N._Simrock

N. Simrock

N. Simrock

German music publisher

N. Simrock (in German Musikverlag N. Simrock, Simrock Verlag, or simply Simrock) was a German music publisher founded by Nikolaus Simrock which published many 19th-century German classical music composers. It was acquired in 1929 by Anton Benjamin.

Title page of a 1906 Simrock edition of Dvorak's 5th Symphony for piano

The firm was founded in 1793 by Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn. Simrock had been a close friend to Beethoven his whole life. It was expanded by his son Peter Joseph in the 19th century, and in 1870 moved to Berlin by the latter's son Fritz.[1] His nephew Hans Simrock later ran the company, and in 1907 acquired another music publisher, Bartholf Senff of Leipzig.[2][3] In 1911 the company merged with Albert Ahn's publishing house to form Ahn & Simrock, headquartered in Bonn and Berlin, but later separated from it. In 1929 it was sold to the Leipzig publisher Anton J. Benjamin,[2][4][5] which was re-established in 1951 in Hamburg[6] and acquired by Boosey & Hawkes in 2002.[5] Many of the company's archives and plates were lost in the Second World War and had to be reconstructed by reproducing old editions.[7] The remaining archives were mostly held in what is now the Saxon State Archive in Leipzig, but some material was dispersed in the 1990s and early 2000s.[8]

The company was the first publisher of the music of a veritable "Who's Who" of classical music composers, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (what must have been a hand-written copy of The Magic Flute),[9] Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven (13 first editions), Robert Schumann (including his Third Symphony), Johannes Brahms,[2][10] Felix Mendelssohn (such as his oratorios Elias and Paulus),[11] Max Bruch (including his Violin Concerto No. 1), Antonín Dvořák,[2] and Josef Suk.

Notes

  1. [1]
    Donald William Krummel and Stanley Sadie, Music Printing and Publishing, Norton/Grove handbooks in music, New York: Norton, 1990, ISBN 9780393028096, p. 107.
  2. [2]
    Otto Biba, "Die Simrocks—Verleger für Beethoven wie für Brahms", in Johannes Brahms und Bonn, ed. Martella Gutiérrez-Denhoff, Bonn: Stadt Bonn, Beethoven-Haus, 1997, ISBN 9783922832164, p. 89 (in German)
  3. [3]
    Beiträge zur Geschichte des Buchwesens 3 (1968) p. 204 (in German)
  4. [4]
    The School Musician Director and Teacher 56 (1985) p. 42.
  5. [5]
    Ludwig Finscher and Friedrich Blume, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, Part 2, Volume 15, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2006, ISBN 9783476410306, p. 837 (in German)
  6. [6]
    Krummel and Sadie, p. 170.
  7. [7]
    The Instrumentalist 47 (1992) pp. 5, 106.
  8. [8]
    Michael Freyhan, The Authentic Magic Flute Libretto: Mozart's Autograph Or the First Full Score Edition?, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 2009, ISBN 9780810869677, p. 159.
  9. [9]
    Freyhan, p. 68, note 51.
  10. [10]
    Brahms' letters to Fritz Simrock were published in 1917–19; Peter Schmitz, Johannes Brahms und der Leipziger Musikverlag Breitkopf & Härtel, Abhandlungen zur Musikgeschichte 20, Göttingen: V & R, 2009, ISBN 9783899717280, p. 21 and note 23 (in German)
  11. [11]
    "Nikolaus Simrock" (in German). Stadtmuseum Bonn. 2012. Archived from the original on 27 April 2012. Retrieved 1 May 2012.

References
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