Publishing and the Music Trade

A conspicuous feature of nineteenth-century English musical life was the establishment of a large number of firms trading in music, offering items and services as diverse as a burgeoning market for music demanded. There were sellers and repairers of musical instruments, many of whom manufactured their own instruments for sale, organ builders and firms dealing solely with the manufacture, sale and maintenance of pianos. There were ‘professors of music’, which in the present context means persons who professed, or taught, music. These professors sometimes organised themselves into commercial groups, perhaps under the title of ‘Academy’, and many of them also held positions as church organists. Any, or all, of these types of individual or organisation could (and often did) publish music. In addition, there were booksellers, printers and stationers, whose main activities concerned the written word but who were also sometimes commissioned to print or sell items of music. In the early part of the century, therefore, the concept of the music publisher as a specialist principally in that single area was almost non-existent. Even in the second half of the century, well after the establishment of such large London firms as Novello (1810), Chappell (1811) and Boosey (c.1816) and the midcentury advances in music-printing technology, this multiplicity of functions continued for the most part to prevail. It did so for much of the twentieth century, too, and some such firms are still in existence, for example Banks of York and Forsyth of Manchester.

For the present-day investigator of music publishing, whose principal sources of evidence include sheet music, catalogues and advertisements, as well as trade directories, in which classifications are unfortunately seldom sufficiently precise or accurate, the concept of the music publisher in the nineteenth century can sometimes be uncomfortably vague. An interest in enhancing personal fame or fortune from music in print seems here to have been the determining factor, rather than a particular function in the process of producing or disseminating it. For example, in one instance the composer of a piece of music might be recorded as its publisher, because this single person had carried out every stage in the music's creation and dissemination except the act of printing it. In another, a commissioning body might be recorded as the publisher, although this organisation might nowadays more commonly be termed the sponsor or promoter.