Boosey & Hawkes

Boosey & Hawkes is the world's self-proclaimed biggest international classical music publisher. He emerged from two former British family farms, who had also profiled as an instrument builder. Meanwhile contained Boosey & Hawkes in addition to the publishing group is a conglomerate of numerous European instrument-making company, which was spun off in 2001 under the name of The Music Group.

History of the company

The beginnings

Around 1760 John Boosey founded in London a lending library of sheet music. He brought one of the first publishers with great success cheap editions of classical music pieces on the market, thereby gained rapidly in importance and acquired the rights to the works of important composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. In 1850 the company expanded its business into the production of wind instruments.

The first rival company Hawkes & Son was founded in 1865 by William Henry Hawkes. He focused his publishing activities initially on compositions for brass bands (brass bands ) and orchestra, but expanded rapidly. At the same time he produced musical instruments, accessories and reeds.

Laying Generic activities in the 20th century

In 1930, Boosey & Company merged with Hawkes & Son into a conglomerate Boosey & Hawkes, which developed as a result to an international heavyweight in the music industry. At this time, Ralph Hawkes had already taken several other European publishers. Thanks to their international contacts, he advanced before the outbreak of the Second World War to the publisher of Bartók, Kodály and Delius and took the still unknown Benjamin Britten under contract.

During the war, Hawkes went to the USA, where he expanded his portfolio to include Stravinsky, Copland and Martinů. Thanks to his London contacts occurred in 1943 to contract with Richard Strauss on the Rights of whose operas outside of Germany and Italy, and in all later works. 1947 finally succeeded Hawkes, to secure through acquisitions the rights to many of the most important works of the 20th century, including pieces by Prokofiev and Rachmaninov.

Since then, Boosey & Hawkes took a variety of the most famous composers of the 20th century under contract and acquired another competitor and catalogs. To this end, the takeover of the traditional Berlin building Bote & Bock in 1996, the Hamburg publisher Anton J. Benjamin counts in 2002, inter alia, with the original Simrock editions of works by Brahms and Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, as well as first editions of the Prague publishing pace in 2004, with a wide range of Czech music.

Instrument

Through the influence of the musician Henri Distin instruments of bugle family won in the first half of the 19th century in Great Britain increasingly popular (brass band movement). Distin initially took over the UK distribution of such instruments on behalf of its inventor, Adolphe Sax, but soon joined with a proprietary operating in competition with him.

He worked closely with Boosey & Co., which he joined in 1868. The instrument manufactory of Boosey & Co. was at that time busy with several promising research projects, the highlight was the invention of the compensation system by DJ Blaikely in 1878.

Hawkes & Son Built in 1925, a tool factory in Edgware, north London, where the company after the merger with Boosey & Co. from 1930 continued to produce brass instruments.

Further acquisitions and consolidation

In 1948, the takeover of rival Besson. 1981 Boosey & Hawkes swallowed the Tolchin Group, among others, the company clerk and Sons ( woodwinds ), Paesold (string instruments), Jakob Winter ( suitcase ) and Buffet Crampon belonged ( woodwinds ). Schreiber took his hand in 1997 the saxophone manufacturer Julius Keilwerth.

In the summer of 2001, the resulting Boosey & Hawkes Musical Instruments Ltd. moved. their production facility Edgware after Croxley Green, near Watford in Hertfordshire. About 100 employees represented there until the end of 2005 on an area of ​​over 5,000 square brass instruments that were sold under the brand Besson.

In February 2003 Boosey & Hawkes divided all endorsed the passage of time from instrument construction companies in the consortium The Music Group.

Since July 2004, a strategic partnership between the Mainz Schott Music Publishing and Boosey & Hawkes, to improve the distribution and preservation of license rights abroad. Thus Schott accepts certain logistical and sales tasks for Boosey & Hawkes.

Boosey & Hawkes has, in addition to the international headquarters in London, offices in New York and Berlin.