Hofmeisters Monatsberichte

[eschiss1]

Will need to explain this further in a bit, since I'm in a hurry at the moment and just want to put in a caveat rather than a full explanation of what I'm talking about ... sorry.

Those used to using the online databases/scans/etc. of Hofmeisters Monatsberichte (or even consulting the printed source itself in a library) should be aware that there are cases where it is a -very- poor source if your goal is to guess/determine the first edition/publication of a composition. For example, on the basis of HMB, I guessed that the 3rd string quartet of Jacob Rosenhain did not appear in print until as late as 1884, published by the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf und Härtel, and that his 2nd quartet didn't appear until 9 years later (this didn't make much -sense-, but... whatever).  I was only 20 years off/29 years off.  An entry in a similar French publication - Bibliographie de l'Empire français, ou journal général (...), 26 November 1864, page 562, (registration no.2854 on that page... scanned in by Google and I think by the French National Library BNF also) - shows all 3 of his string quartets published by Richault of Paris. So, yes, only 20+ years off... and nowhere near the only such case.

Never limit oneself to one resource when many are available.

[Mark Thomas]

Hofmeister only claims to cover publications in the German speaking world, though, doesn't it?

[eschiss1]

Erm... define German-speaking world? They listed a number of publications from France, Russia, the USA and elsewhere. There were and are German-speakers in those places - not trying to be difficult, seeking clarification.

It does seem to be true that the closer the publisher of the piece of music/book/etc. being described got to Leipzig, the more accurate/timely/what-have some of the information was (the information was, generally speaking and considering that the publication (Hofmeisters'...) existed for about 115 years, fairly accurate to begin with, I think.)

[Mark Thomas]

Eric, the phrase comes from the Introduction to the Hofmeister XIX project itself, which begins: "In 1829 the Leipzig music publisher Friedrich Hofmeister began publishing a series of monthly or bi-monthly catalogues of printed music, largely but not exclusively based on the products of publishers in the German-speaking world." I take that to mean Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

[cypressdome]

For those not aware and who might be interested the volumes of Hofmeister's Musikalisch-literarischer Monatsbericht from 1901 to 1947 (which wasn't included in the Hofmeister XIX project) are available on archive.org.  A list of links can be found here.  Likewise, many of the volumes of the Bibliographie de la France taken from Google and the French national library are now at archive.org. A list of links can be found here.  Enjoy!

[eschiss1]

Ah. Largely but not exclusively is probably close to the truth, since one of the main exceptions I can think of (Jürgenson, usually of Moscow) only turns up, between 1829 and 1900 (leaving out 1901 to 1947, less easily searched) about 650-odd times (starting in 1862) (I say about, since the "673" that the RHUL database-search provides depends on the accuracy of their optical character reading... and other problems.)- but that's 650 against a much larger number of publishers from Germany/Austria/Switzerland.
Publishers from Boston show up less than a dozen times (in the 19th century) in HMB; from Paris, 2,600-odd times (indeed, France probably provides the largest no. of exceptions outside of Germany and Austria, I think...) (Farrenc, Troupenas, Lemoine, Richault, Pacini, among the publishers one finds); 600-odd from St. Petersburg

(actually, using the "Country" tab of RHUL's advanced search, there's more entries published in France -- 3000-plus- than from Switzerland. But then- larger country! 1,639 published/co-published somewhere in "Russian Federation" (modern country names/extents used- so Königsberg is counted as Russian Federation rather than Germany, a bit of a cheat. Ah, those borders.)
Germany: 239,143. Austria: 29,084.
So no argument there on preponderance...