Boosey & Hawkes: The Publishing Story

A rare look behind the scenes of a publishing company working with composers to shape musical history.

Distinguished journalist and broadcaster Helen Wallace vividly charts the story of Boosey & Hawkes from 1930, when Leslie Boosey and Ralph Hawkes chose to merge their rival London businesses to build a worldwide operation.

Signing Bartók and Strauss, and investing in young talents like Britten and Copland, the company came of age with the acquisition of Serge Koussevitzky’s Russian catalogue, with its masterpieces by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and Prokofieff.

A leadership vacuum following Ralph Hawkes’s untimely death led to boardroom rifts and takeover battles, until a new flowering in the 1980s saw the signing of composers ranging from Reich, Adams and Carter in America, to Górecki and Andriessen in Europe.

Illustrated with over 150 archive photographs, this new book follows the company’s progress through boom years and unexpected financial threats, and reveals how artistic foresight has been balanced with commercial reality to build one of the world’s leading classical music publishers.

Essential reading for students, musicians, composers, music historians, and anyone interested in classical music, Boosey & Hawkes: The Publishing Story will be published in May 2007.

Follow these links to read advance sample pages:

• Preface
• Koussevitzky Catalogue Acquisition
• Battle of Britten
• Steve Reich Signs

Helen Wallace has worked as a music critic on The Times and as editor of The Strad, BBC Music Magazine, Southbank and About the House for the Royal Opera House. Her publications include Spirit of the Orchestra, about the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, and Classique UK. She is active as a broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and is a Kodály teacher and cellist.