Schlesinger, Adolph Martin
Schlesinger, Moritz, Maurice, Adolph, *3 October 1798 Berlin, †25 February 1871 Baden-Baden, German music publisher, eldest son of Adolph Martin. He worked in his father’s publishing house until he left for Paris in 1819, where he became a volunteer in the Bossange Père bookstore, then became independent and opened a music shop. In 1821, he published the first musical prints (piano reductions of W.A. Mozart’s operas). In the 1920s, he published piano works by L. van Beethoven, J.N. Hummel, I. Moscheles, C.M. von Weber and F. Chopin (approx. 40 works, most of them first editions). In 1826, the company burned down and many autographs were destroyed (including L. van Beethoven’s letters). In 1829, he began publishing all of Beethoven’s piano works, and later his string trios and quartets. After 1830, M. Schlesinger published piano works by, among others, S. Heller, J. Lanner, J. Strauss (father), S. Thalberg and early works by F. Mendelssohn and F. Liszt. He published the first editions of H. Berlioz’s works (Huit scènes de Faust 1829, Requiem 1838, Grande symfonie funèbre et triomphale 1843, Symphonie fantastique 1845). He published at least 25 scores and 50 piano reductions of operas (1st editions: E.N. Méhul’s Valentine de Milan, F. Halévy’s The Jewess, G. Meyerbeer’s The Huguenots and Robert the Devil). In total, he published approximately 4,500 items. He was not interested in the works of R. Wagner, but in 1840–42, he entrusted him with the preparation of piano reductions of operas La favorite by G. Donizetti and Le postillon de Lonjumeau by A. Adam. From 1834, he published “Gazette musicale de Paris,” which in 1835 was combined with “Revue musicale” and was published until 1880 as “Revue et gazette de la vie musicale en France.” In 1839, the only surviving daguerreotype of F. Chopin was made in the Schlesinger publishing house. In 1846, the company was bought by L. Brandus, and M. Schlesinger returned to Germany after a few years. M. Schlesinger was an imaginative man, violent in behaviour, inflexible in business and involved in numerous conflicts in the publishing environment. This led to him being portrayed by G. Flaubert in the character of Jacques Arnoux in the novel L’éducation sentimentale (1849).
Literature: Adolph Martin Schlesinger, Robert Lienau. Berlin 1810–1960. 150 Jahre Musikuerlag, ed. R. Elvers, Berlin 1960; A. Randier-Glenisson Maurice Schlesinger, éditeur de musique et fondateur de la “Gazette Musicale de Paris”, 1834–1846, “Fontes Artis Musicae” No. 38, 1991.