Boosey and Hawkes: The Publishing Story

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Boosey and Hawkes: The Publishing Story", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 8, pp. 748-750. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710818162

Any historian or analyst of the publishing industry will tell you that getting the right mix of commercial acumen and artistic flair is the secret of success. The relationships authors and editors and publishers have with each other is a fugal counterpoint of entrepreneurial exploitation and creative collaboration. Even if it flourishes, there are ups and downs, as there are in the business of publishing itself, above all in the music publishing field where the pressures of markets and of change are stronger than most.

Helen Wallace's highly readable history of that doyen of music publishers Boosey and Hawkes is not only a study of the firm from its beginnings (Boosey started as a lending library in London in the late 18th century and Hawkes in the mid‐19th with an interest in military music), not just a conventional official history despite the imprint. The firm as we know it today started in the 1930s and that it survives today is partly the result of skill and partly accident.

The book is also a highly informed interpretation of music publishing itself, of the ways in which the business drove the music and the music drove the business. As Ernst Roth, one of the major forces in the firm and editor of Stravinsky, said to a young colleague: “Always remember, you are not in business for the sake of music; you are in music for the sake of business”. That said, Roth's own record, and that of the patriarchal Leslie Boosey (or LAB, 1887‐1979) and the mercurial Ralph Hawkes (1898‐1950) demonstrates that, for them all, the business and the music were equally important, the networking and the editing probably above all.

The composers and musicians with whom B&H had dealings over the years reads like a roll‐call of key cultural figures – notably Stravinsky and Britten, Shostakovich and Prokofieff and Bartok, and then later Xenakis and von Einem, Maxwell Davies and Górecki, Adams and Reich. Many of the relationships staff at B&H had with these people was artistic and editorial, and Wallace brings out time and time again how these worked (and sometimes did not) – Erwin Stein and Ernst Roth and later David Drew and others acted as intermediaries, interpreters, sub‐editors, mentors and counsellors to them. Relationships could get stormy and her description of them is far from sentimental or hagiographic. Often legal and financial matters got fraught, as when the Stravinsky letters project failed, when legal problems developed over Górecki, or hasty judgements were made of Bernstein's ventures into popular music. Central to an understanding of this, and the light it sheds on music publishing more widely, is the balance between business and music.

At least three further sets of tensions beset the firm and these come out vividly in the book. The first is the struggle to keep up with changing tastes in music: the new musical styles of Xenakis and Maxwell Davies in the 1960s provoked disagreement among key managers of the firm, not only artistic disagreements but those based on risk and investment too. Associated challenges came along later when even new computerized software like Sibelius struggled to represent the complex musical texts of Steve Reich and others (who were increasing able to publish their own music). The second was the long‐standing rivalry between the two major arms of B&H – instruments, on the one side, and music publishing and editing, on the other. For anyone interested in examining the ways in which publishers – and indeed any business with different functional areas – operate, the challenges they faced financially, how the two sides often looked with suspicion at the other, and how different types of pressure from market rivals impacted on both sides of the business, Wallace's study is very informative indeed.

The third hinges on the struggles for control between, simply, the Boosey part of the business and the Hawkes part. In the beginning the firm was confident in its artistic judgement though autocratic: Boosey was the diplomat and organizer while Hawkes networked and had the flair. The premature death of Hawkes led to often‐bitter quarrels about control, attempts to oust the Boosey family from the board of directors, and what Wallace calls a “scorpions’ nest” in the 1950s and 1960s. Britten himself – a major published composer with the firm – had his favourites and exerted no small control, and for specialists in Britten the book will provide interestingly new insights. Wallace has written no polite apologia for the firm, and draws on a wide range of sources (including the firm's newsletter called Tempo) for many telling stories and insights. The vicissitudes of the company (problems in the New York office, the success of Germany in the 1990s, over‐spending by CEO Boxford in the 1980s, rumours of takeovers and clever share‐dealing by Carl Fischer, the shop that caught fire, the continual battles over rights) all come out clearly.

Threading their way through the middle of all this are the strong relationships between composers and editors, the scholarship and skill of these editors, the competitive strength of the list, the acumen and aggression with which rights and hire material were developed and protected – musical personalities woven in with business decision‐making. New business methods – strategic international thinking, pragmatic cost‐control, marketing options (by which, for instance, new opportunities like educational publishing took off and new threats like rivals like Schirmer were averted) came in with Anthony Fell, and, in more recent years, new business structures evolved (the shop outsourced, a website developed, an alliance with Schott under which Schott handled distribution and marketing and B&H provided royalty accounting and copyright control services). Wallace provides just enough backdrop information throughout to set these financial and legal matters in context.

However, it is the elusive balance between business and music that comes out most clearly from the book. The editors and B&H staff, as well as the composers, are shown in black‐and‐white photographs. Many got involved in both business and music – Stein and Roth were scholarly editors, Drew an expert on Kurt Weill, Janis Susskind and Jim Kendrick as musical as they were entrepreneurial. Trevor Glover (from Penguin) and John Minch (from Reed) were crucial in pushing the firm – financially, legally, and artistically – forward. What is also provided by the book are excerpts from letters (from Britten and others) and pictures of musical works (like Nicholas Maw's The Rising of the Moon, at Glyndebourne in 1970), and this adds to the flavour of the book. Editorial and marketing staff are legendarily invisible and Wallace's choice of illustration remind the reader that these were real people!

Wallace herself has been editor of The Strad and BBC Music Magazine, and as a Kodály teacher and cellist has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, combining the business, editorial and musical talents that she so often discusses in the book. B&H come out as an important strand in the cultural and musical life of Britain in the last hundred and more years, and, even though there is more to tell, this insight into such a company makes it an excellent addition to any music and academic and public library. For any student of publishing history, musical or otherwise, this is a definite purchase.