G. Schirmer
G. Schirmer, Inc. is an American classical music publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1861. The oldest active music publisher in the United States, Schirmer publishes sheet music for sale and rental, and represents some well-known European music publishers in North America, such as the Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello, Breitkopf & Härtel, Sikorski and many Russian and former Soviet composers’ catalogs.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article on G. Schirmer, Inc..
From the period sources
Gustav Schirmer, a prominent German music-publisher, was born in Saxony in 1829 and emigrated to New York in 1837, entering the music shop of Scharfenberg and Luis (Grove’s Dictionary, 1908). He entered the music-publishing business in 1853, becoming manager of Breusing’s music business in 1854, which had been founded in 1848 by Kerksieg and Breusing. In 1861, Schirmer, with B. Beer, took over this enterprise, operating it as Beer & Schirmer, before eventually gaining complete control (Grove’s Dictionary, 1908). The firm, known as Schirmer of Broadway, New York, became American agents for European publishers such as Peters, Breitkopf and Härtel, and Augener and Co., and published numerous works by both American and European composers, including Abt, Arditi, Buck, Damrosch, Gounod, Liszt, and Schumann (Brown’s Biographical Dictionary, 1886).
Under Schirmer’s management, the business steadily grew in standing and influence, establishing and maintaining for many years the principal circulating music library in the United States, which was later transferred to the Institute of Musical Art in 1906 (Grove’s Dictionary, 1908). The firm also published the weekly magazine The Musical Review from about 1879 (Brown’s Biographical Dictionary, 1886). Gustav Schirmer died in 1893 in Eisenach, Thuringia, while traveling in Germany in hopes of restoring his health. His heirs incorporated the business in the same year, with his sons Rudolph E. and Gustave Schirmer taking over management and further expanding its importance, particularly in publication (Grove’s Dictionary, 1908). By 1906, the G. Schirmer catalogue boasted about 18,000 active titles, including the Library of Musical Classics and a series of modern operas in vocal score, alongside works by notable American composers such as Dudley Buck, George W. Chadwick, and Horatio W. Parker (Grove’s Dictionary, 1908).