Chester, John and his son William, English music publishers. They founded a company in 1860 or 1861 in Brighton. In 1915, O.M. Kling bought it (the son of Breitkopf & Härtel representative in England), and in 1918 moved its headquarters to London).
Initially, Chester had an exclusive right to sell publications of contemporary French and Russian music in England. After 1918, the company quickly achieved a high editorial level; it was mainly interested in contemporary music, publishing works by I. Stravinsky, M. de Falla, G.F. Malipiero, F. Poulenc, S. Palmgren, E. Goossens and J. Ireland. In 1920 it became a joint stock company. Since the management of R.D. Gibson (1938–70), particular emphasis was placed on English music. In 1957, the Hansen company from Copenhagen bought a significant part of the shares. In later years, publishing houses operating in England and Denmark were merged under the name J & W Chester/Edition W. Hansen. In 1915–40, the monthly “Chesterian” was published, and from 1947 to 1961 it was published as a quarterly. In 1988, J & W Chester became part of the Wise Music Group (from 2020 The Music Sales Group), becoming one of the leading music publishers operating in the field of contemporary music and music education. The company’s catalogue is now international and largely includes works by contemporary composers, including L. Berkeley, M. Constant, A. Hopkins, W. Lutosławski, P. Maxwell Davies, Ph. Glass, J. Tavener, J. Weir, K. Saariaho, E.-P. Salonen, H. W. Henze and J. Talbot.
