Augener & Co.

Augener & Co. was a music-publishing business in London, established by George Augener (1830–1915).

The business was founded at 86 Newgate Street, London, in 1855. Later on branch warehouses were established at 1 Foubert Place, 22 Golden Square, and 81 The Quadrant, Regent Street. By a change of partnership on 26 February 1887, the warehouse in the Quadrant was transferred to Wesley S. B. Woolhouse, while the general business with this exception remaining George Augener's.

In the late nineteenth century, Augener & Co.'s catalogue contained upwards of 6000 works, of which nearly 1000 were cheap volumes; among these was a comprehensive collection of pianoforte classics edited by Ernst Pauer, as well as an important series of educational works edited by him, by John Farmer, and other well-known musicians. To this collection they added the works of some of the most important composers of the New German School, including Xaver Scharwenka, Jean L. Nicodé, and Moszkowski. They had a large and varied stock of music and were the sole agency for Great Britain of the famous Edition Peters published at Leipzig.

They also published The Monthly Musical Record, a journal which had among its contributors prominent names in English musical literature. At the end of the century, its circulation was about 6000.

Between 1898 and 1904, Augener purchased Robert Cocks & Co. from Robert Cocks's descendents, Robert Macfarlane Cocks and Strould Lincoln Cocks.^[1]

George Augener retired in 1910. At this point, Schott and Co., Limited, now a three-way partnership between Ludwig Strecker, Sr., Ludwig Strecker, Jr., and Willi (né Wilhelm Strecker),^[2] acquired the company, but were forced to relinquish their interest at the outbreak of World War I (1914). The firm acquired the catalogues of UK publishers Joseph Weekes and Joseph Williams in 1960–1961. Augener & Co. was sold to Galaxy Music of New York in 1962 and became a division of Galaxy's UK subsidiary, Galliard Ltd., which in turn was sold to Stainer & Bell in 1972.

Correspondence between Augener and music publishing houses in Leipzig from the first half of the 20th century is stored in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig.

References

1. Auction Catalogue of the Valuable Copyrights, Engraved Music Plates of Messrs Robert Cocks & Co., November 7th to 16th, 1898, Puttick and Simpson, London (1898); OCLC 829991355
2. Festschrift für einen Verleger: Ludwig Strecker zum 90. Geburtstag, by Ludwig Anderson, pseudonym of Ludwig Strecker, Jr. (1883–1978), edited by Carl Dahlhaus, Mainz: Schott Music (1973) OCLC 166521607

Note

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Grove, George, ed. (1900). "Augener". A Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan and Company.