Adolf Martin Schlesinger

Adolf Martin Schlesinger (born Sülz, Silesia, 4 October, 1769, died Berlin, 11 October, 1838) was a German music publisher whose firm became one of the most influential in Berlin in the early nineteenth century.

Schlesinger was Jewish, and was born Aaron Moses Schlesinger. He began in the book business in Berlin in 1795, and founded a music publishing house there, the Schlesinger'sche Buchhandlung, in 1810. The firm expanded over the next decade to include leading composers such as Carl Maria von Weber, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Felix Mendelssohn. It also published military music for the Prussian state. Schlesinger's ongoing lobbying on the issue of musical copyright was a major factor in the introduction of the influential Prussian copyright law of 1830. [Friedemann Kawohl: "Urheberrecht der Musik in Preußen: 1820 - 1840" (Tutzing, 2002).]

In 1824 Schlesinger launched a music magazine, the "Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung", with Adolf Bernhard Marx as editor. On Marx's advice, he undertook the first publication of J. S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion after Mendelssohn's pioneering revival of the work (from manuscript sources) in 1829.

His Jewish origins led to slighting references about him by some other publishers and contemporary composers. Schlesinger was characterised by Beethoven in his correspondence as 'a beach-peddler and rag-and-bone Jew' [Letter to Anton Diabelli, 1823. Anderson, "Letters of Beethoven", 1961, p. 1047.] ; and Beethoven complained in a letter to the publisher Peters in 1826 that 'Schlesinger [..] has paid me a dirty Jewish trick' [Anderson, op. cit., p. 952] . Peters had previously asked Beethoven not to offer Schlesinger his Missa Solemnis, because 'a Christian Mass composed by Beethoven cannot come into the hands of a Jew, and especially such a Jew.' [Theodore Albrecht, "Letters to Beethoven", 1996, vol. 2, p. 212. ] Despite these comments, Beethoven was perfectly happy for Schlesinger to publish, subsequently, his late quartets and sonatas.

Schlesinger's son Moritz Adolf (Maurice) Schlesinger later started a branch of the firm in Paris, and another son, Heinrich, took over the Berlin branch and sold it to Robert Lienau in 1864.

The Paris firm became a leader of musical taste, publishing the music of Chopin, Liszt, and Meyerbeer among others. It also published the principal Paris musical magazine, the "Revue et gazette musicale". The composer Richard Wagner worked for Maurice Schlesinger in Paris in 1840-41, turning out hack arrangements of opera excerpts. Wagner's autobiography pointedly refers to Maurice Schlesinger's Jewish origins. [See, e.g. Wagner , "My Life", 1992 , p. 208]

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