The Hal Leonard Corporation (HLC) and Volta Music have entered into an agreement allowing the former to publish Volta-controlled music compositions in sheet music and songbook form. With this venture, Olivia Tiomkin Douglas hopes to make the Tiomkin catalog, particularly in song form, readily available for personal enjoyment and for performance by singers, pianists, and other instrumentalists. The Tiomkin catalog includes nearly 200 songs, written from the 1920s to the 1960s. His primary collaborators were the lyricists Ned Washington and Paul Francis Webster.

As the world’s largest music print publisher, HLC;s ability to promote Tiomkin’s music is unrivaled. Currently, songs in the Tiomkin oeuvre are primarily available in general songbook collections for piano. For example, “Friendly Persuasion” can be found in HLC’s The Big Book of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Songs of Paul Francis Webster – Composer Collection. According to Jeff Schroedl, vice president of pop and standard publications, HLC plans to publish these songs in numerous editions. A Composer Collection songbook for Tiomkin is in the works, and will be similar to those of other notable composers in the company’s catalog, including Rodgers and Hammerstein and Irving Berlin. To obtain digital downloads of sheet music such as “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me),” “Friendly Persuasion,” or “Town Without Pity,” visit www.sheetmusicdirect.com or another Hal Leonard Full-Line Internet Dealer.

Throughout his career, Tiomkin was a strong advocate for the right of composers to retain control of their own compositions. Much like today, the music for major studio-produced films in the past was often created under work-for-hire agreements that granted the publishing rights to the studio, while composers and lyricists shared only the performing rights. Due to his stature as a composer and the large number of independently produced films he scored, Tiomkin was able to secure the publishing rights to many of his film compositions. He formed his own publishing company, Volta Music, which was incorporated in California in 1957 and is a publisher member of ASCAP. Included in the Volta catalog is music from The Alamo, D.O.A., High Noon, The Men, and Rawhide.

Hal Leonard Corporation (www.halleonard.com), founded in 1947, publishes songbooks, sheet music, educational publications, reference books, videos, DVDs, CD-ROMs, children’s music products, and more. Through its more than 60,000 publications, the company represents some of the world’s best known and most respected publishers, artists, writers, and arrangers. HLC is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has offices in Winona, Minnesota; New York City; Nashville; Melbourne; Hong Kong; and London.