| Founded | 1872 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Carl Fischer |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Publication types | Sheet music |
| Official website | www.carlfischer.com |
Carl Fischer Music is a major publisher of sheet music based in New York City that has been in business since 1872. As one of the few remaining family-owned music publishers, it supplies educational materials to professional and beginning musicians of all ages, as well as new music works.
Notable authors and composers published by Carl Fischer Music include Henry Brant, Sebastian Currier, Jason Eckardt, Mischa Elman, Carl Flesch, Lukas Foss, Daron Hagen, Howard Hanson, Jascha Heifetz, Lee Hyla, Norman Dello Joio, Fritz Kreisler, Janice Tucker Rhoda, Eric Rosenblith, John Phillip Sousa and Anton Webern.
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Carl Fischer (1849-1923), the founder of the firm bearing his name, was by training and profession a musician and manufacturer of musical instruments. Shortly after arriving from his native Germany, he opened a musical instrument store in 1872 on East Fourth Street in New York City, the city's cultural center. He supplied musicians with sheet music and instruments from Europe while supplementing his own income with professional engagements as a violinist in several orchestras and bands throughout the city. These experiences made him aware of the lack of printed music available for the many orchestras and bands of different sizes and instrumentations that existed at the time. At first, he reproduced such arrangements in longhand and, somewhat later, adopted the lithographic process. In adding the services of an engraver and an arranger to his staff, Fischer became a music publisher.
As the demand for printed music increased, Fischer expanded his offerings, publishing works of then-fashionable composers such as Edwin Franko Goldman, Victor Herbert, Arthur Pryor, Leopold Godowsky and John Philip Sousa. By the turn of the 20th century, the firm had begun offering material for music education and performance in the areas of orchestra, band, choral, piano, and other instrumental music -- among them, the first concert band work published in America. Resultantly, Fischer's company increasingly concentrated on publishing.
Three of Carl Fischer's sons, Carl, Jr., Walter S. and George, helped him run the business during this period. Walter continued to do so after the deaths of George in 1909 and Carl, Jr. in 1912, becoming president of the company after his father's death in 1923. That same year, the firm moved its New York operations to a company-owned twelve-story building on Cooper Square, where it remained until 1999. In 1939, Walter Fischer asked his son-in-law Frank Hayden Connor, who had worked in the banking industry, to become his assistant.
The company's visibility and prestige grew under Walter Fischer's influence. In 1924, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), which at the time mainly licensed popular music presentations, invited Fischer to bring his company's concert music titles to be part of their group. Many works by distinguished American composers were added to Carl Fischer Music's catalog at this time, including those by Howard Hanson, Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Peter Mennin, and Douglas Moore. Music education offerings, especially ones serving the needs of school music programs, increased in number. During the 1930s and 1940s, well-known violinists such as Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifitz, Fritz Kreisler, and Joseph Szigeti contributed compositions to the company's catalog that would subsequently become standard repertoire items for that instrument.
In 1941 the company falsely copyrighted an Australian folk song "Waltzing Matilda" written by Banjo Patterson in 1887 causing a minor scandal.
Upon Walter Fischer's death in 1946, Connor became the firm's president. An uptown retail store branch featuring a concert hall was opened at 165 West 57th Street. This five-story building was the largest music store in New York City until it was sold in 1959 to a concert bureau following the announcement that Carnegie Hall would be replaced by an office building.
Connor re-established contact with major European publishers and subsequently extended the activities of the company both nationally and internationally. During that period, Carl Fischer Music represented Oxford University Press, Paterson's of London, Henle Verlag of Germany, and several other European publishers in the U.S. Similar steps were taken to represent certain American editions, and the firm became the sole selling agent for the publications of Cundy-Bettoney, William Pond, and R.D. Row, among others. Among the domestic catalogs acquired or represented by the firm, Eastman School of Music (containing music by then-director Howard Hanson), the Fillmore Music catalog (containing Henry Fillmore's marches), and the Charles Foley catalog (containing the compositions of Fritz Kreisler) were most noteworthy. Notable additions to the catalog during the 1960s and 1970s included previously unknown works by Austrian composer Anton Webern, deriving from the composer's original manuscripts that had been hidden during the war and discovered by musicologist Hans Moldenhauer.
In 1977, five years after the one hundredth anniversary of the firm, Frank Hayden Connor died and was succeeded by his son Walter Fischer Connor, who became President and Chairman of the Board of Carl Fischer Music, as well as Chairman of Boosey & Hawkes, a noteworthy London-based international music publishing and musical instrument company, where Carl Fischer Music had acquired a substantial interest.
Under Walter Connor's leadership, Carl Fischer Music further expanded its involvement in music distribution and retail sales with its New York City store and through branches in Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Boston while continuing the firm's commitment to music education. The company developed the Rack Sense program, the first computerized system for stocking music stores with high-turnover music print product. Since the 1980s, the works of many noteworthy concert music composers were taken on, including those by Henry Brant, Michael Colgrass, Sebastian Currier, Jason Eckardt, Daron Hagen, Lee Hyla, and David Maslanka.
Walter Connor died on January 5, 1996. Three years later, F. Hayden Connor, the great grandson of founder Carl Fischer, acquired the company. Veteran publisher and musician Sandy Feldstein was named company president, superseded by Lauren Keiser.
In June 1999, Carl Fischer Music moved into new corporate headquarters on the 8th Floor of the Bayard-Condict Building at 65 Bleecker Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Greenwich Village. Administration, Editorial, Production, Copyright, Royalty, Sales, Concert Music, and Marketing staff are located here, while Order Fulfillment and Distribution are handled from a distribution center located at the Theodore Presser Company in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Carl Fischer Music purchased Theodore Presser Company in 2004.
The catalogs of the firm continue to contain a large and diversified selection of material that runs the gamut of music literature from the educational field to that of concert music. Publications embrace every category including band, orchestra, choral, piano, vocal, string, fretted instruments, brass, woodwind, percussion and church music. In addition, the company maintains an extensive rental library of over 2,500 compositions which makes available chamber, opera, ballet and symphonic material to professional and educational performing organizations. The company has launched a record label (Bleecker Street Records) to bring consumers recordings of some of the company's major titles.