Music Business, Institutions and Organizations

German family firm of wind instrument makers. The business, located in Mainz, was established in 1782 by Franz Ambros Alexander (b Miltenberg, July 22, 1753; d Mainz, Dec 1, 1802), who was described in a Mainz Cathedral report of the same year as a wood-turner and wind instrument maker. Portraits depict Franz Ambros and his son Philipp (1787–1864) with clarinets. After his death, Alexander's business was continued by his widow and two of his sons, Claudius (1783–1816) and Philipp, later joined by a third, Kaspar Anton (1803–72). Under the direction of Philipp and Kaspar Anton the firm became known as Gebrüder Alexander, the name it still bears. Kaspar Anton's two sons Franz Anton (1838–1926) and Georg Philip (i) (1849–97) became the third generation to direct the company. Woodwind instruments, mainly for military use, were the firm's main products until the mid-19th century. By that time, however, band instrumentation had become more brass orientated; after Philipp's death in ...

(b Ilimbav, Sibiu, May 14, 1914; d Bucharest, April 20, 1997). Romanian ethnomusicologist. He studied at the Bucharest Royal Academy of Music (1931–6) and became Brăiloiu's closest collaborator, working with him at the folklore archive of the Society of Romanian Composers (1935–49); he continued his research appointment there when the archive was incorporated in the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore (1949), undertaking several field studies and collecting numerous examples of Romanian folksong, some of which have been recorded. He was Brăiloiu's successor in the folklore department of the Royal Academy of Music (1943–8), where he held various posts before becoming professor (1954–9). In 1956 he did research in China and from 1965 to 1967 he was the folklore expert of the Ministry of Culture of the United Arab Republic in Cairo, where he made recordings of Egyptian and Nubian folksong. In ...

(d 1634). English music printer. He printed a few musical works between 1610 and 1615, only his initials ‘E.A.’ appearing on certain imprints. He printed Thomas Ravenscroft’s A Briefe Discourse (1614) and John Amner’s Sacred Hymnes of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts for Voyces and Vyols (1615). His address was ‘neere Christ-Church’ in London. His name appears among a list of printers granted printing monopolies by James I and his successors as ‘Edw. Alday, to print sett songs et al’, but he apparently made little use of any such privilege.

(b Los Angeles, CA, March 31, 1935). American trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and record company executive. He studied trumpet as a child and left college to play in the army for a two-year period. After three years of producing records on his own, he launched A&M Records with Jerry Moss in 1962. A&M’s first issue was also Alpert’s first recording as a trumpeter and bandleader, The Lonely Bull (A&M, 1962). The title track included sounds from the bullring in Tijuana, Mexico, so Alpert dubbed his band the Tijuana Brass. His music exploited a distinctive combination of Mexican mariachi-style brass with jazz rhythms, which was dubbed Ameriachi. A string of hits including “Mexican Shuffle” (A&M, 1964) and “Tijuana Taxi” (A&M, 1965) followed. In 1966 Alpert had five recordings simultaneously listed on the Billboard Top 20. His cover of “This guy’s in love with you” reached no.1 in ...

[Myra Ellen]

(b Newton, NC, Aug 22, 1963). American alternative-rock singer-songwriter, pianist, and record producer. She emerged in the early 1990s amid a resurgence of female singer-songwriters and has been one of the few well known alternative-rock artists to use the piano as her primary instrument. She attended the preparatory division of the prestigious Peabody Conservatory but left the school at the age of 11. She began to play her own music in nightclubs at 14, chaperoned by her father, who was a preacher. After Amos moved to Los Angeles in her late teens to pursue a recording career, her band Y Kant Tori Read released a self-titled album (Atl., 1987). Although this was unsuccessful, Atlantic Records retained her six-album contract.

Amos’s debut solo album, Little Earthquakes (Atl., 1992), earned her critical acclaim for her vocal expressivity, pianistic virtuosity, and fearless exploration of a wide range of personal themes, notably female sexuality, personal relationships, religion, sexual violence, and coming of age. The album ...

[Chester Burton ]

(b nr Luttrell, TN, June 20, 1924, d Nashville, TN, June 30, 2001). American country-music guitarist and recording company executive. Although the first instrument he played professionally was the fiddle, he became internationally famous as a guitarist. Developed while he was in high school, his guitar style was influenced by Merle Travis, Les Paul, Django Reinhardt, and George Barnes and was characterized by the use of the thumb to establish a rhythm on the lower strings and multiple fingers to play melodic or improvisational passages on the higher strings, sometimes with complex voicings. In the early 1940s Atkins toured with Archie Campbell and Bill Carlisle playing both fiddle and guitar, and appeared with them on WNOX radio in Knoxville. He then toured with the second generation Carter Family as a sideman and in 1946 joined Red Foley. After beginning his association with the “Grand Ole Opry” he settled in Nashville in ...

(Delmetia )

(b Coleman County, TX, March 18, 1899; d at sea nr Los Angeles, CA, March 30, 1941). American inventor of musical instruments. He was co-founder of the National Stringed Instrument Corporation and the Rickenbacker guitar company. He played the violin and the lap steel (‘Hawaiian’) guitar in vaudeville before settling in Los Angeles, where he worked with John and Rudy Dopyera to develop an acoustically amplified guitar, probably inspired by Stroh models. An early model with a Victrola horn failed, but trials using conical aluminium resonators within a metal guitar body (a prototype of the three-cone Dobro guitar) proved successful and attracted investors. Production of metal-body guitars under the name National soon involved Adolph Rickenbacker’s nearby tool and die shop.

From the mid-1920s Beauchamp also experimented with electrical amplification of guitars (including lap steel and bass guitars) and violins of unconventional shape, without normal resonators but using simple phonograph pickups. After his collaboration with the Dopyeras ended, in ...

(d Brussels, May 4, 1776). Flemish bookseller and music printer. He was the principal music seller in Brussels from 1745 to 1770. As the official printer for the Théâtre de la Monnaie he printed librettos for opéras-comiques and comédies mêlées d’ariettes performed there by composers such as Duni, Monsigny, and Philidor, some with a musical supplement. His publications were covered at first by a privilege of impression and sale (1757–66) which applied only to works that had not yet been staged at Brussels, and then by another (1767) which allowed Boucherie to print and sell all theatre works. Under this later privilege, he forged Parisian editions (such as Toinon et Toinette by Gossec, with the false address ‘Paris, Veuve Duchesne’). He was also involved in the production of two engraved editions of the works of C.-J. van Helmont. Boucherie was the Brussels distributor for Benoît Andrez of Liège, as well as of a large number of essentially Parisian editions of instrumental music, opera librettos, and music journals....

American ballet dancers, teachers, choreographers, and company directors. Three of the four Christensen brothers made their careers in dance. Members of a Danish Mormon family that had settled in America, they were taught folk and social dancing by their father and grandfather and trained in ballet by various teachers. All three were instrumental in establishing and popularizing ballet in the western United States.

Willam Farr Christensen (b Brigham City, UT, Aug 27, 1902; d Salt Lake City, Oct 14, 2001) was the eldest of the brothers. After touring the vaudeville circuit, he opened a ballet school in 1932 in Portland, Oregon, from which sprang the Portland Ballet. In 1937 he joined the San Francisco Opera Ballet, where, as ballet-master, he staged the first full-length American productions of Coppélia (1939), Swan Lake (1940), and The Nutcracker (1944). Returning to Utah in 1951, he taught ballet at the state university and founded a performing group that eventually became known as Ballet West....

[John Henderson ]

(b Whitehaven, TN, April 8, 1931). American singer-songwriter, producer, publisher, and entrepreneur. He began playing bluegrass while in the military and after his discharge in 1952, played at radio stations in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Boston. While enrolled in Memphis State University (from 1954), he worked nights and weekends at the Eagle’s Nest club. After working briefly for Fernwood Records, he was hired by Sun Records, where he recorded Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, among others. He wrote hits for several of Sun’s artists, including Johnny Cash’s singles “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” and “Guess things happen that way” (both Sun, 1958).

Clement left Sun in 1960 to became a staff producer for RCA in Nashville. In 1963 he moved to Texas, started a publishing company, and produced Dickey Lee’s hit “Patches” (Smash, 1963). After returning to Nashville in 1965, he discovered and produced Charlie Pride and wrote songs for a variety of country artists, including Pride (“Just between you and me,” RCA Victor, ...

(b ?London, 1695–1705; d ?London, after1742). English music seller and publisher, father of organist and composer Benjamin Cooke. He was active in London from 1726 to 1743, and published a considerable number of vocal and instrumental works, some of them obviously pirated from other publishers, others under licence as authoritative first editions. His publications were mostly in a heavy bold style, but some were engraved in a lighter style by Thomas Cross. After Cooke’s death or retirement some of his plates were acquired by John Johnson (ii), who reissued copies from them. Cooke’s publications include Roseingrave’s XII Solos for a German Flute (1730), Handel’s Sonatas op.2 (c1733) and 42 ‘suites’ by Domenico Scarlatti in two volumes (1739). His most interesting publication, however, was that of the five books of sonatas and the 12 concertos of Corelli issued in 1732. Not only do these constitute a collected edition of the composer’s works, but all, including the concertos, were published in score expressly for study purposes, an extraordinary form of publication for instrumental music at that time. Cooke’s plates were used well into the 19th century for reissues of these works....

(b ?London, ?1660–65; d ?London, ?1732–5). English music engraver, printer, publisher and music seller. He was probably the son of the 17th-century engraver Thomas Cross, who engraved some frontispieces and portraits for John Playford’s publications, including the portrait of the composer John Gamble (Ayres and Dialogues, 1656), and who may have engraved some music. From 1683 to about 1710 the younger Cross often signed himself ‘Tho. Cross junior sculpt.’, as on his first known work, Purcell’s Sonnata’s of III. Parts (1683), printed for the composer. From about 1692 to about 1720 he kept a music shop in London. He was the first to issue songs in single sheet format rather than in collections, and from the 1690s a considerable number of these appeared under his imprint. At first they were engraved on copper plates, which was an expensive method considering the ephemeral nature of the sheet songs, but he later used a cheaper material, probably pewter. He had a virtual monopoly of the music engraving trade until Walsh established his business in ...

(b Lille, June 8, 1731; d Brussels, July 30, 1804). French bookseller, printer, and type founder, active in the southern Netherlands. Born into a family of printers, he was the son of Henri de Boubers and Marie Catherine Gavroy. He married Marie-Thérèse Joseph Panckoucke, a sister of the French bookseller Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, and later married Marie-Thérèse Joseph d’Audenarde. A bookseller in Dunkirk by about 1747, then a printer-bookseller in Liège from 1761, he established himself in Brussels in 1768 after two years of apprenticeship with Jean-Joseph Boucherie. On October 18, 1769 he opened the first permanent bookshop in the Théâtre de la Monnaie selling librettos of lyric works, some with music. De Boubers was also a type founder, at first in partnership with Mathias Rosart, son of the printer Jacques-François Rosart. He produced new printing type in 1779 which he sold to numerous printers in the Netherlands as well as to individuals, including the Prince de Ligne. De Boubers edited some occasional pieces, two of which were published for the inauguration of Charles de Lorraine’s statue in Brussels in ...

(d Oct 6, 1749). Italian music publisher and bookseller. His firm was active in Bologna for most of the 18th century and was famous in the art of typography and for the accuracy and elegance of its editions. In 1720, as head of a society of Bolognese printers, Della Volpe acquired the printing establishment of the widow of Giulio Borsaghi. His first musical publication was an enlarged edition (1720) of Angelo Bertalotti’s Regole utilissime per … il canto fermo. He issued a further enlarged edition in 1744 (reprinted 1756, 1764 and 1778). He ordered musical type characters from the Netherlands and in 1734 began his music printing activities in earnest, starting with Giovanni Battista Martini’s op.1, Litaniae atque antiphonae finales B. Virginis Mariae. Della Volpe was also active as a bookseller, handling the musical publications of the Bolognese printers P.M. Monti and G.A. Silvani. In ...

[James Rae ]

(b Buffalo Valley, TN, Feb 28, 1911; d Nashville, TN, Aug 27, 1963). American country music agent, publisher, and Grand Ole Opry manager. One of the most influential and powerful figures in the country music business, Jim Denny followed the path of the classic American success story. He left his home in Buffalo Valley, Tennessee, at age 16 with purportedly no more than 40 cents in his pocket. He moved to Nashville and joined the mailroom staff at WSM radio (home of the Grand Ole Opry). He completed his college degree by mail and worked his way up the corporate ladder, becoming the manager of concessions at the Opry during World War II. In 1951 Denny was promoted to manager of the Opry, an appointment that granted him to programming privileges and thus put him in the position to make or break performers’ careers. Additionally, he headed the ...

(b Nuremberg, 1524; d Frankfurt an der Oder, Aug 21, 1583). German printer and book dealer. He probably learnt the printing trade in his native city, and he entered the University of Frankfurt an der Oder in 1547. Two years later he took over Nicolaus Wolrab's printing press and within a few years it became one of the main publishing houses in eastern Germany. He soon became official printer for the university and was made a member of the city council in 1570. On 31 October 1577 he requested and was granted the protection of Maximilian II's imperial patent. A subsidiary firm, founded by Eichorn in Stettin in 1568–9, was given to his son-in-law, Andreas Kellner (d 1591) in 1572. The main business was taken over in 1581 by Eichorn's son Andreas (b Frankfurt an der Oder, 17 Sept 1553; d Frankfurt, 21 Nov 1615...

(b ?1778; d Prague, June 23, 1841). Czech bookseller and publisher. He had a bookshop first in Leipzig and then from 1809 (or 1810) until 1835 (or 1836) in Prague, where until 1832 he also ran a publishing house. He published mostly contemporary dance music, vocal and piano pieces by Prague composers, notably Václav Jan Tomášek. In 1817 he produced Jakub Jan Ryba's book Počáteční a všeobecní základové ku všemu umění hudebnímu (‘First and universal principles for all musical art’), which was of fundamental importance in the development of Czech literature on music. He also attempted to publish the first Austrian bibliography, but failed for lack of support.

[Dauphin, Dauphiné]

(fl Paris, 1538–66). French printer and bookseller. He was active in Paris as a publisher from 1538 to 1566, dealing specifically with music between 1551 and 1558. From the Hostel d’Albret on Mont St Hilaire he published literary works by François Habert (1549, 1551, 1557, 1560), Michael Beuther (1551), François Rabelais (1552), Marc-Claude de Buttet (1561) and others, using four different marks: a pheasant and dolphin, a winged Mercury, a snake with the motto ‘Ne la mort ne le venin’ and a heron holding a dolphin in its claws. He collaborated with other publishers including Nicolas Buffet (1543), Jérome de Marnef (c1550), Vincent Sertenas (1551), Jean Vincent (1554), Robert Granjon (1550–51) and Guillaume Morlaye (1552–8).

His activity in music began on 23 December 1550 when he signed a ten-year contract with Robert Granjon. The association may have realized around 14 books between ...

[James Staton ]

(b Lundale, WV, July 26, 1922). American record label executive. Over the course of more than 50 years, Jim Foglesong has played an influential role in the administration of country music. He initially aimed to be a vocalist, performing on a local radio station as a teenager and receiving a degree as a vocal major from the Eastman School of Music in 1950. He subsequently moved to New York City, where he was hired by Columbia Records shortly thereafter. He was appointed the head of their Epic subsidiary in 1953 and held that position for the next ten years. He moved to RCA Victor in 1964 as the executive director of their pop acts. In 1970 Fogelsong moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and joined the Dot Record label as head of their Artist and Repertoire Department. In 1973 he became president of Dot Records. In 1979 he became president of MCA Records Nashville and was named the president of Capitol Records Nashville in ...

English firm of publishers and music and instrument dealers. The brothers Henry Forsyth (d July 1885) and James Forsyth (b 1833; d Manchester, Jan 2, 1907) were the third generation of Forsyths to work for Broadwood; they started their own business in Manchester in 1857, selling, hiring, tuning and repairing pianos. They published music from 1858, but this activity became important only in 1873, when they produced the first numbers of Charles Hallé’s Practical Pianoforte School and opened a London publishing house at Oxford Circus. Their list grew to include works by Stephen Heller (a friend of Hallé), Berlioz, Stanford and Delius. The firm also shared significantly in the management of leading concerts in Manchester, in particular the Hallé concerts. In 1901 the firm became a limited company; it now sells pianos, orchestral and school instruments, sheet music by all publishers and records. James’s son Algernon Forsyth (...