The proliferation of unauthorised arrangements was of concern to composers and publishers alike c.1800. The chapter considers this phenomenon, which was central to the creation and reception of arrangements. Publishing practices in Vienna are compared to other centers, taking account of the lines of national and international dissemination that Beethoven’s publishers employed. The absence of copyright law at this time is considered: only after Beethoven’s life time does one find the transference of ownership from publisher to composer, which severely reduced the liberties arrangers could take with their source materials, as well as the ability to disseminate any kind of copies legally. A case study is made of Karl (Carl, Charles) Zulehner (ca. 1770–1841), composer, publisher, copyist, and arranger. He was notorious for publishing several masses wrongly attributed to Mozart and for unauthorized publications of Beethoven’s music. These underhand dealings need not blind us to his talents as an arranger. Besides his string quartet arrangement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, Op. 21 (Simrock, 1828), which serves as a case study in this chapter.

The boom in arrangements in the early nineteenth century was partly a function of the enthusiasm of the publishers themselves, who recognised their sales potential, especially that of small-scale arrangements of large-scale works by increasingly well-known composers. But while publishers capitalised on the popularity of arrangements, they also helped fuel that popularity by making otherwise relatively inaccessible works readily available in comparably cheap editions, in this way helping with canon formation. This chapter studies four important publishers of early nineteenth-century arrangements, from Bonn (Simrock), Leipzig (Breitkopf and Härtel), and London (Lavenu and Monzani and Hill), considering the types of arrangements that they made or commissioned, how the arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies they published fit into the market, and how they functioned in canon formation. Studying these publishers’ catalogues reveals the popularity of arrangements for varied chamber ensembles, alongside the highly popular piano transcriptions. Indeed, arrangements for chamber ensembles make up a substantial portion of published chamber music at this point.

Throughout his lifetime, Brahms accompanied dozens of singers in a variety of settings, ranging from huge public halls to his friends’ homes, and conducted many others in choirs. Some of those working relationships were one-offs, arising from the widespread practice of including a set of piano-accompanied songs within most concerts and the expediency and cost-effectiveness of using local talent. Others were deep, enduring partnerships; the timbres and interpretative approaches of those singers are surely ingrained in his vocal music. Overall, Brahms’s singers were generally not part of the international operatic elite associated with Verdi, Bizet and Massenet. Figures like Julius Stockhausen (1826–1906) and Raimund von Zur-Mühlen (1854–1931)were almost exclusively concert singers and, later on, teachers. Most hailed from German-speaking territories, reflecting Brahms’s own concert career.

Since Brahms only had a salaried position for brief periods (as choral director in Detmold, 1857–9, director of the Vienna Singakademie 1863–4 and artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde 1871–5), he had to support himself primarily by other means. Apart from concert fees, he relied on the honoraria his publishers paid him and did not receive royalties. Indeed, his relationships with his publishers are a means of tracing his stratospheric career trajectory. As a young man, Brahms was forced to tout his works to publishers and enter into protracted and wearying negotiations, which jarred against his artistic principles. In later years, he was a universally courted composer who could determine the conditions under which his work would be published. In fact, after 1869, it was virtually only one publisher, Fritz Simrock, who issued all of Brahms’s new works.