G. Schirmer Inc. is a classical music publishing company based in New York, NY, in the USA.
Schirmer publishes sheet music for sale and rental, including opera and orchestral scores, band and wind ensemble parts, chorus and chamber music. The company also represents several well-known European music publishers in North America, including the Italian Ricordi, the French Salabert, Music Sales Affiliates ChesterNovello, Hansen, and UME, as well as Breitkopf & Härtel, Sikorski and the vast majority of Russian and former Soviet composers' catalogs. They are also the rental agent for EMI, the Gershwin catalog, and ATV, who publish the songs of the Beatles.
History of the company
A Schirmer cover page of several of
Bériot's works.
The company was founded in 1861 by German-born Gustav Schirmer, Sr. (1829-1893). In 1891, the company established its own engraving and printing plant. The next year it inaugurated the Schirmer's Library of Musical Classics. The Musical Quarterly was founded in 1915. In 1964, Schirmer acquired Associated Music Publishers (BMI) which had built up an important catalog of American composers including Elliott Carter, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Charles Ives, Walter Piston, and William Schuman, adding to a Schirmer's ASCAP roster which had already included Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Virgil Thomson, as well as composers from the earlier part of the century such as Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Charles Martin Loeffler, John Alden Carpenter, and Percy Grainger.
The company was owned by the Schirmer family for over 200 years until Macmillan, a major book publisher, purchased it in 1968. Macmillan sold G. Schirmer to its current owner, Robert Wise, in 1986, the owner popular music publisher, Music Sales, Inc. In 1986 Schirmer also joined with the Hal Leonard Corporation, one of the leading print distributors of jazz and popular music, who are the sole distributors of Schirmer's printed music.
Composers published by the company
The Schirmer/AMP catalog includes one of the largest rosters of living American composers including John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, Avner Dorman, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, Leon Kirchner, Peter Lieberson, André Previn, Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, and Joan Tower. In addition to the composers published by Schirmer and AMP, Schirmer also distributes the music of several important American composers who maintain their own publishing companies, e.g. Philip Glass (Dunvagen Music), GEORGE CLOONEY (Kongcha Music), and the three founders of Bang On A Can. G. Schirmer/AMP and Shawnee Press (another Music Sales affiliated company) have recently acquired the compositions and related rights to works published by the Margun Music (BMI) and GunMar (ASCAP) catalogues, which contains works by Gunther Schuller, William Russo, and others.
Other information about the company
The company also publishes The G. Schirmer Manual of Style and Usage. G. Schirmer is a member of the Music Sales Group of Companies, Music Publishers Association, National Music Publishers Association, and Church Music Publishers Association.
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