N. Simrock

N. Simrock (in German Musikverlag N. Simrock, Simrock Verlag, or simply Simrock) was a German music publisher founded by Nikolaus Simrock which published many 19th-century German classical music composers. It was acquired in 1929 by Anton Benjamin.

The firm was founded in 1793 by Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn. Simrock had been a close friend to Beethoven his whole life. It was expanded by his son Peter Joseph in the 19th century, and in 1870 moved to Berlin by the latter's son Fritz.^[1] His nephew Hans Simrock later ran the company, and in 1907 acquired another music publisher, Bartholf Senff of Leipzig.^[2][3] In 1911 the company merged with Albert Ahn's publishing house to form Ahn & Simrock, headquartered in Bonn and Berlin, but later separated from it. In 1929 it was sold to the Leipzig publisher Anton J. Benjamin,^[2][4][5] which was re-established in 1951 in Hamburg^[6] and acquired by Boosey & Hawkes in 2002.^[5] Many of the company's archives and plates were lost in the Second World War and had to be reconstructed by reproducing old editions.^[7] The remaining archives were mostly held in what is now the Saxon State Archive in Leipzig, but some material was dispersed in the 1990s and early 2000s.^[8]

The company was the first publisher of the music of a veritable "Who's Who" of classical music composers, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (what must have been a hand-written copy of The Magic Flute),^[9] Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven (13 first editions), Robert Schumann (including his Third Symphony), Johannes Brahms,^[2][10] Felix Mendelssohn (such as his oratorios Elias and Paulus),^[11] Max Bruch (including his Violin Concerto No. 1), Antonín Dvořák,^[2] and Josef Suk.

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