Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and their publishers.
Item
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Title
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Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and their publishers.
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Identifier
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AAI3115238
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identifier
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3115238
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Creator
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Currie, Norman.
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Contributor
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Adviser: L. Michael Griffel
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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Music publishing comprised a large and important segment of the music industry in the period when royal patronage began to give way to the middle-class music consumer and when composers and performers began to earn their livelihoods by serving this new audience. The present study of Robert Schumann's and Hector Berlioz's business practices, as seen through their interactions with music publishers, provides a unique and, I believe, revealing glimpse into their personalities and the ways they conducted themselves in the prosaic but necessary activity of making a living in composition. A chronological examination of these composers' dealings with publishers is conducted in detail. This research furnishes a perspective on each man's nature and character that has been generally lacking in other accounts. In addition, historical information is given for each of the publishing houses that brought out the composers' editions.;One thread that rums throughout Robert Schumann's life is financial need. Since Schumann had no performance career prospects, his only path to success as a composer was through publication. At what could be considered the dawn of the professional music industry, Robert Schumann had an exceptional awareness of the importance of marketing, advertising, and commercial appeal that may have been the result of his experience with his family's publishing activities and his own later journalistic enterprise. Schumann's personal familiarity with the publishing industry, his natural business ability, and his determined effort to establish personal relationships with music publishers, despite his own physical or psychological impediments, contributed to the building of his musical reputation.;Berlioz, too, in the absence of a performing career as an instrumentalist, had few avenues to achieve distinction for himself as a composer, and so he took financial risks by promoting concerts of his music and, on occasion, paying for his own editions. Though he may have presented himself as possessing a Romantic spirit, this composer labored constantly to attain a solid financial foundation. Hector Berlioz was a naturally shrewd businessman whose volatile spirit generally did not interfere with his aggressive---and, in later years, more conservative---commercial and financial decisions regarding publication.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
