About us

About us

Based in Dunblane, Scotland, The Art of Music was founded by Alistair Warwick in 1992 in order to provide high-quality music and text typesetting. This soon extended to include practical and reflective skills training for musicians, especially those who work in worship and other music of the Church.

Information provided on this website is copyright © 1992-2008 The Art of Music. However, in most cases you are free to make non-commercial use of the material, providing due credit is given.

Naturally, this does not apply to our publications since we're running a business!

Technical information about this website can be found here.

Towards an ethical and environmental policy

• we aim to be ethical in all that we do
• we endeavour to reduce, to reuse and to recycle wherever possible
• we use "green" electricity from renewable sources
• we are customers of the only UK high street bank with a customer-led ethical policy that prevents our money being used by companies that disrespect the environment or that sell arms to repressive regimes – indeed as a co-operative it supports enterprises that help the community
• we drink FairTrade tea and coffee – and eat FairTrade chocolate (donations always welcome!)

Fairtrade at work

Passion in the workplace…

…pity they didn't compost the banana skin!

Ethical links

Here are some ways of saving and spending your hard-earned cash – ethically.

The Co-operative Bank / Smile

1. Open bank accounts with smile (cheque / savings / ISA):
   as they say, "have a happy wallet and a happy heart"
2. Get The Co-operative insurance (home and car) – and save 10% online
3. Apply for The Co-operative Bank think credit card which comes with half an acre of rainforest (through the charity CoolEarth) when you first use your Think card, and rewards you for making ethical purchases.

Pay with your new think credit card and:

• you could receive £35 off your first year’s bill when you switch to Ecotricity
• you could get a 28% discount (that's £15 instead of £21) for new magazine subscriptions to Ethical Consumer
• you you could get free delivery on your orders from ethicalsuperstore.com
• a contribution of 25p will be made to Cool Earth for every £100 spent on the card
• a special rate of 7% pa on products bought from our ethical partners, for 6 months after each purchase – usually 14% APR typical/variable

Ethical Superstore

reduce : reuse : recycle

• buy what you believe at ethicalsuperstore.com
  your one stop shop for more than 3000 products: ethical gifts, eco-friendly gadgets, fair trade and organic groceries
• use your Co-operative Bank think credit card and get free delivery on your orders

Your Privacy

Your privacy – and therefore your confidence in us – is important to The Art of Music.

We will only disclose your information to other members of
The Art of Music group (details can be found here).

We will not sell, lend, rent or otherwise make available your details to any other person or organisation (except in compliance with any legal requirement that may be made of us).

• full details of our Privacy Policy

Use your computer to help save lives

Join the World Community Grid

For some time we've been members of the World Community Grid (WCG), first as a personal member and, since June 2006, as a team.

Grid computing enables hundreds of years' worth of computing processing time to be utilised to enable non-profit, humanitarian projects to run. WCG projects include:

• Human Proteome Folding
• FightAIDS@Home
• Help Conquer Cancer
• Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy
• Discovering Dengue Drugs
• Genome Comparison
• AfricanClimate@Home

Details of these projects can be found on the WCG site.

Our contributions

The badges below indicate that we have contributed at least 14 days worth of CPU Run Time to each of the following projects:

Human Proteome Folding project

 

FightAIDS@Home project

We are also working on Help Conquer Cancer.

How is it done?

No other technological breakthrough has demonstrated the power of individuals more than grid computing. By donating your unused computer time (Linux, Mac or Windows), you can help to change the world for the better.

Join over 350,000 computer users around the world who are contributing an average of over 112 years' worth of computing power every day (and that's just from unused computer time)!

The Art of Music team has notched up over 60 days computing time towards these projects.

More information about grid computing can be found here.

How does grid computing help?

In less than three months, with grid computing, scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease.

Without the grid, the work would have taken more than a year to complete.

Sounds great. How do I start?

1. Just go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org to register
2. Once you've completed the registration process, you'll need to download and install the World Community Grid software to get going with the project

If you already participate in the World Community Grid, then you can join our team. Just follow this link to join us.

Use your computer to help save lives

Join BOINC

Other projects are available from BOINC.

These include Climate Prediction, which we joined on 25 April 2008 and are now working on.

Why "The Art of Music"?

• Our name comes from a 16th-century Scottish musical treatise The Airt of musick which deals with faburden – the way in which counter-melodies were added to a tune or air. More…
• "Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world."
  (Martin Luther, 1483-1546)
• "Where the speech of man stops short, then the art of music begins."
  (Richard Wagner, 1813-1883)
• "[Sacred music] must be true art, for otherwise it cannot exercise on the minds of the hearers that influence which the Church meditates when she welcomes into her liturgy the art of music."
  Tra le Sollecitudini (Motu proprio of Pius X, 22 Nov 1903)