Universal Edition

Context

The practical and symbolic significance of Universal Edition for the musical life and the development of publishing (not just music publishing) in the Dual Monarchy and later the Austrian Republic can hardly be underestimated, as is outlined by Murray Hall in the first volume of his magisterial study of Austrian publishing during the inter-war years (MHOV, I, 60):

As Hall’s study documents, music publishing merely reflected the malaise of publishing generally in the Dual Monarchy: most of the important nineteenth century German-speaking literary figures in the Habsburg lands were also published primarily in Germany, not Austro-Hungary. The factors that shaped this  situation were, broadly speaking, three-fold: censorship (which had much less impact on music publishing), the unhelpful development of copyright in the Monarchy (with, for example, very limited protection for authors against unauthorised translation), and the failure of Austro-Hungary to sign the Berne Convention in 1886.

The basic law in force during most of the second half of the nineteenth century was codified in the Imperial Patent of 19 October 1846, and it was only with a new law of 26 December 1895 that copyright protection was extended to more recent artistic media, such as photography. Some existing forms of protection were improved, but in most respects the Austrian legislation was lagging behind developments in copyright elsewhere in the world. There was one major exception: the establishment of performing rights for non-theatrical musical works, opening up opportunities for exploitation that were recognised early by the music publisher Josef Weinberger.

By remaining outside the list of signatories to the Berne Convention, Austro-Hungary effectively denied its authors and composers automatic reciprocal copyright protection in the countries that had signed. By the First World War this roster consisted of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Kingdom (1887), Luxembourg (1888), Norway (1896), Japan, Monaco (1899) Denmark (1903), Sweden (1904), Portugal (1911) and the Netherlands (1912). In the absence of such automatic protection Austro-Hungarian copyright owners could initially only rely on a series of bi-lateral agreements with a limited numbers of states: France (1866), Italy (1890), United Kingdom (1893) and Germany (1899), all of which (with the exception of the treaty with Italy) were limited in the protection they extended. However in 1907 an amendment to the 1895 law facilitated the establishment of bi-lateral agreements and a few more followed: Denmark, United States (1907) Romania and Sweden (1908), Belgium (1910) and Spain (1912). Apart from these exceptions the international copyright policy of the Monarchy had deleterious consequences, as was pointed out in 1900 by Carl Junker (CJBC, 71):

Thus authors and composers found it advantageous to seek publishing contracts with firms based in countries that had signed the Convention (notably in the German Reich), and book and music publishers also responded (CJBC, 75):

This development was specifically addressed in a petition submitted to the Ministry of Justice by the Verein der österreichisch-ungarisch Buchhändler and the Korporation der Wiener Buch-, Kunst- und Musikalienhändler in 1911 (cited in MHOV, I, 32) where it was reported that:

Foundation

The details of the early history of Universal Edition are not wholly discernable at present, and many issues remain to be clarified, e.g. when did the planning of the new Edition commence, what was the nature of the association of the main participants, what was the nature of the commercial and licensing arrangements between them, and what, in detail was the initial commercial strategy? According to Weinberger’s company history the planning commenced as early as 1896, and the main participants were Josef Weinberger, Bernhard Herzmansky of Ludwig Doblinger, and Adolf Robitschek, and Weinberger was responsible for putting together a consortium (that included the Österreichische Länderbank) to provide the necessary start-up capital (HYJW, 13–14; the assertion of Weinberger’s crucial initiating role was originally made in 1910: see MHOV, 61, n. 72). A slightly different account is provided by a catalogue of an exhibition celebrating the first 75 years of the firm (UE75, 9):

Josef Simon (23 February 1854–29 December 1926) was born in Horschitz (Horsice) in Bohemia, but spent much of his life in Vienna where he was a director of the Österreichische Länderbank, and other major businesses. He had married Luise Deutsch, the sister of Strauss’s wife, and became involved in artistic life, forming an outstanding collection of manuscripts, printed editions and memorabilia focused of the music of his brother-in-law and the Viennese tradition he represented (this collection is now in A-Wst), and in 1900 joining a consortium that purchased the Theater an der Wien. It is very likely that Simon knew Weinberger a few years before the UE project came to fruition, since Weinberger had acquired Strauss copyrights in 1897–9 and therefore almost certainly would  have had business dealings with the Strauss heirs.

Many years later a rather patronising, but nevertheless entertaining portrait of Simon in 1921 was published by Hans Heinsheimer, who worked at Universal Edition in the period 1923–38 (HHMFS, 42–4); on his first visit to Vienna, Heinsheimer attended a party at his uncle’s home:

There was another player in the preliminary discussions that lead to the founding of UE, one whose status is not entirely clear: Vienna’s largest music printer, Jos. Eberle & Co (by that date, part of the Erste Wiener Zeitungsgesellschaft (EWZG)). That the firm played a central role is suggested in an orotund article published anonymously in 1911 to celebrate the first ten years of UE (UEW, 1137–8):

If Simon negotiated some of the capital investment, and Jos. Eberle & Co. provided the music printing expertise and capacity, it seems it was Weinberger who contributed the skills of a successful music publisher with an international perspective, and effectively ran the new business as its CEO in the early years: UE was initially operated from the Weinberger offices at Maximilianstraße 11, before moving to Wipplingerstraße 32 in 1908 (perhaps significantly, the year Emil Hertzka took over management responsibility), to Reichsratstraß 9 in 1911 and finally to the Musikvereinsgebäude in Karlsplatz in 1914 (the latter move causing some disruption: see BSC, 48).

Planning for the first issues of the Edition must have begun some time before its launch in 1901. Weinberger is reported to have placed an initial order with J. Eberle & Co. of 65,000 plates for the initial batch of volumes (HYJW, 13), and the  likelihood is that Weinberger’s earlier links to the government helped to facilitate the negotiations that culminated in the Ministry of Education edict of 5 July 1901 (Z. 20.467) and later that of 12 June 1902 (Z 19.042) – both are referred to on early UE wrappers – recommending the use of UE volumes in education (UE25, 9). On 9 August 1901 press reports of the recent foundation of the new Edition appeared in a number of newspapers, including Neue Frei Presse, 4, Neues Wiener Tagblatt (extract in UE75, 9), Wiener Zeitung, 3–4 and Pester Lloyd, 7. The first three of the articles are extensive and include comprehensive lists of the musicians from around Europe preparing the various instructive editions. The Neue Frei Presse report is particularly interesting in an indirect way. It reports  that the information comes from the [official] press office and then comments:

Although the true extent of Government involvement is still unclear, the fact that a ministerial press office was involved suggests a degree of more than covert support. On the other hand the report ends by pointing out that the release never identifies the publisher who will be issuing the publications. According to UE's own first history the first volumes had appeared in January 1901 and by the end of the year about 400 publications had been issued (UE25, 9).

Verlagsbücher

Among the documentary records that date back to those first years of the Edition, the most important are probably the Verlags- or Verlagsnummerbücher. These ledgers list in strict edition number order every publication of the Edition assigned such a number.  They are an essential, but – it needs to be remembered – circumscribed source of information about the early history of the company. They offer an account (literally) of the publishing activity, but record little if anything of the legal and commercial framework in which that took place, or the editorial processes that underpinned the production of the Edition’s publications. Even the meaning of individual entries needs to be construed with care. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, they offer an exceptional insight into the dissemination of ‘modern’ music in the early twentieth century.

The volumes themselves are substantial in size (452 x 320mm) and are made up from specially printed sheets, organised so that two or three entries appear on each opening (in earlier volumes the openings are numbered).  The column  headings are laid out thus:

Fig. 1

Unfortunately the hopes that this single source will provide all the crucial information about who the in–house editor was, the date the copy was sent for engraving and the dates of dispatch and receipt of first and second proofs, are rarely fulfilled in general, and never for the Mahler publications. The UE Archive does have a few in–house production cards relating to Mahler publications, but all date from much later periods (as do the hire library cards relating to Mahler, the earliest of which dates from 1928). Sadly it is very unlikely that any of the internal printing records of Universal Edition’s printer, Josef Eberle & Co. / Waldheim-Eberle survive: the successor company ceased to exist in the early 1990s and only a small part of its business archive has been traced.

But at least the Mahler entries in the Verlagsbuch do (almost always) record the details of the date of the print order, and the number requested, and invariable give the date of receipt, and quantity delivered. Occasionally additional information is included in the unused columns. For the late works assigned to Universal Edition from the outset – Symphonies 8 and 9 and Das Lied von der Erde – the interpretation of these records is relatively unproblematic. For works absorbed into the UE catalogue by more circuitous roots, the Verlagsbuch entries can be rather more ambiguous, even misleading.

1906 – Edition numbers 946–53

The first works by Mahler to appear in the UE catalogue were issued in 1906,¹ and were all titles for which the rights were held by Druckerei- und Verlags-Actiengesellschaft, vorm. R. v. Waldheim, Jos. Eberle & Co (the successor to the Erste Wiener Zeitungs-Gesellschaft), and which were published on commission by Josef Weinberger (Symphonies Nos 1–3) and Bernard Herzmansky (Ludwig Döblinger) (Symphony No. 4). All three were among the founding shareholders in Universal Edition, and the publications concerned – study scores and piano duet arrangements, were ‘In die Universal Edition aufgenommen’.

Table 1: selected entries from the UE Verlagsbuch

Only the first impressions of a particular publication is listed.
Italics are used to identify entries made (unusually) in pencil (see below).
For complete transcriptions of the relevant entries in the UE Verlagsbuch,
 see the bibliographic descriptions in the main entries for the works concerned.

Exactly what the commercial arrangement lying behind that phrase might have been is not entirely clear: Waldheim-Eberle held the publication rights yet the title pages of the UE issues – though adopting the distinctive UE house design – are unequivocal in retaining the imprints of the two distributors, ostensibly as publishers; the publications all (except for the study score of the First Symphony - see the catalogue entry for a discussion of this exception) retain their original plate numbers, or those of the corresponding full score. The tri-partite contractual agreement, and the decision to adopt the new format were presumably finalised in the autumn of 1905, because in December of that year UE announced its new role in marketing the first four Mahler symphonies.

Fig. 2.

U.E. Advert: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 72/51 (13 December 1905), 1079

Interestingly the first study score to be printed was not – as might be supposed from the UE Verlagsbuch extracts in Table 1 – that of the Third Symphony, but of the Fourth, a copy of which, together with a covering letter, was sent to Mahler by Josef Stritzko, on 5 January 1906 (GMBsV, 114):

Mahler was indeed impressed (GMBsV: 115):

The emphasis Stritzko placed on generating increased turnover is significant, and may in part have been a response to pressure from Mahler, who in the 1890s sought to persuade Schott to set the price of the Lieder und Gesänge volumes as low as possible (GMBsV: 82): the strategy adopted in the re-issue of the symphonies was to exploit UE's existing targeting of the pedagogic and domestic markets, while leaving responsibility for handling the professional market (full scores and part sets) to the original distributers. This was to be achieved through UE's distribution network and marketing, the adoption of a smaller, cheaper format for the scores, and a lowering of the price of the piano duet arrangements (see Table 2).

Table 2: Retail prices of early issues of scores and piano duet arrangements of Mahler’s Symphonies 1–4

The currency most commonly used in advertisements for all these issues was the German Mark and is adopted here.

The exchange between Stritzko and Mahler also raises some important general and specific issues, including some relating to  chronology:

• Regrettably there is no clue as to when the discussions of the new initiative had commenced.

• Stritzko implies that, understandably, there had been some concerns about how well such complex scores could be reduced to an octavo study score format (c. 245 x 175) which was midway in size between the folio full scores previously issued, and 16mo miniature scores (a format not widely used in Vienna before the establishment of the Wiener Philharmonischer Verlag in 1923). In fact the clarity of the original engraving by EWZG was such that the photolithographic reduction in size was remarkably successful.

• Stritzko was apparently sending Mahler a finished copy of the new study score (i.e. not proofs) of the Fourth Symphony. Taken at face value his next statement suggests that work on the new format scores of the other three symphonies was underway  and was expected to be completed shortly. If that was the case, Mahler must have already either (a) prepared revised and corrected copies of the full scores of all four symphonies or (b) made corrections on new sets of proofs. Unfortunately no such scores or proofs have been located. In the case of the Third Symphony the revisions involved were quite extensive and required newly engraved plates.

• There is no entry in the UE Verlagsbuch corresponding to the first printing of the Fourth Symphony study score, a copy of which Stritzko sent to Mahler in January 1906, so in this case – and perhaps in the case of some or all of the other early UE issues – the records in the ledger are incomplete. This may reflect initial uncertainty on the part of the UE staff about how to record the  ordering and transfer processes, perhaps because the initial order for this new format score was initiated by EWZG, not UE. Whatever the explanation, this anomaly also draws attention to the fact the entries in the relevant Verlagsbucher for the first batch of Mahler issues have other notable and unusual features.

  • The eight publications were assigned a block of consecutive edition numbers by UE independently of the ordering and publication sequence (this must have been sometime before mid-December 1905: see Fig. 2).

  • All the initial order and delivery entries for the piano duet copies are in pencil (as indicated by the use of italics in Table 1): elsewhere ink is invariably used for such entries.  Moreover, order dates are only one day earlier than the relevant date of receipt. Waldheim-Eberle could certainly turn around work quickly when necessary, but not usually that promptly. The reason is probably bound up with the fact a reprint was not necessary because EWZG held unsold stock of the arrangements as issued under the Weinberger or Doblinger imprints: copies of all four such issues with a Universal-Edition label pasted over the original imprint survive. The fact that all four orders date from several months after the listings in Hofmeister is a further indication that the records in the UE ledger are incomplete, and that batches of the arrangement with the necessary paste-overs had been supplied earlier.

  • The dates of ordering and receipt for the printings of the study scores of the Second and Third Symphonies are consistent with normal patterns recorded elsewhere in the Verlagsbuch but not that for the First Symphony.

  • Table 1 indicates that the UE management believed there was a substantially enhanced market for the study score of the Third Symphony, a view founded on the astonishing interest shown in the work following its sensationally successful première at Krefeld on 9 June 1902: between then and April 1906 it had already received a further nineteen performances. This assessment of the market proved to be correct: as the Verlagsbuch reveals, between February 1907 and April 1913 an additional 794 copies were ordered.

Fig. 3

1908 – Edition numbers 1690–2; 1694

The Verlagsbücher reveal that a further block of UE issues, consisting of vocal works by Mahler that were either published or distributed by Weinberger, was planned for 1908 (the adjacent entries  in the sequence  are all for publications that were first printed in that year), but as table 2 reveals only the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen was ordered in 1908, and it was indeed published 'In die Universal-Edition aufgenommen'; it was not until early 1910 that orders for the other three were placed:

Table 3

The first UE orders for UE edition nos 1690–93, 1694

At present, no exemplars of the Wunderhorn and klagende Lied volumes listed above have been definitively identified, and in the absence of other documentation of this process, the reasons for the apparent delay are not immediately apparent. Nevertheless, some further details may be adduced here:

• None of the UE Verlagsbuch entries for works in the first batch of Mahler's works licensed to the firm in 1906 make any reference to the rights owner (EWZG) or to the distributors (Weinberger or Doblinger).

• The entries for all four works in the second batch originally referred to Josef Weinberger Verlag: this probably reflected an erroneous belief that Weinberger owned the rights to all four. Subsequently these references in the entries for the last three works were struck through, presumably to correct the misunderstanding. Nevertheless it is hard to see why the ownership of the copyrights should have impacted on the ordering of copies: in 1906 EWZG had already entered into a licensing agreement with UE for some of the Mahler publications they had prepared.

• The one work in the 1908 batch owned by Weinberger – the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen – was issued in 1908, but after six impressions of the UE issue had been printed (a total of 1302 copies), it was withdrawn from the UE catalogue, as a pencil annotation to the Verlagsbuch makes clear: ‘Aus dem Katalog gestrichen 1916’. On 14 October 1915 an order for 200 copies of the song-cycle had been recorded, but subsequently crossed through: for whatever reason Weinberger had decided to cancel the agreement with UE. The entry also records ‘Sämtliche Druckkosten zahlen wir’ suggesting that a different financial arrangement – a division of printing costs between UE as distributor and (presumably) Waldheim-Eberle (as copyright owner) – may have applied to the other Mahler publications ‘In die Universal-Edition aufgenommen’.

• The sale of rights to works by Bruckner and Mahler owned by Waldheim-Eberle to UE was agreed in the summer of 1910, and in most cases this was reflected in entries made in the UE Verlagsbücher later that year. These are unusual in that they record only a delivery date and numbers of copies concerned, and, moreover, the date is the same in every case: 17 November 1910; whether these entries document merely a paper transfer or the physical relocation of the remaining stock is not made clear.

• The only Mahler Waldheim-Eberle publications that have no such entries are those that had been issued under licence since 1906: the study scores and piano duet arrangements of the first four symphonies and the collective piano and voice volumes of the Wunderhorn songs, stocks of which had been managed by UE for four years; and the last three publications in the 1908 batch.

• The print orders for the two Wunderhorn volumes listed in the 1908 batch indicate that even before UE had formally acquired sole rights, it had been decided to reissue the collection in two, rather than three volumes (see Des Knaben Wunderhorn PVC2), and a print run of 100 copies, though modest, is not exceptional.

• If the UE Verlagsbuch is correct, no copies of the vocal score of Das klagende Lied were transferred to UE in November 1910, so perhaps the February 1910 print run of 30 copies followed up with an order for 18 copies on 16 March was needed because the edition was in danger of going out of print. By that year the work had been performed only three times since the 1901 première, but two performances, under Paul Ottenheimer in Prague and Julius von Weis-Ostborn in Graz were scheduled for March 1910: it is just possible that, though rather late in the day, the first order was in some way connected with these events.

Emil Hertzka

Early in 1908, at the age of 39, Emil Hertzka replaced Arthur Fadüm as the chief executive of Universal Edition,² an event that was to result in a decisive transformation of the firm's publishing strategy as it increasingly focussed its activity on the publication of new music as was already hinted at in advertisements published at the end of the year.

Hertzka (1869–1932) was born in Budapest and studied chemistry, music history and literature at the University of Vienna before joining the firm of Josef Weinberger in 1891, where he learnt the business and was able to observe closely the early development of UE. Whether he knew or liked music was a matter of uncertainty for his employees and their admiration for his patronage of new music was qualified by their response to his personality. Heinsheimer and Ernst Roth seem to have held broadly similar views, though Roth's is the more sober assessment (ERBM, 58):

Hertzka wasn't much liked either by some of the composers he supported: Zemlinsky's assertion in July 1913 that ‘Hertzka is a pig!’ was greeted sympathetically by Schoenberg (AZC, 97–8):

On the other hand Hertzka's relationship with Mahler seems to have been generally cordial, and in 1909–10, as part of his idiosyncratic business plan, he initiated a policy of vigorously acquiring the copyrights to or licences for all of Mahler’s works; by 1911 he had succeeded, with one exception. The fact that the Fifth Symphony initially eluded his grasp may indicate that Peters Edition (rightly) perceived UE as a growing and serious competitor, and that nothing was to be gained by licensing the work.

1909–10:  the Eighth Symphony (edition numbers 2660–1; 2770–1)

Mahler himself was initially involved in the detailed negotiations with Hertzka over the contract for the publication of the Eighth Symphony: the two of them met (perhaps for the first time) in June 1909, and Mahler asked his lawyer, Emil Freund to draw up urgently a contract embodying the provisions discussed with Hertzka (GMB, 448; GMSL, 336–7 [revised below]; FWGMV, pp. 198–9):

On or shortly after 26 June Mahler wrote again to Freund, raising some further issues in connection with the publication of the Symphony (GMB, 449–50; GMSL, 338 [revised below]; FWGMV, pp. 200–201):

The signed letter that Mahler enclosed was presumably the letter of agreement of that date summarizing the arrangements for the publication of the Symphony (GMBMH, 402–3; KBME, 259–60):

The urgency stemmed from the fact that Mahler was already having discussions with the impressario Emil Gutmann – who had been instrumental in arranging performances of the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies – that were presumably the preliminary planning for the première of the Symphony in September 1910. On 26 June Mahler could report to Alma ‘Gutmann kündigt auch seinen Besuch für August an in Sachen Musikfest’ [‘Gutmann has announced his arrival in August to discuss the Music Festival’]. (GMBaA, 394; GMBaAE, 331).

Mahler understood that J.V. von Wöss, by this time the in-house music editor of Universal Edition, was going to prepare the vocal score over the summer (see GMB, 259–60; GMSL, 344) so that it would be completed by 1 September 1909 (see above), but by 24 September 1909 it was still not finished, and Mahler doubted that the vocal score and chorus parts could be ready by 2 January 1910, the deadline he was insisting on to ensure that the choirs had sufficient time to learn the work (see Mahler to Gutmann, GMUBE, 72). Despite Hertzka's assurances (see GMUB, 73; GMUBE, 72) the vocal material was not ready until rather later (see Table 3 below), but Mahler was very impressed with the quality of the work (KBME, 261, 263) and thanks to Gutmann's persistence, the première took place as planned on 12 September 1910.

 * various figures for the separate parts within the set

Table 3

The printed string parts were prepared in time for the first orchestral rehearsals and the full score was issued early in 1911 (though the study score was not published until 1912).

1910: the Kahnt editions

While UE was grappling with the huge task of publishing the Eighth Symphony, it was licensing works from C.F. Kahnt and taking over the rights to other works from Eberle. The initial batch of Kant editions ‘In die Universal-Edition aufgenommen’ were assigned edition numbers within a single block (the voice and piano versions of Um Mitternacht for some reason did not make it into that continuous sequence). A further group of numbers were assigned in 1912 (as part of a larger ‘Mahler’ sequence) to full scores of the songs but the unusual and fragmentary entries (mostly made some time after the edition numbers were assigned) suggest that it is unlikely that any copies were ever issued by UE. In the case of the publications that were issued, it is not clear where the main printing was undertaken; it is likely that the sheets were imported from Germany and that only the covers were produced in Vienna.

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