Company Timeline
Boosey & Hawkes is an international music company with a long history and a reputation for excellence and innovation. As well as being the world’s leading specialist classical music publisher, Boosey & Hawkes has a growing roster of jazz musicians and an expanding division providing music for film, TV and advertising.
International Offices
Company History
-
1792: John Boosey opens London bookshopThe Boosey & Sons shop in Old Bond Street opens with a lending library. John Boosey’s grandson Thomas expands the musical side of the business with local favourites and imported scores by Rossini, Hummel, Donizetti and Verdi. -
1850: Boosey & Co - purveyor of music and instrumentsThomas Boosey's son John responds to the Victorian appetite for parlour music and provides affordable editions of the classics. Begins manufacturing wind and brass instruments. 1867 sees the launch of the highly popular Boosey Ballad Concerts, which run for 70 years with premieres including Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance Marches and Delius’s Sea Drift. -
1865: William Hawkes forms new music companyWilliam Henry Hawkes, Queen Victoria’s head trumpeter, retires from service and joins forces with the French bandmaster Jules Rivière. Their new company in Soho Square specialises in military instruments, accessories and sheet music, trading across the British Empire. -
1892: Boosey & Co opens New York officeThe new office serves the increasingly active music world in America. Opera stars, instrumental virtuosi and conductors appear regularly at the Metropolitan Opera and the new Carnegie Hall, opened in 1891. -
1930: Boosey & Co and Hawkes & Son join forcesRather than wage a price war, Leslie Boosey and Ralph Hawkes agree to merge the two rival businesses, creating Boosey & Hawkes. International trading links are developed with publishers in Vienna and Paris. To answer the decline in music sales due to the ‘talkies’ the Cavendish recorded music library is founded. -
1935-40: Britten, Copland and Bartók signHawkes signs the 22-year-old Benjamin Britten and the company’s first American composer, Aaron Copland. New contracts are agreed with the Hungarians Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók, the company representing the latter also as a pianist during his USA exile. -
1945: Koussevitzky catalogue acquiredAcquiring Serge Koussevitzky's catalogue brings masterworks by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff and Prokofieff to Boosey & Hawkes. Also in the 1940s, the company promotes wartime concerts at the Wigmore Hall, rescues Covent Garden as an operatic venue, builds upon the premiere of Britten’s Peter Grimes, and signs Richard Strauss. -
1982-88: American signings: Bernstein to ReichThe post-war period brings a new contract with Stravinsky and publishing relationships with Prokofieff and Shostakovich. Over following decades a contemporary music catalogue is established with the young Peter Maxwell Davies and leading American composers such as Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich and John Adams. -
2003: Instrument business sold: focus on publishingWith the sale of its instrument division, Boosey & Hawkes recasts itself solely as a publishing company. To complement its catalogue of leading classical composers, a roster of jazz musicians is built including Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis. The new century brings an expansion of music for film, TV and advertising and new initiatives in the digital arena.
