Music Publishing by Subscription in 1820s France: A Preliminary Study

Subscription lists in six scores published in France in the 1820s open a window onto publishing and distribution practices of that era. The publishers are J. Frey of Paris, with examples of subscription lists from full scores in his complete sets of operas by Mozart and Grétry; Maurice Schlesinger, also of Paris, with a vocal score of Mozart’s Requiem; and Bohem of Lille, with a vocal score of Zémire et Azor by Louis Spohr. The subscription lists contain information about the types of subscribers: male/female, musicians/nonmusicians, and Parisians/provincials/foreigners. These examples from nineteenth-century France suggest that funding the publishing of scores through subscription had become a less viable business model than had been the case in the eighteenth century.