Any musician recognizes the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. And now we can read about them too, as a book has come out telling tales. Here’s a quote to begin with:
Remember you are not in business for the sake of music; you are in music for the sake of business. (Ernst Roth, a managing director)
And then there’s this:
Hawkes also spotted the home-grown market potential of Benjamin Britten – much to the regret of Oxford University Press, whose main man, Herbert Foss, must have eaten the words he scrawled on an internal memo, suggesting dismissively of OUP’s young uncultivated star that “it may be worthwhile to let Boosey waste some money on him”. Hawkes saw equal opportunity in the confused cultural vacuum of post-war America, taking Britten’s advice to sign up the little-known Aaron Copland.
I’m guessing the book is somewhat biased. It’s published by … can you guess? … Boosey & Hawkes.
