Universal Edition is a classical music publishing

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

 firm. Founded in 1901

1901 in music

-Events:*April 18 - Contralto Mariska Horvath marries politician J. Frank Aldrich.*October 27 – First complete performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2*November 25 – Premiėre of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No...

 in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, and originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n market (which had until then been dominated by Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

-based publishers). The firm soon expanded to become one of the most important publishers of modern music.

History

In 1904, UE acquired Aibl publishers, and so acquired the rights to many works by Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

 and Max Reger

Max Reger

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...

, but it was the arrival of Emil Hertzka

Emil Hertzka

----Emil Hertzka was an influential and pioneering music publisher who was responsible for printing and promoting some of the most important European musical works of the 20th century.-Early life and education:...

 as managing director in 1907 (who remained until his death in 1932) which really pushed the firm towards new music. Under Hertzka, UE signed contracts with a number of important contemporary composers, including Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

 and Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...

 in 1908; Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

 and Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

 in 1909 (Mahler's Symphony No. 8

Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)

The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is often performed with fewer than a...

was the first work UE acquired an original copyright to); Anton Webern

Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

 and Alexander von Zemlinsky

Alexander von Zemlinsky

Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.-Early life:...

 in 1910; Karol Szymanowski

Karol Szymanowski

Karol Maciej Szymanowski was a Polish composer and pianist.-Life:Szymanowski was born into a wealthy land-owning Polish gentry family in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire, now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. He studied music privately with his father before going to Gustav Neuhaus'...

 in 1912, and Leoš Janáček

Leoš Janácek

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...

 in 1917. Through their association with Schoenberg, they also published many works by Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

.

The firm's avant garde directions continued after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, when UE published works by a number of significant composers, among them Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...

, Mauricio Kagel

Mauricio Kagel

Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...

, György Kurtág

György Kurtág

György Kurtág is a Hungarian composer of contemporary music.- Biography :György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region, Romania.In 1946, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he met his wife, Márta, and also György Ligeti, who became a close friend...

, György Ligeti

György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

 and Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

. Later important additions to the catalogue include Georg Friedrich Haas

Georg Friedrich Haas

Georg Friedrich Haas is an Austrian composer of spectral music.He grew up in Tschagguns and studied composition with Gösta Neuwirth, Iván Erőd, and piano with Doris Wolf at the Musikhochschule in Graz...

, Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...

, Cristóbal Halffter

Cristóbal Halffter

Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina is a Spanish composer. He is the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter.-Life:...

, Robert Aitken

Robert Aitken (composer)

Robert Morris Aitken, is a Canadian composer and flautist. He began his career as a teenager playing in a number of orchestras, notably becoming the youngest principal flautist in the history of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in 1958 at the age if 19. In 1971 he abandoned ensemble performance...

, Richard Rodney Bennett

Richard Rodney Bennett

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE is an English composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works...

, Harrison Birtwistle

Harrison Birtwistle

Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...

, Georges Lentz

Georges Lentz

Georges Lentz is a contemporary composer and sound artist, born in Luxembourg in 1965, and is that country's internationally best known composer. Since 1990, he has been living in Sydney, Australia...

, Johannes Maria Staud

Johannes Maria Staud

- Biography :Staud studied with, amongst others, Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Jarrell. He gained a publishing contract with Universal Edition in 2000, and since then has won numerous prizes, including a special music prize of the Austrian Republic , the composition award of the Salzburg Easter...

, John Rea

John Rea (composer)

John Rea is a Montreal-based composer who notably won the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music in both 1981 and 1992. He obtained his Bachelors degree at Wayne State University , his Master of Music degree at the University of Toronto , and his PhD at Princeton University. His children's opera...

, Jay Schwartz

Jay Schwartz

Jay Schwartz is an American composer living in Europe.He studied music at Arizona State University, where he graduated in 1989, after which he studied musicology in Tuebingen, Germany....

, Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...

 and Friedrich Cerha

Friedrich Cerha

Friedrich Cerha is an Austrian composer and conductor.-Biography:Cerha was born in Vienna.He received his education at the Viennese Music Academy and at the University of Vienna...

.

UE have also published several significant historical editions, including the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...

. In collaboration with Schott

Schott Music

Schott Music is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe and is currently the second oldest music publishing house. The company headquarters of Schott Music was founded by Bernhard Schott in Mainz, Germany in 1770.Established in...

, they have published the Wiener Urtext Edition series since 1972. Originally consisting of works for one or two performers by composers from Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 to Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...

, the series was later expanded to include a limited number of later works, such as the Ludus Tonalis

Ludus Tonalis

Ludus Tonalis , subtitled Kontrapunktische, tonal, und Klaviertechnische Übungen , is a piano work by Paul Hindemith that was composed in 1942 during his stay in the United States.The piece starts with a three-part Praeludium in C resembling Bach's toccatas, and ends with a Postludium...

of Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

.

Litigation threats

On October 19, 2007, Universal Edition entered legal proceedings against the International Music Score Library Project

International Music Score Library Project

The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...

, an online entity which seeks to make musical scores in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 available digitally. In response to a cease-and-desist letter from Universal Edition demanding that certain scores still covered by Austrian copyright be removed, IMSLP closed itself voluntarily, amidst controversy that UE's demands lacked reasonable legal grounds. For although Austrian copyright governs works published up to 70 years after its composer's death, IMSLP is hosted in Canada, where copyright lasts twenty years less. The Internet Law professor Michael Geist

Michael Geist

Michael Allen Geist is a Canadian academic, and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. Geist was educated at the University of Western Ontario where he received his Bachelors of Laws before going on to get his Masters of Laws at both Osgoode Hall Law...

wrote a column for the BBC which suggested UE's actions lacked reasonable legal ground. The International Music Score Library maintained that UE's actions lacked legal justification, and reopened on June 30, 2008.