{"id":10743,"date":"2024-07-02T07:46:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T05:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/baerenreiter-a-publisher-of-global-standing\/"},"modified":"2024-07-05T09:18:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T07:18:13","slug":"baerenreiter-a-publisher-of-global-standing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/jubilaeum\/baerenreiter-a-publisher-of-global-standing\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u00e4renreiter \u2013 a publisher of global standing"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Kassel \/ Basel \/ London \/ New York \/ Prague
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B\u00e4renreiter \u2013 a publisher of global standing
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\u201cThe sun never sets on my kingdom!\u201d Karl V\u00f6tterle joked in late 1962 in an allusion to another Karl or Charles (the fifth Holy Roman Emperor of that name), speculating that \u201cnot an hour goes by without a work published by B\u00e4renreiter resounding somewhere in the world.\u201d There were particular key reasons for the commercial success that B\u00e4renreiter achieved in the post-war period \u2013 the success that underpins V\u00f6tterle\u2019s complacent statement. During the economic miracle of the 1950s, the publishing house had begun to systematically broaden its offer. For one, B\u00e4renreiter embarked upon several acquisitions and cooperations (Nagels Verlag in 1952, Hinnenthal-Verlag in 1953, Bruckner-Verlag (later Alkor-Edition) in 1955, Gustav Bosse Verlag in 1957) and established the Musicaphon record label (1959). For another, it continuously expanded its catalogue. In particular, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s series of complete works editions and the individual editions based upon them became increasingly popular with an international audience, quickly leading B\u00e4renreiter to extend its focus beyond Germany\u2019s immediate neighbours. From 1959 onwards, the newsletter of the International Music Council (UNESCO), The World of Music, was published by B\u00e4renreiter \u2013 its title a clear indication of where the publisher was headed.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter Basel
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Shipping B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s titles across the globe of course required corresponding distribution structures. B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s first efforts in this regard date back to the National Socialist period and were a direct consequence of the dictatorship\u2019s repressive measures. While the foreign branch set up in 1939 by Karl V\u00f6tterle\u2019s Jewish friend Albert Dann first in Haifa and then in Tel Aviv was only short-lived due to the outbreak of the War, the founding of the legally and economically independent Basel branch of B\u00e4renreiter was intended to ensure the publishing house\u2019s survival \u2013 at the time, the Kassel headquarters were under threat of confiscation by the National Socialists. Armed with a rare exit permit, V\u00f6tterle had thus travelled to Switzerland on a secret mission in March 1944, taking all B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s publishing rights with him. His numerous helpful contacts served him extremely well in this venture: Ruth Majer, a trained bookseller and the sister of Marianne Majer, a member of the Basel Viola da Gamba Quartet, agreed first to register the publishing house in Basel within a day and then to manage it. <\/p>\n

The founder of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Paul Sacher, provided advice and support, another friend lent V\u00f6tterle the required Swiss francs, and August Wenzinger\u2019s parents provided the publisher with temporary storage space. V\u00f6tterle was thus prepared for an emergency, although it then occurred in a form he had not anticipated: when B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s Kassel premises burned down in March 1945, \u201cthe thought that a small, functioning B\u00e4renreiter publishing house existed in Basel was a comfort and help\u201d (Haus unterm Stern, p. 318). Ruth Majer managed the business until 1960; her successors expanded the branch into a major Swiss retailer, and Peter G. Isler in particular has rendered outstanding services since 1988 as B\u00e4renreiter Basel\u2019s Managing Director and as the person responsible for the French-speaking European markets.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Pierre Pidoux, Le Psautier Huguenot, Cover<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Until 2021, when all publishing rights were transferred to the parent company in Kassel, editions of music and musicological texts such as Pierre Pidoux\u2019s standard work Le Psautier Huguenot were published there; above all, however, B\u00e4renreiter Basel was the first port of call in Switzerland for Swiss composers such as Willy Burkhard, Klaus Huber, Rudolf Kelterborn, Beat Furrer, Andreas Lorenzo Scartazzini and Dieter Ammann. And in B\u00e4renreiter Basel\u2019s anniversary year 1994, history repeated itself: as Chairman of the Board of Directors of B\u00e4renreiter-Verlag Basel AG, Leonhard Scheuch, Swiss lover of all things Czech and a dedicated supporter of contemporary music, founded a subsidiary of B\u00e4renreiter Basel in Prague that paved the way for the privatisation of the Czechoslovakian state publishing house Editio Supraphon. B\u00e4renreiter Praha is thus a \u201cchild\u201d of freedom \u2013 of the freedom that Scheuch\u2019s father-in-law Karl V\u00f6tterle had sought and found in Switzerland at a time of severe hardship.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Cooperating with Czechoslovakian music publishers
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1965 Karl V\u00f6tterle erh\u00e4lt die Goldene Medaille der \u010cSSR<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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2010 Verlagsgeb\u00e4ude in Prag<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Prager Kollegium 2023<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Long before B\u00e4renreiter had a branch in Prague, it had already established close contacts with the countries of what was then the Eastern Bloc \u2013 especially Hungary, Romania and above all Czechoslovakia: \u201cA music publisher rooted in the singing movement could not but love Bohemian minstrelsy, the soil that nourished the art of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, Smetana, Jan\u00e1\u010dek and Martin\u016f\u201d, V\u00f6tterle wrote in Haus unterm Stern (p. 280f.), and thus the first informal meeting with representatives of the Czechoslovakian foreign trade company Artia Prague took place as early as 1955 in Bad Schandau. These talks became a forum for true encounter at the time of the Cold War and marked the beginning of a genuine partnership in which Bruckner-Verlag \u2013 which had moved to Kassel that same year and now was named Alkor-Edition \u2013 and its director Fritz Oeser played an important role. Among other things, Alkor took over the distribution of the Prague Dvo\u0159\u00e1k edition, all works by Smetana and compositions by the Slovak J\u00e1n Cikker, and via Kurt Honolka\u2019s libretto translations, numerous operas by Czechoslovakian composers, first and foremost Smetana\u2019s The Bartered Bride, found their way onto German-speaking stages. In 1965, Karl V\u00f6tterle was awarded the Golden Medal of the \u010cSSR in recognition of his efforts, which were anything but self-evident at the time: \u201cThere are no diplomatic relations between our countries,\u201d said Vojt\u011bch Strnad, the director of the State Music Publishing House, \u201cbut Czechoslovakia has a good \u2018consulate\u2019 in Kassel in the field of culture\u201d (Das B\u00e4renreiter-Werk 14, 1965, p. 12f.). And in 1974, yet another event that was to determine the course of the publishing house took place on Czechoslovakian soil: at the Jan\u00e1\u010dek Festival in Brno, the young Barbara V\u00f6tterle and the Zurich dramaturg Leonhard Scheuch met for the first time. The couple married in 1975 and after Karl V\u00f6tterle\u2019s death not only took over the running of the publishing house, but also continued to cultivate B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s special relationship with Eastern Europe. The fact that the takeover of Editio Supraphon in 1994 was a \u201cmatter close to B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s heart\u201d, and that B\u00e4renreiter Praha is now a permanent fixture within the publishing group, thus requires no further explanation.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter Limited
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The gates to the Western world were thrown open in London, and once again it was V\u00f6tterle\u2019s friend Albert Dann who took the decisive step. He had returned to Europe with his family after the War and from 1948 to 1956 ran a B\u00e4renreiter agency in West Hoathly (between London and Brighton). B\u00e4renreiter enjoyed close links with the British Isles in other ways, too: for example, V\u00f6tterle had stayed in touch with the music collector Paul Hirsch and with Otto Haas, the former owner of the Berlin antiquarian music store Liepmannssohn, both of whom had fled to England during the Nazi regime. He was also acquainted with Rolf Gardiner, the father of the conductor John Eliot Gardiner, who had close ties to the German singing movement. V\u00f6tterle\u2019s relationship with the Jewish musicologist Adolf Aber, who later became director of publishing at Novello & Co, proved particularly fruitful. Aber brought B\u00e4renreiter and the long-standing British publisher together; not only was a large exhibition about the German publishing house held in Novello\u2019s offices in October 1958, but from 1957 onwards Novello also handled the distribution of B\u00e4renreiter publications in Great Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth nations. The responsibility for this lay in the hands of Elfriede Lauezzari-Pap, who eventually also took over the management of the foreign branch B\u00e4renreiter Ltd., which was founded in 1963. With relentless tenacity, Lauezzari-Pap saw to it that B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s editions found their way as far as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southeast Asia \u2013 under conditions that bore no comparison with those of today\u2019s globalised world, as pointed out by Christopher Jackson, who joined B\u00e4renreiter Ltd. (now based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, 35 miles north of London) in 1977 and has been the branch\u2019s Managing Director since 1986: \u201cOur communication with customers, especially those on the other side of the world, took a lot of time back then. An airmail letter took about ten days to arrive from Australia, our reply took the same amount of time, and another ten days passed before we finally received the order. The whole process easily lasted for more than an entire month.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Patrick Abrams and Christopher Jackson 2023, B\u00e4renreiter Limited<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In the 1990s and 2000s, Patrick Abrams, who joined B\u00e4renreiter Ltd.\u2019s team in 1981 and is now its Associate Director, made a significant contribution to expanding and cultivating B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s personal contacts with dealers, libraries, orchestras, opera houses and conductors across the globe through his extensive travels abroad. In 1990, he experienced just how widely known the name \u201cB\u00e4renreiter\u201d already was on a visit to South Africa: \u201cAs I was waiting at a bus stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a man joined me and we started talking. He asked me what had brought me to South Africa, and I replied \u2013 assuming that this would put an end to the conversation \u2013 that I was travelling for a German classical music publisher. \u2018For which one?\u2019 I told him, whereupon when he pulled the B\u00e4renreiter piano score of Bach\u2019s Christmas Oratorio out of his bag. He was on his way to a rehearsal at the cathedral!\u201d Since 1990, B\u00e4renreiter Ltd.\u2019s distribution has operated from Harlow, about 28 miles northeast of London. Now, of course, the company has long since arrived in the digital age: in 2015, Abrams discovered the short message service Twitter, and since then has been in charge of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s Twitter account. He is passionate about cultivating connections with artists all over the world via this channel.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u00c9dition B\u00e4renreiter France
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Almost simultaneously with B\u00e4renreiter Ltd., a French branch was established in 1963, \u00c9dition B\u00e4renreiter Paris, run by Karl V\u00f6tterle\u2019s daughter Maria and her husband Michel Bernstein, a French record producer. In 1970 the company moved to Tours, but was abandoned in 1980 when Maria Bernstein resigned as a limited partner of B\u00e4renreiter Verlag. France was subsequently served by B\u00e4renreiter Basel for many years; today, this sales region falls within the remit of the headquarters in Kassel.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter in the USA
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For a long time, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s efforts to gain a foothold in the United States of America failed to achieve much success. In 1969, Karl V\u00f6tterle wrote in Haus unterm Stern (p. 320) that the task of establishing a functioning \u201cforeign branch in this world that is unusually open to B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s work\u201d still lay ahead of him. At least B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s long-time chief editor, the musicologist Wolfgang Rehm, was able to ascertain on a trip to the States in 1970 that the MGG and all complete edition volumes published by B\u00e4renreiter up to that point had already found their way into the major American libraries<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Igor Resnianski, Petra Woodfull-Harris and James Litzelman at the 2018 National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association in Orlando, FL<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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One of the companies B\u00e4renreiter probably owed this to was Theodore Front Musical Literature. Front, who had emigrated from Germany in the 1930s, had founded his business in Los Angeles in 1961; he used to make regular trips to Europe with a dozen specially made suitcases that he filled up with the publications of various publishing houses, including those of B\u00e4renreiter Verlag, single-handedly bringing them to the U.S. However, it was B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s collaboration with George Sturm and Robert Walls that proved to be the decisive step towards marketing B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s editions more intensely in the States. In 1980, Sturm became B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s consultant on all issues concerning U.S. copyright, visiting opera houses and orchestras and editing the magazine MadAminA!, which was instrumental in promoting orchestral and stage works. It was Sturm who introduced B\u00e4renreiter to Bob Walls and his company Foreign Music Distributors (F.M.D.), with whom B\u00e4renreiter signed a distribution contract in 1984. Walls made it easier for American music dealers to get hold of B\u00e4renreiter editions, thus ensuring a greater visibility and wider distribution of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s titles in the United States. The English catalogues and product directories produced by Walls played a key role in this process. In 1986, at Walls\u2019 instigation, a very successful piano reduction of Handel\u2019s Messiah was published with the text underlay solely in English, and a year later an edition of Mozart\u2019s piano sonatas with an exclusively English-language cover and preface followed \u2013 a sign of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s increasingly international orientation and a milestone in the development towards multilingualism as standard in all B\u00e4renreiter editions. A good ten years later, the model of exclusive foreign representation had had its day; Walls decided to give up wholesale trade and specialise in the distribution of orchestral material instead. The contract with F.M.D. was terminated in 1996, and from that point onwards it proved more advantageous for B\u00e4renreiter to serve the North American music market directly from Kassel.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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International marketing and sales
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Sales to those countries that do not fall within the remit of a foreign branch are handled by B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s headquarters in Kassel. In the 1990s, the sales department was divided into national and international areas of responsibility. This made it possible to build and cultivate stable dealer networks for the long term in the various European countries, the USA, and the Far East, and conversely means that customers have their fixed contact persons at B\u00e4renreiter. The extent to which these mutual relationships contribute to successful cooperation is illustrated, for example, by the awarding of the 2017 \u201cDon Eubanks Sales Rep Award\u201d \u2013 presented by the US Retail Print Music Dealers Association \u201cfor excellence and outstanding service\u201d \u2013 to B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s Petra Woodfull-Harris.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Catriona Glatthaar with Isabel Audenis and Carles Gumi at the Frankfurt Music Fair 2018<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A further key factor in B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s international success is the department\u2019s professionalism: a degree in music, for example, is helpful for marketing, as is a native proficiency in English \u2013 thus Catriona Glatthaar carries out important translations for B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s catalogues and social media advertising alongside other tasks \u2013, as is intercultural competence when dealing with Asian customers. Printed music is a cultural good, and as such its worth also needs to be communicated to musicians and scholars in conceptual terms. Direct contact with (end) customers, working with dealers in a spirit of partnership, and the presentation of the editions\u2019 content, which is sometimes also done jointly by the editors and copyeditors on lecture tours, are all indispensable in convincing customers of the relevance and value of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s publications.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Corinne Votteler and John Zhang, Sinjo Trading & Consulting, at the 2016 Music China in Shanghai<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter in Japan and China
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The different conditions on which the Kassel-based international sales department has been able to build since the 1990s are illustrated vividly by the Asian markets, which since 2003 have been overseen by the current Director of International Marketing & Sales, Corinne Votteler. B\u00e4renreiter had already been in contact with Japan since 1949, namely with Academia Music in Tokyo, a company that started to import classical sheet music and books from Europe shortly after the Second World War and remains an important partner for B\u00e4renreiter to this day. The 1970s then saw the signing of highly successful licensing agreements with Japanese publishers, including Zen-on and Ongaku no Tomo.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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In 1981, with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, the first \u201cGerman Music Fair\u201d was held in Japan; it was attended by Wolfgang Matthei, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s then authorised representative. B\u00e4renreiter was a regular exhibitor for the close to twenty years the fair ran. Ties with the Japanese market have thus existed for a very long time and are cultivated intensely in person through regular visits.<\/p>\n

The case is quite different in China: it was Wendelin G\u00f6bel who made the first trip to the then still very foreign world of the People\u2019s Republic in 1999 in his capacity as director of publishing. On that occasion, he was unable to find a single original B\u00e4renreiter edition there, not even in the library of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the country\u2019s largest conservatory. Due to China\u2019s low standard of living at that time and the fact that all imports of sheet music had to (and still have to) be handled by one of the large import companies (direct sales to music stores are not possible), it became apparent that \u201cconquering\u201d the Chinese market would require patience. Nevertheless, the \u201cMusic China\u201d trade fair, which has been held in Shanghai since 2002, has grown in the meantime and now occupies seventeen large halls instead of two small ones. China\u2019s important music libraries have gradually acquired B\u00e4renreiter complete works editions; direct relationships with music dealers have also been established. The \u201cB\u00e4renreiter Urtext\u201d brand has been launched, and B\u00e4renreiter is currently experiencing its greatest growth in China. Recently, a Chinese supplement to the Sassmannshaus Violin Method was published with the support of Kurt Sassmannshaus, who regularly visits the Far East with his educational \u201cStarling Preparatory String Project\u201d and teaches numerous students from China at the Cincinnati Conservatory.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Major developments and changes
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Major developments and changes
\nIn the first decades after the Second World War, B\u00e4renreiter Verlag\u2019s efforts to break into the international markets focused on cooperations with institutions and musicologists as well as on the establishment of branch offices \u2013 at that time, its network of foreign dealers was only rudimentary. In the last forty years, however, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s staff have travelled extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia and established good connections to the printed music trade in key markets for Western classical music. The Frankfurt Music Fair, which was first held in 1980 and for three decades remained the largest international trade fair for music publishers, also played a significant role in cultivating contacts. The fair decreased in importance in more recent years and has not been held at all since the outbreak of the pandemic, a circumstance that is symptomatic of the radical changes in the wider market. While B\u00e4renreiter still generates by far the largest share of its sales from the trade in sheet music, the number of music dealers and especially of local music shops has declined across the globe; the market is dominated by a few large companies. At the same time, digitisation is becoming more and more important in all areas of the music industry. Accordingly, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s sales activities are now increasingly aimed at communicating with musicians directly via social media. However, personal encounters \u2013 for example at national and international conferences, association meetings, and concerts, but also during visits to dealers and institutions such as opera houses, orchestras, libraries, and music academies \u2013 remain indispensable in ensuring that in future, too, not an hour will pass without music being played somewhere in the world from a work published by B\u00e4renreiter.<\/p>\n

Gudula Sch\u00fctz & Petra Woodfull-Harris<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\t\t

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Kassel \/ Basel \/ London \/ New York \/ Prague
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B\u00e4renreiter \u2013 a publisher of global standing
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\u201cThe sun never sets on my kingdom!\u201d Karl V\u00f6tterle joked in late 1962 in an allusion to another Karl or Charles (the fifth Holy Roman Emperor of that name), speculating that \u201cnot an hour goes by without a work published by B\u00e4renreiter resounding somewhere in the world.\u201d There were particular key reasons for the commercial success that B\u00e4renreiter achieved in the post-war period \u2013 the success that underpins V\u00f6tterle\u2019s complacent statement. During the economic miracle of the 1950s, the publishing house had begun to systematically broaden its offer. For one, B\u00e4renreiter embarked upon several acquisitions and cooperations (Nagels Verlag in 1952, Hinnenthal-Verlag in 1953, Bruckner-Verlag (later Alkor-Edition) in 1955, Gustav Bosse Verlag in 1957) and established the Musicaphon record label (1959). For another, it continuously expanded its catalogue. In particular, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s series of complete works editions and the individual editions based upon them became increasingly popular with an international audience, quickly leading B\u00e4renreiter to extend its focus beyond Germany\u2019s immediate neighbours. From 1959 onwards, the newsletter of the International Music Council (UNESCO), The World of Music, was published by B\u00e4renreiter \u2013 its title a clear indication of where the publisher was headed.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter Basel
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Shipping B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s titles across the globe of course required corresponding distribution structures. B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s first efforts in this regard date back to the National Socialist period and were a direct consequence of the dictatorship\u2019s repressive measures. While the foreign branch set up in 1939 by Karl V\u00f6tterle\u2019s Jewish friend Albert Dann first in Haifa and then in Tel Aviv was only short-lived due to the outbreak of the War, the founding of the legally and economically independent Basel branch of B\u00e4renreiter was intended to ensure the publishing house\u2019s survival \u2013 at the time, the Kassel headquarters were under threat of confiscation by the National Socialists. Armed with a rare exit permit, V\u00f6tterle had thus travelled to Switzerland on a secret mission in March 1944, taking all B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s publishing rights with him. His numerous helpful contacts served him extremely well in this venture: Ruth Majer, a trained bookseller and the sister of Marianne Majer, a member of the Basel Viola da Gamba Quartet, agreed first to register the publishing house in Basel within a day and then to manage it. <\/p>\n

The founder of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Paul Sacher, provided advice and support, another friend lent V\u00f6tterle the required Swiss francs, and August Wenzinger\u2019s parents provided the publisher with temporary storage space. V\u00f6tterle was thus prepared for an emergency, although it then occurred in a form he had not anticipated: when B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s Kassel premises burned down in March 1945, \u201cthe thought that a small, functioning B\u00e4renreiter publishing house existed in Basel was a comfort and help\u201d (Haus unterm Stern, p. 318). Ruth Majer managed the business until 1960; her successors expanded the branch into a major Swiss retailer, and Peter G. Isler in particular has rendered outstanding services since 1988 as B\u00e4renreiter Basel\u2019s Managing Director and as the person responsible for the French-speaking European markets.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Pierre Pidoux, Le Psautier Huguenot, Cover<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Until 2021, when all publishing rights were transferred to the parent company in Kassel, editions of music and musicological texts such as Pierre Pidoux\u2019s standard work Le Psautier Huguenot were published there; above all, however, B\u00e4renreiter Basel was the first port of call in Switzerland for Swiss composers such as Willy Burkhard, Klaus Huber, Rudolf Kelterborn, Beat Furrer, Andreas Lorenzo Scartazzini and Dieter Ammann. And in B\u00e4renreiter Basel\u2019s anniversary year 1994, history repeated itself: as Chairman of the Board of Directors of B\u00e4renreiter-Verlag Basel AG, Leonhard Scheuch, Swiss lover of all things Czech and a dedicated supporter of contemporary music, founded a subsidiary of B\u00e4renreiter Basel in Prague that paved the way for the privatisation of the Czechoslovakian state publishing house Editio Supraphon. B\u00e4renreiter Praha is thus a \u201cchild\u201d of freedom \u2013 of the freedom that Scheuch\u2019s father-in-law Karl V\u00f6tterle had sought and found in Switzerland at a time of severe hardship.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Cooperating with Czechoslovakian music publishers
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1965 Karl V\u00f6tterle erh\u00e4lt die Goldene Medaille der \u010cSSR<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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2010 Verlagsgeb\u00e4ude in Prag<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Prager Kollegium 2023<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Long before B\u00e4renreiter had a branch in Prague, it had already established close contacts with the countries of what was then the Eastern Bloc \u2013 especially Hungary, Romania and above all Czechoslovakia: \u201cA music publisher rooted in the singing movement could not but love Bohemian minstrelsy, the soil that nourished the art of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, Smetana, Jan\u00e1\u010dek and Martin\u016f\u201d, V\u00f6tterle wrote in Haus unterm Stern (p. 280f.), and thus the first informal meeting with representatives of the Czechoslovakian foreign trade company Artia Prague took place as early as 1955 in Bad Schandau. These talks became a forum for true encounter at the time of the Cold War and marked the beginning of a genuine partnership in which Bruckner-Verlag \u2013 which had moved to Kassel that same year and now was named Alkor-Edition \u2013 and its director Fritz Oeser played an important role. Among other things, Alkor took over the distribution of the Prague Dvo\u0159\u00e1k edition, all works by Smetana and compositions by the Slovak J\u00e1n Cikker, and via Kurt Honolka\u2019s libretto translations, numerous operas by Czechoslovakian composers, first and foremost Smetana\u2019s The Bartered Bride, found their way onto German-speaking stages. In 1965, Karl V\u00f6tterle was awarded the Golden Medal of the \u010cSSR in recognition of his efforts, which were anything but self-evident at the time: \u201cThere are no diplomatic relations between our countries,\u201d said Vojt\u011bch Strnad, the director of the State Music Publishing House, \u201cbut Czechoslovakia has a good \u2018consulate\u2019 in Kassel in the field of culture\u201d (Das B\u00e4renreiter-Werk 14, 1965, p. 12f.). And in 1974, yet another event that was to determine the course of the publishing house took place on Czechoslovakian soil: at the Jan\u00e1\u010dek Festival in Brno, the young Barbara V\u00f6tterle and the Zurich dramaturg Leonhard Scheuch met for the first time. The couple married in 1975 and after Karl V\u00f6tterle\u2019s death not only took over the running of the publishing house, but also continued to cultivate B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s special relationship with Eastern Europe. The fact that the takeover of Editio Supraphon in 1994 was a \u201cmatter close to B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s heart\u201d, and that B\u00e4renreiter Praha is now a permanent fixture within the publishing group, thus requires no further explanation.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter Limited
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The gates to the Western world were thrown open in London, and once again it was V\u00f6tterle\u2019s friend Albert Dann who took the decisive step. He had returned to Europe with his family after the War and from 1948 to 1956 ran a B\u00e4renreiter agency in West Hoathly (between London and Brighton). B\u00e4renreiter enjoyed close links with the British Isles in other ways, too: for example, V\u00f6tterle had stayed in touch with the music collector Paul Hirsch and with Otto Haas, the former owner of the Berlin antiquarian music store Liepmannssohn, both of whom had fled to England during the Nazi regime. He was also acquainted with Rolf Gardiner, the father of the conductor John Eliot Gardiner, who had close ties to the German singing movement. V\u00f6tterle\u2019s relationship with the Jewish musicologist Adolf Aber, who later became director of publishing at Novello & Co, proved particularly fruitful. Aber brought B\u00e4renreiter and the long-standing British publisher together; not only was a large exhibition about the German publishing house held in Novello\u2019s offices in October 1958, but from 1957 onwards Novello also handled the distribution of B\u00e4renreiter publications in Great Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth nations. The responsibility for this lay in the hands of Elfriede Lauezzari-Pap, who eventually also took over the management of the foreign branch B\u00e4renreiter Ltd., which was founded in 1963. With relentless tenacity, Lauezzari-Pap saw to it that B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s editions found their way as far as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southeast Asia \u2013 under conditions that bore no comparison with those of today\u2019s globalised world, as pointed out by Christopher Jackson, who joined B\u00e4renreiter Ltd. (now based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, 35 miles north of London) in 1977 and has been the branch\u2019s Managing Director since 1986: \u201cOur communication with customers, especially those on the other side of the world, took a lot of time back then. An airmail letter took about ten days to arrive from Australia, our reply took the same amount of time, and another ten days passed before we finally received the order. The whole process easily lasted for more than an entire month.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Patrick Abrams and Christopher Jackson 2023, B\u00e4renreiter Limited<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In the 1990s and 2000s, Patrick Abrams, who joined B\u00e4renreiter Ltd.\u2019s team in 1981 and is now its Associate Director, made a significant contribution to expanding and cultivating B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s personal contacts with dealers, libraries, orchestras, opera houses and conductors across the globe through his extensive travels abroad. In 1990, he experienced just how widely known the name \u201cB\u00e4renreiter\u201d already was on a visit to South Africa: \u201cAs I was waiting at a bus stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a man joined me and we started talking. He asked me what had brought me to South Africa, and I replied \u2013 assuming that this would put an end to the conversation \u2013 that I was travelling for a German classical music publisher. \u2018For which one?\u2019 I told him, whereupon when he pulled the B\u00e4renreiter piano score of Bach\u2019s Christmas Oratorio out of his bag. He was on his way to a rehearsal at the cathedral!\u201d Since 1990, B\u00e4renreiter Ltd.\u2019s distribution has operated from Harlow, about 28 miles northeast of London. Now, of course, the company has long since arrived in the digital age: in 2015, Abrams discovered the short message service Twitter, and since then has been in charge of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s Twitter account. He is passionate about cultivating connections with artists all over the world via this channel.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u00c9dition B\u00e4renreiter France
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Almost simultaneously with B\u00e4renreiter Ltd., a French branch was established in 1963, \u00c9dition B\u00e4renreiter Paris, run by Karl V\u00f6tterle\u2019s daughter Maria and her husband Michel Bernstein, a French record producer. In 1970 the company moved to Tours, but was abandoned in 1980 when Maria Bernstein resigned as a limited partner of B\u00e4renreiter Verlag. France was subsequently served by B\u00e4renreiter Basel for many years; today, this sales region falls within the remit of the headquarters in Kassel.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter in the USA
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For a long time, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s efforts to gain a foothold in the United States of America failed to achieve much success. In 1969, Karl V\u00f6tterle wrote in Haus unterm Stern (p. 320) that the task of establishing a functioning \u201cforeign branch in this world that is unusually open to B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s work\u201d still lay ahead of him. At least B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s long-time chief editor, the musicologist Wolfgang Rehm, was able to ascertain on a trip to the States in 1970 that the MGG and all complete edition volumes published by B\u00e4renreiter up to that point had already found their way into the major American libraries<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Igor Resnianski, Petra Woodfull-Harris and James Litzelman at the 2018 National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association in Orlando, FL<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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One of the companies B\u00e4renreiter probably owed this to was Theodore Front Musical Literature. Front, who had emigrated from Germany in the 1930s, had founded his business in Los Angeles in 1961; he used to make regular trips to Europe with a dozen specially made suitcases that he filled up with the publications of various publishing houses, including those of B\u00e4renreiter Verlag, single-handedly bringing them to the U.S. However, it was B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s collaboration with George Sturm and Robert Walls that proved to be the decisive step towards marketing B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s editions more intensely in the States. In 1980, Sturm became B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s consultant on all issues concerning U.S. copyright, visiting opera houses and orchestras and editing the magazine MadAminA!, which was instrumental in promoting orchestral and stage works. It was Sturm who introduced B\u00e4renreiter to Bob Walls and his company Foreign Music Distributors (F.M.D.), with whom B\u00e4renreiter signed a distribution contract in 1984. Walls made it easier for American music dealers to get hold of B\u00e4renreiter editions, thus ensuring a greater visibility and wider distribution of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s titles in the United States. The English catalogues and product directories produced by Walls played a key role in this process. In 1986, at Walls\u2019 instigation, a very successful piano reduction of Handel\u2019s Messiah was published with the text underlay solely in English, and a year later an edition of Mozart\u2019s piano sonatas with an exclusively English-language cover and preface followed \u2013 a sign of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s increasingly international orientation and a milestone in the development towards multilingualism as standard in all B\u00e4renreiter editions. A good ten years later, the model of exclusive foreign representation had had its day; Walls decided to give up wholesale trade and specialise in the distribution of orchestral material instead. The contract with F.M.D. was terminated in 1996, and from that point onwards it proved more advantageous for B\u00e4renreiter to serve the North American music market directly from Kassel.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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International marketing and sales
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Sales to those countries that do not fall within the remit of a foreign branch are handled by B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s headquarters in Kassel. In the 1990s, the sales department was divided into national and international areas of responsibility. This made it possible to build and cultivate stable dealer networks for the long term in the various European countries, the USA, and the Far East, and conversely means that customers have their fixed contact persons at B\u00e4renreiter. The extent to which these mutual relationships contribute to successful cooperation is illustrated, for example, by the awarding of the 2017 \u201cDon Eubanks Sales Rep Award\u201d \u2013 presented by the US Retail Print Music Dealers Association \u201cfor excellence and outstanding service\u201d \u2013 to B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s Petra Woodfull-Harris.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Catriona Glatthaar with Isabel Audenis and Carles Gumi at the Frankfurt Music Fair 2018<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A further key factor in B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s international success is the department\u2019s professionalism: a degree in music, for example, is helpful for marketing, as is a native proficiency in English \u2013 thus Catriona Glatthaar carries out important translations for B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s catalogues and social media advertising alongside other tasks \u2013, as is intercultural competence when dealing with Asian customers. Printed music is a cultural good, and as such its worth also needs to be communicated to musicians and scholars in conceptual terms. Direct contact with (end) customers, working with dealers in a spirit of partnership, and the presentation of the editions\u2019 content, which is sometimes also done jointly by the editors and copyeditors on lecture tours, are all indispensable in convincing customers of the relevance and value of B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s publications.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Corinne Votteler and John Zhang, Sinjo Trading & Consulting, at the 2016 Music China in Shanghai<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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B\u00e4renreiter in Japan and China
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The different conditions on which the Kassel-based international sales department has been able to build since the 1990s are illustrated vividly by the Asian markets, which since 2003 have been overseen by the current Director of International Marketing & Sales, Corinne Votteler. B\u00e4renreiter had already been in contact with Japan since 1949, namely with Academia Music in Tokyo, a company that started to import classical sheet music and books from Europe shortly after the Second World War and remains an important partner for B\u00e4renreiter to this day. The 1970s then saw the signing of highly successful licensing agreements with Japanese publishers, including Zen-on and Ongaku no Tomo.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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In 1981, with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, the first \u201cGerman Music Fair\u201d was held in Japan; it was attended by Wolfgang Matthei, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s then authorised representative. B\u00e4renreiter was a regular exhibitor for the close to twenty years the fair ran. Ties with the Japanese market have thus existed for a very long time and are cultivated intensely in person through regular visits.<\/p>\n

The case is quite different in China: it was Wendelin G\u00f6bel who made the first trip to the then still very foreign world of the People\u2019s Republic in 1999 in his capacity as director of publishing. On that occasion, he was unable to find a single original B\u00e4renreiter edition there, not even in the library of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, the country\u2019s largest conservatory. Due to China\u2019s low standard of living at that time and the fact that all imports of sheet music had to (and still have to) be handled by one of the large import companies (direct sales to music stores are not possible), it became apparent that \u201cconquering\u201d the Chinese market would require patience. Nevertheless, the \u201cMusic China\u201d trade fair, which has been held in Shanghai since 2002, has grown in the meantime and now occupies seventeen large halls instead of two small ones. China\u2019s important music libraries have gradually acquired B\u00e4renreiter complete works editions; direct relationships with music dealers have also been established. The \u201cB\u00e4renreiter Urtext\u201d brand has been launched, and B\u00e4renreiter is currently experiencing its greatest growth in China. Recently, a Chinese supplement to the Sassmannshaus Violin Method was published with the support of Kurt Sassmannshaus, who regularly visits the Far East with his educational \u201cStarling Preparatory String Project\u201d and teaches numerous students from China at the Cincinnati Conservatory.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Major developments and changes
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Major developments and changes
\nIn the first decades after the Second World War, B\u00e4renreiter Verlag\u2019s efforts to break into the international markets focused on cooperations with institutions and musicologists as well as on the establishment of branch offices \u2013 at that time, its network of foreign dealers was only rudimentary. In the last forty years, however, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s staff have travelled extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia and established good connections to the printed music trade in key markets for Western classical music. The Frankfurt Music Fair, which was first held in 1980 and for three decades remained the largest international trade fair for music publishers, also played a significant role in cultivating contacts. The fair decreased in importance in more recent years and has not been held at all since the outbreak of the pandemic, a circumstance that is symptomatic of the radical changes in the wider market. While B\u00e4renreiter still generates by far the largest share of its sales from the trade in sheet music, the number of music dealers and especially of local music shops has declined across the globe; the market is dominated by a few large companies. At the same time, digitisation is becoming more and more important in all areas of the music industry. Accordingly, B\u00e4renreiter\u2019s sales activities are now increasingly aimed at communicating with musicians directly via social media. However, personal encounters \u2013 for example at national and international conferences, association meetings, and concerts, but also during visits to dealers and institutions such as opera houses, orchestras, libraries, and music academies \u2013 remain indispensable in ensuring that in future, too, not an hour will pass without music being played somewhere in the world from a work published by B\u00e4renreiter.<\/p>\n

Gudula Sch\u00fctz & Petra Woodfull-Harris<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t"},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":10753,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_popup_image":0,"_vp_format_audio_url":"","_vp_album_images":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail":0,"_vp_custom_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail_cover":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10743","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","grve-entry-item"],"acf":[],"wpml_current_locale":"en_US","wpml_translations":{"de_DE":{"locale":"de_DE","id":10267,"slug":"der-baerenreiter-verlag-als-weltunternehmen","post_title":"Der B\u00e4renreiter-Verlag als Weltunternehmen","href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/jubilaeum\/der-baerenreiter-verlag-als-weltunternehmen\/"}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10743\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emag.baerenreiter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}