Introduction
When in October 1891 Mahler attempted to interest the German music publisher B. Schott’s Söhne in his music, the owner, Dr Ludwig Strecker, ignored the three large-scale works on offer – a symphony, a Märchen for chorus, orchestra and soloists, and a symphonic poem – and was content to acquire a collection of songs, published as the 14 Lieder und Gesänge.Footnote 1 Even for a major and long-established German firm, with ample opportunity to use income from works of enduring popularity to cross-subsidize more costly and risky ventures, the publication of new, innovative symphonic works, let alone a cantata, by a barely-known composer was not a commercially attractive proposition. In fact, two of these three works were in no state for publication: the score of Das klagende Lied (1880) had not been prepared for performance,Footnote 2 and no more than the first movement of what became the Second Symphony had been completed in score when Mahler first wrote to Strecker; only one work, the Symphonic Poem in Two Parts (eventually and definitively re-designated Symphony No. 1 in D major by 1896), had been heard in public, at Budapest in November 1889.
For a young composer seeking a publisher, direct personal or indirect contact was (and remains) of great importance, and for Mahler, that he had met Strecker at the time of the Leipzig premiere of his completion of Weber’s comic opera Die drei Pintos in 1889 was a decisive factor in determining the direction of his approach, as he admitted in his initial letter.Footnote 3 Moreover Schott’s was well-known, with international reach, and had an interest in publishing new music. The timing of this letter may also have been significant: that it followed relatively quickly after Mahler had taken up a new appointment (as 1. Kapellmeister at the Hamburg Stadt-Theater) in March 1891 anticipated – perhaps not entirely coincidentally – the circumstance of his next documented contact with a music publisher.
On 27 April 1897 Mahler left HamburgFootnote 4 to assume a post as Kapellmeister at the Court Opera in Vienna, and at about that time (by 28 April at the latest) Siegfried Grünfeld, acting on Mahler’s behalf, approached his brother-in-law, Paul Ollendorff, a senior staff member at C. F. Peters, to try to interest the firm in the composer’s music.Footnote 5 Mahler’s portfolio was now substantially larger – three symphonies, the orchestral version of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and ‘a number of humoresques and songs’ for voice and orchestra – and the song cycle, the first two symphonies, three movements of the Third and some orchestral songs had been performed with varying degrees of success. Mahler may well have hoped that these performances and his appointment to one of the most important musical institutions in central Europe would encourage greater interest in his music, but Ollendorff wrote to Mahler to indicate that the firm was not in a position to take on new composers. Fortunately, the move to Vienna opened up new publishing opportunities for Mahler: not only could he tap into professional and personal networks, but he also had a professional status within one of the Dual Monarchy’s most influential musical organizations that would be further enhanced by his subsequent elevation to the position of Director of the Court Opera. Moreover, Viennese music publishing was in the early stages of a transformation founded on modern printing and business methods, and a generally forward-looking approach towards copyright and performance rights, that culminated in the foundation in 1901 of Universal-Edition, the firm that would eventually compete with the major German publishers, transform the public profile of Mahler’s music, and develop the international market for new music.Footnote 6
One of the most active and successful new publishers in late nineteenth-century Vienna was Josef Weinberger (1855–1928), who combined a genuine interest in music (not least as an amateur pianist and singer) with a commercial training and an increasingly influential role within and beyond the Viennese music trade. The ‘Kunst- und Musikalienhandlung’ he founded with Carl Hofbauer in November 1885 began publishing music soon after, but when Weinberger registered a music publishing business in Leipzig in 1889 he did so on his own account,Footnote 7 presumably recognizing the severe disadvantages placed on the monarchy’s music publishers by the failure of Austro-Hungary to sign the Berne Copyright Convention (1886). The first basic principle of the latter is that ‘works originating in one of the Contracting States must be given the same protection in each of the other Contracting States as the latter grants to the works of its own nationals’.Footnote 8 Authors and composers in Austro-Hungary soon realized that to maximize the protection of their rights, publication in a country that was a signatory – such as Germany – was highly desirable. The cultural emigration that this encouraged was noted by the Viennese book and music trades and led to a campaign to change the Government’s mind, which proved fruitless: not until 1920 did the Austrian Republic join the Convention.Footnote 9 However, Weinberger’s business strategy appears to have been successful (it was subsequently adopted by a number of other local publishers) and he also played an important role in drafting the legislation that established performing rights for non-theatrical works in Austro-HungaryFootnote 10 and in the creation in 1897 of a society for the collection of the resulting performance fees, the Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger (AKM). His work in this area attracted official attention:
In 1898, acting at AKM’s request, the Ministry of Culture and Education established a council of experts on musical matters with a six-year brief. Weinberger served on it with such practising musicians as Mahler, Kienzel and Richard Heuberger. Weinberger’s next public task was to prepare a report for the Ministry of the Interior on the advisability of Austro-Hungary joining the Berne Copyright Convention. Then, at the request of the Ministry of Justice, he carried out research personally in Paris into all decrees and laws concerning copyright and related subjects since the French Revolution.Footnote 11
The contacts within the administration established or reinforced through such consultancy work were presumably useful when, during the late 1890s, Weinberger helped bring to fruition another nationally and internationally significant scheme, the formation of a joint stock company that brought together a cartel of Austro-Hungarian music publishers and music sellers, the largest music printer in the Monarchy, the Vienna-based Oesterreichische Länderbank and individual investors to form Universal-Edition in 1901; Weinberger was the managing director until 1906.Footnote 12 The project addressed a series of agendas: for the investors, it was an (albeit risky) opportunity to earn a reasonable return on capital; for the publishers, a means of challenging the market dominance within the monarchy of German music publishers and establishing an international presence; for the music printer, an opportunity to ensure a well-filled order book; and for many of the interested parties, a possible means of both repatriating the classic Viennese repertoire and offering local composers of serious music an attractive alternative to foreign publishers. For the government in Vienna, the prospect that it might help to reduce the trade deficit in cultural products with Germany might have been a further inducement. Whatever the motivations, there was low-key administrative support for the launch of the new venture: the prospectus of the new company was issued by the government press office, which encouraged the Neue freie Presse to wonder whether this indicated official support.Footnote 13 In fact, the Ministerium für Cultus und Unterricht went further and also issued two decrees Z.20.467 (5 July 1901) and Z. 19.042 (12 June 1902) recommending the Edition for use in all musical education establishments and schools throughout the Monarchy (these were cited in Universal-Edition publications for a number of years).Footnote 14
Nothing is known directly about either the circumstances that led Weinberger to publish in 1897 Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, a work that at the time sat uneasily with his existing catalogue of mainly popular music and stage works, or the extent and nature of their prior connections. However, one might note that in the 1890s Weinberger began to shift his own publishing business towards theatrical works, in particular the operas of Smetana, issuing German-language versions of Dalibor and Der Kuss [Hubička] (1893) and then Das Geheimnis [Tajemství] (1895).Footnote 15 Mahler conducted the first two at Hamburg, in 1896 and 1895 respectively,Footnote 16 and Dalibor again at the Vienna Court Opera in October 1897. Moreover, Gustav Lewy (1823–1901), the music dealer, publisher, and theatrical, concert and artists’ agent – he was Mahler’s for ten years – sold his theatrical copyrights to Weinberger,Footnote 17 so there is a strong possibility that the discussions between Mahler and Weinberger were founded on direct or indirect personal acquaintanceship. As in 1891, the negotiations about publication also coincided with Mahler’s move to a new position; moreover, the public perception that he was a Director ‘in waiting’ grew over the summer, and he was indeed appointed to the post on 8 October. His new role could have given him a useful bargaining position in his discussions with Weinberger, since a ‘Bühnen-Verlag’ might understandably wish to maintain a cordial relationship with the head of the Court Opera;Footnote 18 nevertheless, it is notable that Weinberger accepted the least financially onerous work (from a publisher’s perspective) remaining in Mahler’s portfolio.
The contract between Mahler and the ‘Musikalien-Verhandlung Josef Weinberger in Leipzig und Wien’ is a short and straightforward document of just over 150 words.Footnote 19 In it Mahler assigns in perpetuity all publishing, marketing and author’s rights in the song cycle for all countries and for all publication formats to Weinberger’s firm. No honorarium was payable to Mahler, but every quarter Weinberger was to pay Mahler 50 per cent of the profit – defined as total income less printing costs – from each published edition.Footnote 20 It is unlikely that the work generated much revenue, let alone profit, during its first decade. Mahler performed the cycle only once after publication (the version for voice and piano, in 1907Footnote 21 ), and I have traced only four complete performances of the orchestral version between 1897 and May 1911.Footnote 22 Only after Mahler’s death did both versions begin to enter the standard concert repertoire. But despite this lack of financial reward, the publication of the songs at least partially addressed one of the composer’s concerns outlined by his confidante Natalie Bauer-Lechner at a lunch for Mahler’s admirers and patrons in 1896:
I told how [Mahler] would always drag the heavy trunk of manuscripts around with him on his summer holidays, never daring to let it out of his sight; how he never went off for a day’s excursion without worrying about the dangers of fire, flood or theft and, above all, how difficult it was for him to circulate his works and get them performed because he did not have multiple copies to send out.Footnote 23
The immediate result of Bauer-Lechner’s intervention had been the funding by two Hamburg admirers of Mahler’s music, Wilhelm Berkhan and Hermann Behn, of the publication of the full score of the Second Symphony that appeared in February 1897,Footnote 24 but even so by the autumn of that year Mahler still had no printed full score or parts for his First and Third Symphonies, Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Das klagende Lied, or printed orchestral and chorus parts for the Second Symphony. However, discussions to remedy this situation must have been already underway, and surely they were facilitated by a number of personal and business networks.
Undoubtedly the publication of these large-scale works was a high-risk, high-cost undertaking for any publisher, but one of Mahler’s old friends from his student years, the musicologist, Guido Adler (1855–1941), played a crucial role in helping the composer to secure a significant grant towards the production costs. Like Mahler, Adler grew up in Iglau (Jihlava) in Moravia and received piano lessons from Johannes Brosch, who later taught Mahler, but only after the latter had moved to Vienna did they become friends.Footnote 25 Both studied at different times at the Vienna Conservatory, and by 1875 Adler was already on an academic path that would lead to a significant role in the emergence of musicology as an academic discipline. How the two young men met is unknown, but both were members of the Wiener Akademischer Wagner-Verein, Adler from 1873 to 1885 and Mahler from 1877 to 1879. By 1880 Adler was recommending Mahler to another member, Franz Schaumann, for a choirmaster’s positionFootnote 26 and eight years later, as a Professor at Prague, Adler played an important (and successful) role in bringing Mahler’s name to the attention of the management of the Royal Opera, Budapest.
In 1891 Adler was one of the tertiary-level teachers in Prague, most of whom were Professors at the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, who founded the Gesellschaft zur Förderung deutscher Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur in Böhmen (hereafter GFdWKL). The initial impetus was provided by the creation the previous year of the Böhmische Kaiser Franz Joseph-Akademie der Wissenschaften, Künste und Literatur in Prag, at a time of growing linguistic, cultural and political tensions within the Czech Lands.Footnote 27 Originally the Society consisted of 40 ordinary members, who had to live in Prague or its immediate neighbourhood, and its meetings were held in Prague (§1 of the Statutes of 1891); additional ‘corresponding’ members could be elected by the General Assembly of the Society, acting on recommendations from one of the constituent sections. Initially the Gesellschaft consisted of three Sections: Scholarship (Wissenschaft), Literature and Art. The latter was subdivided in 1896 into sections for Fine Art (bildende Kunst) and Music (Tondichtung), and the number of ordinary members raised from 40 to 45. The Prague book publisher Friedrich Tempsky provided the start-up funding of 4000 Fl., supplemented by other donations, including regular contributions from the Böhmische Sparkasse. However, thanks to the energetic lobbying of one of the Society’s first presidents, the experimental pathologist Philipp Knoll (1841–1900), the Gesellschaft eventually succeeded in obtaining grants from both the Bohemian administration and the central government in Vienna. In 1893 these amounted to 13,000 Fl, compared to the 36,000 Fl received by the Czech Academy, but in the next few years the local and central government funding increased to levels comparable to those of the Kaiser Franz Joseph-Akademie. Most of the available funds were used to support research and creative work by German-speaking scholars, artists, musicians and writers born in Bohemia.
Adler’s close links with the GFdWKL put him in an excellent position to support an application for a subvention towards the printing costs of Mahler’s works, and he set about making the case. By mid-January 1898 he had obtained an estimate of the costs from the Viennese printer Jos. Eberle & Co., had pestered Mahler for a curriculum vitae,Footnote 28 and had proposed that Mahler be elected a corresponding member of the Gesellschaft (received on 23 JanuaryFootnote 29 and adopted at a meeting on 28 January 1898Footnote 30 ) and awarded a subvention of 3000 Fl. towards the cost of publishing his music (received on 24 January and duly approvedFootnote 31 ). Mahler was sent notification of his election and the award of the subvention on 1 February 1898, and on 3 February he replied, thanking the Gesellschaft.Footnote 32
A dated entry in Bauer-Lechner’s memoirsFootnote 33 makes clear that some weeks before the subvention was approved, Mahler felt assured of the publication of his symphonies, and already knew which firm would be involved in their printing:
‘To him that hath shall be given’
New Year’s Eve, 1897
Mahler told me the happy news that, thanks to the efforts of Guido Adler, the scores of both his still unpublished symphonies (the First and Third) as well as the piano reductions and the orchestral parts are to be printed by Eberle in Vienna.
The reference to Adler’s role may simply be related to his involvement with the (as yet un-submitted) application for the subvention, but the context suggests that Mahler may have been indicating that Adler was also instrumental in finding a printer. This inference is not implausible. Since 1893 Adler had been planning and editing the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich, initially published by Artaria and printed by Jos. Eberle & Co., so Adler would certainly have had business contacts with the firm. Moreover, as a Bruckner pupil and member of the Akademischer Wagner-Verein he may well have known that Eberle & Co. had signed a publishing contract with Bruckner in 1892 that provided the elderly composer with a guaranteed annual income and eventually resulted in the publication of scores, parts and piano duet arrangements of his First, Second, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.Footnote 34
Given this context, it is unfortunate that the final contract for the publication of Mahler’s first three symphonies has not come to light, and its loss is all the more acute because in certain respects it continued to play a role after the rights in the symphonies and other early works were transferred to Universal-Edition in 1910. However, some insights into its likely content are provided by the emergence of a relatively early handwritten draft of the document, with pencil annotations and revisions, now in the archives of Doblinger in Vienna.Footnote 35 In addition, this extensive document (it is significantly longer than the Weinberger contract) also reflects significant aspects of the evolution of music printing and publishing in late-nineteenth century Austria.
The Draft Contract
Commentary
The most notable feature of the contract’s preamble is the absence of Jos. Eberle & Co. from the parties named. Eberle (1845–1921) had founded his lithographic printing business c. 1873, and by the late 1880s he was the sole owner of a major printing firm that boasted the most modern and extensive music printing facility in the Dual Monarchy.Footnote 37 In 1894 he sold the business to the Erste Wiener Zeitungs Gesellschaft (hereafter EWZG), another firm with interests in the printing industry, but one founded on a different and more modern business model: a well-capitalized joint stock company with substantial support from Viennese banks, that had been established in 1891 as the owner, printer and publisher of the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, one of the large-circulation daily papers in Vienna. Eberle had been on the board since its foundation and remained to manage his old printing works within the enlarged corporation: the business name Jos. Eberle & Co. was retained as a trading name, especially for the music-related business.Footnote 38 It is this management structure to which Mahler alludes, but fails to fully explain, in an important letter to Hermann Behn, dated 21 January 1898,Footnote 39 which requests that Behn arrange for the transfer of the engraved plates of the full score of the Second Symphony and Behn’s two-piano arrangement of the work from the original engraver, C.G. Röder in Leipzig, to ‘Eberle u Cie’ in Vienna. Both editions had been published ‘In Commission’ by F. Hofmeister in Leipzig, and this arrangement was to be terminated. The plan was that both scores would be reissued alongside the first editions of the First and Third Symphony,Footnote 40 but notably the draft contract does not specifically stipulate that Mahler would supply the necessary plates to EWZG, or that Behn’s arrangement was to be part of the scheme.
That omission may have been an oversight (though a financially significant one), but if not, it raises the issue of the date of this document. The last line of the contract indicates that when it was prepared the final version was meant to be signed in February 1898. Paragraph 4, however, refers only to ‘possible subventions’, suggesting it was drafted (and annotated) before early February when Mahler was informed of the success of Adler’s application. The absence of any reference to the plates for the Second Symphony may indicate a date in the first half of January or earlier. Moreover, the marginal note to §6 [original numbering] refers to an earlier draft – ‘the original contract’ – which may well have been prepared in late 1897. That by that time discussions with EWZG had reached the stage of contractual negotiations is consistent with Mahler’s confident assertions to Bauer-Lechner on 31 December 1897.
It is very unlikely that Josef Eberle was involved in the discussions, not least because by 16 September 1897 he had been replaced as manager of his old printing operation, and at the start of the new year was involved in a bitter dispute with the EWZG Board, culminating in his resignation c. 17 January, and his establishment of a new printing and publishing business. In any case, the music printing side of Eberle’s operation had for some years been managed by his brother-in-law, the composer and conductor Josef Stritzko (1861–1908).Footnote 41 It was Stritzko who had negotiated the contract with Bruckner in 1892, and in 1898 he decided not to follow Eberle, but to remain with EWZG, was rewarded with a Directorship and in later years was Mahler’s point of contact with ‘the newspaper company’.
§ 1. This covers the acquisition of all the publishing rights to Mahler’s first three symphonies, even though EWZG was not a music publisher: Mahler’s letter to Behn acknowledges this situation and reports that the firm would find a suitable publisher, probably Doblinger. This arrangement was adopted for the printing and distribution of the works by Bruckner acquired by Eberle in 1892, for which Doblinger was indeed the publisher ‘on Commission’, but for whatever reason, Mahler’s three symphonies were eventually assigned to Weinberger under a similar agreement, perhaps because the latter already had the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in his catalogue (however see also the notes on § 9 below).
It is probable that § 1 was modified before signature, because although the draft lists only three works by Mahler, between 1898 and 1902 six (including Das klagende Lied, the twelve Wunderhornlieder and the Fourth Symphony) were issued with plate numbers in a single series (albeit with anomalies) running from 1 to 35, and the rights to all six were sold by EWZG (by then renamed – see below) to Universal-Edition in 1910. Most likely, the Fourth Symphony (begun in the summer of 1899) was offered to EWZG under the terms of § 9, but the cantata and the songs were specifically listed in the final version of the contract: their inclusion must have involved further negotiation, which in turn would help to explain why the contract was not signed until August 1898.Footnote 42 However, there is no clue in any of the documents referred to here that explains why, when it was eventually published in 1902, the Fourth Symphony was issued on commission by Doblinger, not Weinberger.
The third sentence of the section reflects the need to recognize the rapidly evolving state of copyright law during this period, both within Austro-Hungary (see above p. 4) and internationally, with the Monarchy’s adoption of bilateral copyright treaties with countries such as Italy (1890), United Kingdom (1893) and Germany (1899). A similar, but less elaborately worded provision was included in Mahler’s contract with C. F. Kahnt for the publication of various Lieder, dated 13 April 1905.Footnote 43
§ 4. The deletion of this paragraph is notable: as a result, the draft contract had no provisions to ensure that the works would be marketed. The only documentation of the business arrangements between EWZG and Weinberger (and subsequently Doblinger) for their distribution to have come to light are letters from Doblinger (B. Herzmansky) (17 June 1910) and Weinberger (23 June 1910) that merely indicate that the works they published were ‘In Commission’;Footnote 44 none for those relating to the editions of study scores and piano duet arrangements issued ‘In die Universal-Edition aufgenommen’ between 1906 and 1910 has been located.
§ 5.Footnote 45 This section details the payment by royalty for the rights, but unlike the earlier Weinberger contract this clause includes advertising among the deductible costs. In the absence here of any statement to the contrary, the contract was apparently not yet conditional on the award of a subvention.Footnote 46 On the other hand Mahler was bound to accept the EWZG estimates of the costs incurred. In his second memorandum to the GFdWKL Adler reported that the estimated printing costs for the full scores, parts and piano arrangement (four hands) of the First and Third Symphonies, and the parts of the Second were 12,000 Fl.Footnote 47 So, allowing for the subsidy, the revenue from sales would have had to generate an income of well over 9000 Fl. before Mahler received any royalty. The retail prices (RP) in Gulden (Fl.) are shown in Table 1, but the wholesale price paid by music sellers would have been about 30–40 per cent less.Footnote 48
Table 1 Retail prices of Weinberger issues of Symphonies Nos. 1–3
No details of the print runs of these first issues are available, but those for the study scores and piano duet arrangements issued by Universal-Edition in 1906–1909 are given in Table 2.Footnote 49
Table 2 Print runs of study scores and piano duet arrangements issued by Universal-Edition, 1906–09
The preparation of each reprint would have involved additional production costs, so it seems unlikely that either party to the contract would make any profit quickly (but see below). Under the provision of the final sentence in the clause, EWZG had to provide Mahler with annual statements, but (as the arrival of a similar statement from Schott’s in 1903 later reminded Mahler) they rarely complied with this provision.Footnote 50
From documents relating to Mahler’s negotiations with Universal-Edition in 1909–10 it is clear that the final version of the EWZG contract adopted a different royalty arrangement for the ‘non-symphonic works’: Mahler received 50 per cent of the gross income (i.e. with no deduction of any costs).Footnote 51
§6. The deletion of this paragraph may simply have been a pragmatic reflection of the difficulty at that stage in Mahler’s publishing career of estimating and agreeing on an equitable amount to be paid for a full and final buy-out of the rights of his heirs.
§ 7. This sought to exploit the establishment, in 1895, of the legal framework for the collection of performance royalties for non-theatrical works in Austria: the Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger had held its first meeting on 17 October 1897. Mahler remained a member until 1903, when, under the influence of Richard Strauss, he resigned from the Gesellschaft and joined the Berlin-based Genossenschaft deutscher Tonsetzer. Josef Stritzko had agreed to Mahler’s resignation from the Vienna society, but was very concerned that the Genossenschaft would impose high performance fees (250–400 Mk) that would discourage the performance of the works owned by EWZG.Footnote 52
§ 9. The basic provisions of this section must have been retained in the final version of the contract because Mahler recalled it when he began correspondence about the rights to his Fifth Symphony with C. F. Peters in late July 1903.Footnote 53 Although he had probably not fully complied with the procedure specified in the contract, he was soon able to report to Bruno Walter: ‘Luckily I have just reached an amicable settlement with my publisher and can now dispose of my works freely!’Footnote 54 Such a readiness to abandon the first-refusal provision of the contract may be evidence of a shift in the enthusiasm of EWZG for its continuing role as both Bruckner’s and Mahler’s publisher. This interpretation is reinforced by evidence of an offer made in 1906 – but not taken up – to sell the rights to Bruckner’s symphonies and Mahler’s first four to C. F. Peters for 160,000 Marks.Footnote 55
Postscript
Early in 1908 Emil Hertzka replaced Arthur Fadüm as the managing director of Universal-Edition,Footnote 56 and in dealing with the financial crisis he inherited, began to shift the publishing activity of the firm decisively towards new music. One result, revealed by the Universal-Edition Verlagsbuch, was that in the summer of that year a new batch of Mahler scores owned by Viennese companies was to be ‘In die Universal-Edition aufgenommen’ (see Table 3). As with the early publications, Universal-Edition was planning to issue the works in formats that would appeal to the widest market – voice and piano scores – and ignored the orchestral scores and parts.Footnote 57
Table 3 First print orders for Universal-Edition Nos. 1690–1692, 1694. From the Universal-Edition Verlagsbuch I
Of more far-reaching importance was the approach made to Mahler the following summer about the possibility of Universal acquiring the rights to his works owned by Waldheim-Eberle: the composer was clearly not averse to the proposal, and on 7 June 1909 he signed a document agreeing in principle to such a transfer ‘providing that all my guaranteed rights remain with me’.Footnote 58 At about the same time discussions began concerning the publication by Universal-Edition of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony ahead of the first performances planned for the following year; there seems to have been no further discussion of the transfer of the earlier works to Universal-Edition until July 1910, when Hertzka visited Mahler at his summer retreat at Toblach, as reported by Alma Mahler:
Broadly speaking, Alma Mahler’s third-hand summary of the meeting is plausible,Footnote 60 despite some potential anomalies, and the essence is confirmed by the contractual letter of 11 August (see below). Though the reported discussion (and Mahler’s subsequent letter of agreement) concerned only the first four symphonies, this limitation presumably reflected the limited interest in and income-generating power of Das klagende Lied and the Wunderhornlieder. However, it appears that Hertzka was being disingenuous. The 50,000 Kr. figure (i.e. the equivalent of 25,000 Fl.) given for the production costs would only be consistent with the 1897 estimate of 12,000 Kr. for the production costs for the first three symphonies if the GFDKWL subsidy for Symphonies Nos. 1–3 was omitted from the calculation, and the comparison made on the basis of numbers of engraved plates involved in all six works covered by the 1898 contract. For the works covered by the original estimate 1653 plates were engraved in 1898–99; thereafter some new plates were required for the study score editions of the first three symphonies (1905–06) and for three other works not included in the 1898 estimate (see Table 4).Footnote 61
Table 4 Numbers of plates engraved for the Mahler works owned by EWZG
But, as noted above, Mahler had never been liable for the repayment of the production costs of the publication of Das klagende Lied or the Wunderhornlieder, so to include them in the calculations was of dubious validity. Moreover, the acquisition by Universal-Edition of the works by Bruckner had already been agreed in principal by an exchange of letters on or about 21 June 1910, under the terms of which the rights and engraved plates to the works by both Bruckner and Mahler would be sold by the Druckerei- und Verlags-Aktiengesellschaft vorm. R. v. Waldheim, Jos. Eberle & Co. (the name adopted by EWZG from 1906Footnote 62 ) to Universal-Edition for 120,000 Kr., to be paid in 12 annual instalments of 10,000 Kr.Footnote 63 Hertzka’s strategy was to acquire rights to works that fitted in well with his plans for a reform of the Universal-Edition catalogue, but at minimal cost, with payment spread over more than a decade and subsidized by Mahler’s willingness to forego a further 50,000 Kr of royalties from his first four symphonies: the head of Universal-Edition was, after all, ‘well-known as a specialist in the field of publishing’!
Mahler signed the contractual letter to Universal-Edition, outlining their agreement over the transfer of rights on 11 August 1910.Footnote 64 It is mostly concerned with Symphonies Nos. 1–4 and in particular deals with how the 50,000 Kr. were to be repaid--from income from the symphonies only:
For accounting purposes, a single unified account would be maintained for the four works together. Otherwise Mahler notes that Universal-Edition had taken over the 1898 publication contract and that the accounting arrangements for the non-symphonic works would be continued as specified there. However, since the purpose of this letter was to record the agreed modifications to the terms of original 1898 contract, one other provision is notable. On 15 July 1910 Mahler wrote a letter to Freund to ask for two changes to a draft letter of contract (which has not come to light) between himself and Universal-Edition, but at the end raised the issue of the first-refusal clause (i.e. § 9 of the unrevised draft) of the EWZG contract:Footnote
But the obligation the clause placed him under clearly rankled, and on the same day he sent a postcard to Freund:
Mahler himself had raisedFootnote the matter with Hertzka two days later,Footnote 67 but from the subsequent contractual letter of agreement it would appear that he had to be content with an assurance:
After Footnote his departure from Vienna Mahler’s contacts with Waldheim-Eberle were probably very limited, not least because in 1907 his main contact within the firm, Josef Stritzko, had been dismissed after financial irregularities were uncovered, and died the following year. The consequential management changes seem to have done nothing to improve the diligence of their accounting, as is clear from Mahler’s penultimate letter to mention the company, written to Emil Freund from New York on 3 February 1910: ‘Please give the newspaper company a sharp prod, since it has for years been neglecting its contractual obligation to send me a statement.’Footnote 69 However, notwithstanding the shortcomings of Waldheim-Eberle’s accounting department,Footnote 70 the draft contract offered to Mahler in 1898 by EWZG, even though it offered him neither an honorarium for the rights, nor a regular retainer as did the earlier contract offered to Bruckner by Jos. Eberle, was not ungenerous, and did at least make his early symphonies more easily available for performance. Indeed, when viewed in the context of the realities of music publishing in the late nineteenth century it is apparent that both contracts imply levels of investment and a tacit acceptance of a high commercial risk that verge on corporate patronage. The symphony was an ambiguous genre in a German music publisher’s catalogue: although it stood at the top of any hierarchy of instrumental genres based on cultural prestige, it was highly problematic from a commercial perspective. The production costs of full scores and parts were high, but sales were very modest: only arrangements (more costs) and, after c. 1900, study scores, had any potential for making a profit.Footnote 71 The inclusion of such works in the catalogues of publishers such as Schott, Breitkopf & Härtel, Kistner, Kahnt and Peters could be construed as conferring prestige on their businesses, and were financed initially by internal cross-subsidization.
In Austria, such motivations and mechanisms, if they operated at all, probably did so differently. There were no music publishers on the scale of the large German houses, and with few exceptions the firms’ catalogues consisted mainly of popular rather than serious music (to use contemporary terms), in which modern symphonies were not so much prestigious items as anomalies. With smaller capital reserves, Viennese publishers were less able to cross-subsidize the publication of symphonies; strikingly, of the 14 new symphonies published in Vienna between 1880 and 1899, at the very least four by Bruckner and all three by Mahler were partially or entirely funded by external subsidies.Footnote 72 However, a further four by BrucknerFootnote 73 and, in 1901, Mahler’s Fourth, were published with no such external subsidy, but in these cases the initial capital investment was supplied not by a publisher, but by their printer, Jos. Eberle and EWZG respectively. It seems unlikely that these investments were motivated by a desire to mould a reputation or brand awareness among consumers of art music, since the publications were never publicly associated with the printing company, and all five works were issued under the imprint of Doblinger. But they can be understood in the context of music printing in Vienna: by the late 1880s Eberle was the largest of the modest number of music printers in Austria, but was involved mostly in the origination of relatively small-scale and graphically straightforward publications. The contracts with Bruckner and Mahler offered the firm opportunities to demonstrate its engravers’ and printers’ ability to match major German music printers in supplying graphically challenging full scores of extended works to Austrian publishers. By the late 1890s these opportunities were timely because plans were underway to establish a new publishing house, Universal-Edition, that was in part designed to challenge the hegemony of German publishers and to repatriate the publication of Austrian music. A crucial element in these plans was the existence of an Austrian music printer with the expertise and capacity to fulfil the expected orders, a role that EWZG/Waldheim-Eberle would continue to play for many years. By 1910, when Hertzka was negotiating the acquisition of the rights to works by Bruckner and Mahler acquired by Eberle and EWZG, Mahler was no longer a recipient of patronage, had sold the rights to his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies for the exceptionally high fees of 20,000 Kr and 30,000 Kr respectively,Footnote 74 and had increased his earning power as a conductor substantially during his years in the USA, so he could perhaps afford to be generous. Hertzka no doubt relied on these changed circumstances, and thus Mahler himself became a patron.
