Author: Gina Genova

The American Composers Alliance, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) educational organization that includes American Composers Edition and Composers Facsimile Edition, music publishing imprints affiliated with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). In 1937, the American Composers Alliance (ACA) was first formed as an independent licensing association, to represent American-born or naturalized composers whose music was based on classical forms. In 1944, ACA became affiliated with the newly-formed Broadcast Music Inc. to represent concert music by composers who had not been promoted or served by the licensing organizations of the earlier 20th century. ACA began by representing many refugee composers from Europe (Weigl, Balazs) and African-American composers of the day including Ulysses Kay, and women composers such as Elna Sherman. After 80 years in service, the ACA catalog of musical works on deposit with ACA includes more than 12,000 works by more than 250 composers, including works from every year since 1905. The ACA Collection and Archives, located at the University of Maryland (College Park), contain scores and history files on more than 500 American composers who established membership at some point in the past. A long term digital scanning project started in 2008 to begin offering a substantial portion of the historic ACA Score Collection through online subscriptions and sales of printed and electronic scores.