Boosey & Hawkes
| BOOSEY & HAWKES HOLDINGS LIMITED
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| legal form | Limited |
| founding | 1760 |
| Seat | London , UK |
| management | Kent Hoskins |
| sales | 19.67 million GBP approx. 21.98 million EUR |
| Branch | Music publisher |
| Website | www.boosey.com |
| As of December 31, 2018 | |
Boosey & Hawkes claims to be the world's largest international classical music publisher . It emerged from two former English family businesses that had also distinguished themselves as instrument makers . For some time, Boosey & Hawkes contained, in addition to the publishing group, a conglomerate of numerous European instrument making companies, which was spun off in 2001 under the name The Music Group .
history
Beginnings
Around 1760 John Boosey founded a sheet music library in London . He was one of the first publishers to bring inexpensive editions of classical music onto the market with great success, quickly gaining in importance and acquiring the rights to the works of important composers of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Rossini , Bellini , Donizetti and Verdi . Around 1850 the company expanded its business area to include the manufacture of wind instruments .
The initially rival company Hawkes & Son was founded in 1865 by William Henry Hawkes. He focused his publishing activities initially on compositions for sheet metal bands (brass bands) and orchestra, but quickly expanded. At the same time he produced musical instruments , accessories and reeds .
Publishing activities in the 20th century
In 1930 Boosey & Company merged with Hawkes & Son to form the conglomerate Boosey & Hawkes, which subsequently developed into an international heavyweight in the music industry. At that time, Ralph Hawkes had already taken over several other European publishers. Thanks to their international contacts, he advanced to the publisher of Bartók , Kodály and Delius before the outbreak of World War II and signed the still unknown Benjamin Britten .
During the war, Hawkes went to the USA , where he added Stravinsky , Copland and Martinů to his portfolio . Thanks to his contacts in London, he signed a contract with Richard Strauss in 1943 on the rights to his operas outside Germany and Italy and to all of his later works. In 1947 Hawkes finally managed to secure the rights to many of the most important works of the 20th century through further takeovers, including pieces by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff .
Since then, Boosey & Hawkes signed a number of the most famous composers of the 20th century and acquired other competitors and catalogs. These include the takeover of the traditional Berlin company Bote & Bock in 1996, the Hamburg publisher Anton J. Benjamin in 2002 with the original Simrock editions of works by Brahms and Dvořák as well as Tchaikovsky's first editions and the Prague publisher Tempo in 2004 with a large one Range of Czech music.
Instrument making
Due to the influence of the musician Henri Distin , the instruments of the bow horn family gained increasing popularity in Great Britain in the first half of the 19th century ( brass band movement ). Distin initially took over the English distribution of such instruments on behalf of their inventor Adolphe Sax , but soon competed with him with his own company.
He worked closely with Boosey & Co., which he joined in 1868. At the time, the Boosey & Co. instrument manufacturer was engaged in several promising research projects, the culmination of which was the invention of the compensation system by DJ Blaikely in 1878.
Hawkes & Son built an instrument factory in Edgware in North London in 1925 , where the company continued to produce brass instruments after the merger with Boosey & Co. in 1930 .
Further acquisitions and consolidation
In 1948 the competitor Besson was taken over . In 1981 Boosey & Hawkes took over the Tolchin Group , which included the companies Schreiber und Söhne (woodwind instruments), Paesold (string instruments), Jakob Winter (suitcase) and Buffet Crampon (woodwind instruments). In 1997, Schreiber took over the saxophone manufacturer Julius Keilwerth .
In the summer of 2001, the resulting Boosey & Hawkes Musical Instruments Ltd. their manufacturing facility from Edgware to Croxley Green near Watford in Hertfordshire . By the end of 2005, over 100 employees produced brass instruments on an area of over 5000 m², which were sold under the Besson brand.
In February 2003, Boosey & Hawkes spun off all of the instrument makers it had taken over into the consortium The Music Group .
Since July 2004 there has been a strategic partnership between the Mainz music publisher Schott and Boosey & Hawkes to improve the distribution and maintenance of license rights abroad. Accordingly, Schott takes on certain logistical and sales tasks for Boosey & Hawkes.
In addition to its international headquarters in London, Boosey & Hawkes has branches in New York and Berlin , among others .
In 2019 Boosey & Hawkes took over the German music publishing group Sikorski Musikverlage .
See also
- Ernst Roth , temporarily publishing director at Boosey & Hawkes
literature
- Helen Wallace: Boosey & Hawkes. The Publishing Story. London 2007, ISBN 978-0-85162-514-0 .
Web links
- German-language website of the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes
- English-language website of the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes
- Press release on the partnership between Schott Musikverlag and Boosey & Hawkes (PDF; 30 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Group of companies' accounts made up to December 31, 2018 , accessed January 2, 2019
- ↑ SWR2, SWR2: Music company buys Sikorski publishing group from Hamburg. Retrieved August 29, 2019 .