The Publishers.
Sixty-three publishing houses across eleven regions. From Breitkopf in Leipzig — the world's oldest music publisher, founded 1719 — through Bärenreiter's urtext canon, Schott's Mozart firsts, the yellow Schirmer Library, the Henle Munich standard. The working catalogue of every conservatory, school, choir and church.
A publisher's imprint on the title page tells you who edited the score, who paid the engraver, and whose scholarly tradition shaped the bar lines, the slurring, the dynamics. It is the difference between a Mozart sonata as Mozart intended and a Mozart sonata as someone thought Mozart intended.
The houses on this page are the editorial gatekeepers of three centuries of Western music. Bärenreiter and Henle define the modern urtext standard — the unbiased text of the composer's manuscript, restored. Schott published Mozart's first scores from 1770. Breitkopf & Härtel, founded in 1719, has been continuously publishing music longer than any house on Earth. Boosey & Hawkes is the catalogue home of Stravinsky, Britten and Copland. G. Schirmer's yellow-bound Library of Musical Classics has trained American conservatories since 1892.
What follows is our working catalogue — sixty-three imprints across eleven regions, the editions performers, conductors and educators trust. Three centuries, one shelf.
From Mozart's first publisher to today's Broadway score — the editorial standard of three centuries.The Publishers Network · The Musicians Club
Hal Leonard.
The largest sheet music publisher in the world.
Founded in 1947 in Winona, Minnesota by brothers Harold ("Hal") and Everett ("Leonard") Edstrom with Roger Busdicker, Hal Leonard is the company that distributes virtually the entire American printed-music repertoire. Today, headquartered in Milwaukee with offices in nine countries, they hold print rights for Disney Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group, and have absorbed sixty-plus heritage imprints over four decades — Schirmer, Boosey & Hawkes, Schott Music, Henle Verlag, Editions Durand, Ricordi, Cherry Lane, Faber Piano Adventures, Berklee Press, and the Hal Leonard educational catalogue itself.
Every imprint on the page below — from Mozart's first publisher in Mainz to the modern Faber piano method — reaches American conservatories, schools, churches, choirs and home practice rooms through Hal Leonard's distribution. We curate sixty-three of those imprints in our working catalogue.
Eight houses,
three centuries.
From Leipzig 1719 to the modern urtext standard — the publishers that defined the editorial canon of Western music.
Schott
Bärenreiter
Breitkopf & Härtel
Boosey & Hawkes
G. Schirmer, Inc.
G. Henle Verlag
Ricordi
Editions Durand
The people who built the canon.
Behind every imprint is a single editorial mind. The decisions one founder made — what to print, in what order, with which engraver — shaped what became canonical for the next two centuries.
A chronology of the canon.
Paris
The French canon — from the Paris Conservatoire to the Impressionist generation. Leduc the Concours imprint, Durand the publisher of Debussy and Ravel — a tradition shaped over five generations of family editorship.
London
The English-speaking canon. Novello set the church-music standard from 1811. Boosey & Hawkes made London the home of 20th-century classical — Stravinsky, Britten, Copland. Chester Music and Omnibus Press complete the modern Wise Music family.
Boosey & Hawkes
Novello
Chester Music
Omnibus Press
Mainz · Berlin · Hamburg
The German tradition. Schott (Mainz, 1770) issued Mozart's first scores and remains a Wagner authority. Eulenburg pioneered the pocket study score. Sikorski (Hamburg) holds the Russian and Soviet 20th-century catalogue, including Shostakovich and Schnittke.
The Ricordi archive in Milan
Casa Ricordi's archive holds the autograph manuscripts of every Verdi opera — preserved continuously in Milan since 1808. The publishing house operated as the official press of La Scala for over a century, and its restored archive is now jointly stewarded by Universal Music Publishing Classical and the Archivio Storico Ricordi foundation.
Munich
Henle Urtext — the modern scholarly editorial standard. Founded postwar in 1948 by Günter Henle, the imprint defined the contemporary Urtext methodology used by every conservatory in Europe and America.
Leipzig · Kassel
The German urtext giants — the oldest and most prolific. Breitkopf & Härtel (Leipzig, 1719) is the world's oldest continuously-operating music publisher and the first to print Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner. Bärenreiter (Kassel, 1923) defined the modern German urtext canon for Bach, Mozart, Handel and Berlioz.
What "Urtext" actually means
"Urtext" — German for original text — refers to a scholarly edition that restores the composer's notation as accurately as possible from manuscript sources, stripping away the editorial decisions of later interpreters. Henle, Bärenreiter and Wiener Urtext are the three modern German imprints whose editorial committees define the contemporary Urtext standard. When you see "Urtext" on a title page, you are seeing the composer's decisions — not the editor's.
New York
The American canon. G. Schirmer's yellow-bound Library of Musical Classics has trained every American conservatory since 1892. Cherry Lane and Edward B. Marks built the Tin Pan Alley songbook. Lauren Keiser, Lee Roberts and Second Floor Music continue the independent classical and jazz tradition.
G. Schirmer, Inc.
Schirmer
G SCHIRMER, INC
Associated Music Publishers, Inc.
Associated
Cherry Lane Music
CHERRY LANE MUSIC
Edward B. Marks Music Company
Music Sales America
Music Minus One
Lauren Keiser Music Publishing
Lee Roberts Music Publications, Inc.
Second Floor Music
TRO Essex Music Group
Boston · the Academy
Berklee Press is the publishing arm of Berklee College of Music — the most significant catalogue of jazz harmony, contemporary songwriting and music-industry pedagogy in print. Backbeat Books carries the standard music biographies and journalist-driven artist portraits.
The Schirmer Library of Musical Classics
G. Schirmer's yellow-bound Library of Musical Classics, inaugurated in 1892, has been part of every American conservatory student's shelf for over 130 years. Carl Engel's editorial leadership in the 1920s codified the editorial conventions that defined American classical performance practice through the 20th century.
American Sacred Imprints
The working music ministry of every American denomination. Choir anthems, hymnals, organ literature, handbell ensemble, contemporary worship. Fourteen imprints covering Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal and non-denominational traditions.
Hal Leonard Sacred
Hinshaw Music
Daybreak Music
Brookfield Press
Mark Foster
Pavane Publishing
Fred Bock Music Company
Gentry Publications
PraiseSong
Alliance Music Publications
Transcontinental Music Publications
Barbershop Harmony Society
H.T. FitzSimons Company
Houston Publishing, Inc.
American Educational Imprints
The working studio shelf — method books, sight-reading, theory, technique. Faber Piano Adventures (the most-adopted American piano method). Rubank, Schaum, Willis, Southern, Curnow — wind, string, brass and keyboard methods graded primer-through-recital, classroom-through-conservatory.
Faber Piano Adventures
Schaum Publications
Willis Music
Rubank Publications
Southern Music Co.
Southern Music Company
Curnow Music
De Haske Publications
Amstel Music
Arrangers' Publishing Company
Shawnee Press
Alfred Publishing Co.
Centerstream Publications
Wahnsinn Music
Fretted · Folk · Brass Quintet
Specialty imprints. Waltons (Dublin, 1922) keeps the Irish traditional canon. Canadian Brass — the working brass-quintet repertoire pioneered by the Canadian quintet themselves, performed and recorded across the world.
Six programs, one publisher network.
Beyond the catalogue, six partnership programmes turn the 63 publishers into a working partnership — for orchestras, conservatories, school districts, music educators, festival directors, and the working musician.
For orchestras & conservatories
Standing Order, Hire Library, Educator Pricing — one librarian across all 63 publishers. Apply via the partnership form.
University conservatory account
Department-tailored standing orders for music conservatories. Strings, Brass, Voice, Composition — each gets the right publisher mix.
School district partnership
For school districts with 10+ music programmes — volume pricing, NET-30 invoicing, dedicated rep, district-wide standing orders.
15% educator discount
Verified music teachers get 15% off the catalogue, 20% off bulk class-set orders, priority access to new urtext editions.
Festival repertoire kits
For TMEA, NYSSMA, MMEA, MPA — required-list repertoire pre-sorted, ad-libitum recommendations included, single-parcel delivery.
Pro Membership
$99/year. 10% off the catalogue. Early access to new urtext releases. Monthly editorial briefing. Named music librarian. Free shipping over $30.
Cross the regions.
Discover editions across publishers grouped by repertoire and discipline.
Every imprint.
Every edition.
One shelf.
Sixty-three publishing houses. Twenty thousand editions. The working catalogue of every conservatory, school, choir and church in our practice.