share as you see fit. It would be nice if you gave me credit but it's not required.

Be forewarned that the MP3 files are larger than you are probably used to because of the higher bit rate.

Although I write every note of the music you hear on this web site using either Finale, Sibelius, and as of late Notion (www.notionmusic.com) on my Mac, I don't have a symphony orchestra at my command so some of the music is played using the respective program's built-in sampled sounds. Although I hope that some day a real orchestra will play some of the orchestral music I write, I am fortunate to know several first-rate pianists. For example, Walter Hautzig has recorded my Spanish Nights, the link to which is found below.

You can contact me at: jd@americuscd.com or follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/John_DesMarteau although I am often busy composing so I don't have that much time to tweet.

I hope that you enjoy the music and feedback is always appreciated.

Spanish Nights (2002)

Original Composer: John Kenton DesMarteau (1949- )
Instrumentation: Piano (Solo)

Sample (approx. 18 seconds):

Page with the Complete MP3 (2:15; 5MB), More Info, and the score

Harmonious Blacksmith (2009)

Original Composer: George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Transcription: John Kenton DesMarteau
Instrumentation: Orchestra (Classical)

Sample (approx. 10 seconds):

Page with the Complete MP3 (3:23; 8MB), More Info, and Scores