G. Schirmer Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, founded in 1861. It publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Italian Ricordi

Casa Ricordi

Casa Ricordi is a classical music publishing company founded in 1808 as G. Ricordi & Co. by violinist Giovanni Ricordi in Milan, Italy...

, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello, Breitkopf & Härtel

Breitkopf & Härtel

Breitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The name "Härtel" was added when Gottfried...

, Sikorski

Hans Sikorski

Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski is an international sheet music publishing company with headquarters in Hamburg, Germany.The music publishing firm of Hans Sikorski was founded in 1935 and now comprises more than 30 publishers in several European countries and in the USA...

 and many Russian and former Soviet composers' catalogs.

History

The company was founded in 1861 in the United States by German-born Gustav Schirmer, Sr. (1829-1893), the son of a German immigrant. In 1891, the company established its own engraving and printing plant. The next year it inaugurated the Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics. The Musical Quarterly

The Musical Quarterly

The Musical Quarterly is the oldest academic journal on music in America. Originally established in 1915 by Oscar Sonneck, the journal was edited by Sonneck until his death in 1928...

, the oldest academic journal on music in the U.S., was founded by Schirmer in 1915 together with musicologist Oscar Sonneck

Oscar Sonneck

Oscar George Theodore Sonneck was a U.S. librarian, editor, and musicologist.Sonneck studied philosophy and musicology in Germany at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich....

, who edited the journal until his death in 1928. In 1964, Schirmer acquired Associated Music Publishers (BMI) which had built up an important catalog of American composers including Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...

, Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...

, Roy Harris

Roy Harris

Roy Ellsworth Harris , was an American composer. He wrote much music on American subjects, becoming best known for his Symphony No...

, Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

, Walter Piston

Walter Piston

Walter Hamor Piston Jr., , was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter....

, and William Schuman

William Schuman

William Howard Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.-Life:Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill...

, adding to a Schirmer's ASCAP roster which had already included Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

, Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

, Morton Gould

Morton Gould

Morton Gould was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist.Born in Richmond Hill, New York, Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His first composition was published at age six...

, Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...

, and Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson

Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...

, as well as composers from the earlier part of the century such as Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Loeffler was a German-born American violinist and composer.- Birthplace :Throughout his career Loeffler claimed to have been born in Mulhouse, Alsace and almost all music encyclopedias give this fabricated information. In his lifetime articles were published dissecting his...

, John Alden Carpenter

John Alden Carpenter

John Alden Carpenter was an American composer.-Biography:Born in Park Ridge, Illinois, Carpenter was raised in a musical household. He was educated at Harvard University, where he studied under John Knowles Paine, and was president of the Glee Club and wrote music for the Hasty-Pudding Club...

, and Percy Grainger

Percy Grainger

George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...

.

The company was owned by the Schirmer family for over 100 years until Macmillan, a major book publisher, purchased it in 1968. Macmillan then sold G. Schirmer (except for its reference division, now part of Gale

Gale (publisher)

Gale is an educational publishing company based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, the United States, in the western suburbs of Detroit. It was part of the Thomson Learning division of the Thomson Corporation, a Canadian company, but became part of Cengage Learning in 2007.The company, formerly known...

) to its current owner, Robert Wise, in 1986, the owner of popular music publisher, Music Sales

Music Sales

Music Sales Group is Europe's largest printed music publisher, with headquarters in Berners Street, London. It owns the rights to hundreds of thousands of songs, imprints both for books and sheet music, operates the UK's largest chain of music shops, and sells sheet music, instruments and...

, Inc. According to a spokesman, the purchase price was around USD $7 million.

As the sale of Schirmer did not include The Musical Quarterly, the future of the journal remained uncertain until its transition in 1989 to publisher Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

. In 1986 Schirmer also joined with the Hal Leonard Corporation, a print distributor of jazz and popular music, who became the sole distributors of Schirmer's printed music. The last member of the family named for the founder was Gus Schirmer the 4th, a theatrical director, producer, and agent, who died in 1992 at the age of 73.

Composers published by the company

The Schirmer/AMP catalog includes American composers such as John Corigliano

John Corigliano

John Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the City University of New York.-Biography:...

, Richard Danielpour

Richard Danielpour

Richard Danielpour is an American composer.-Biography:Danielpour is born of Persian/Jewish descent. He studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and later at the Juilliard School of Music, where he received a DMA in composition in 1986...

, Avner Dorman

Avner Dorman

Avner Dorman is an Israeli born composer of contemporary classical music.- Biography :Avner Dorman holds a Doctorate in Music Composition from the Juilliard School where he studied as a C.V. Starr fellow with John Corigliano...

, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Harbison

John Harbison

John Harris Harbison is an American composer, best known for his operas and large choral works.-Life:...

, Aaron Jay Kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis is an American composer and professor at the Yale School of Music.-Biography:Aaron Jay Kernis is Jewish, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Yale University .,Notable works include the...

, Leon Kirchner

Leon Kirchner

Leon Kirchner was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 3.Kirchner was born in Brooklyn, New York...

, Peter Lieberson

Peter Lieberson

Peter Lieberson was an American composer. He was ballerina and choreographer Vera Zorina and Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records....

, André Previn

André Previn

André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

, Bright Sheng

Bright Sheng

Bright Sheng is a Chinese-American composer, conductor, and pianist. He has lived in the United States since 1982 and is on faculty at the University of Michigan. In 1999, the White House commissioned Sheng to compose a piece to honor the Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji at a state dinner hosted by...

, Tan Dun

Tan Dun

Tan Dun is a Chinese contemporary classical composer, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.-Early life in China:...

, and Joan Tower

Joan Tower

Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by the New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world...

.

The company also publishes The G. Schirmer Manual of Style and Usage. G. Schirmer is a member of the Music Sales Group of Companies, the Music Publishers Association, the National Music Publishers Association

National Music Publishers Association

The National Music Publishers Association is the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners. The NMPA’s mandate is to protect and advance the interests of music publishers and songwriters in matters relating to the domestic and global protection of...

, and the Church Music Publishers Association.

External links

• Schirmer.com, Home page
• ArtistsHouseMusic.org, Interview with Peggy Monastra on G. Schirmer Music Publishers