Geoffrey Hawkes also sold shares in the company to fund his philandering, to the point that the company was forced to go public to raise cash. However, he died suddenly on 8 September 1950, and representation of his faction was taken over by his flamboyant but unreliable brother Geoffrey who spent much of the company's money on ventures such as the manufacture of mouth organs and ovens, which failed. Hawkes secretly wanted to buy out the music publishing side of the business and manage it from New York, leaving Boosey in London with the musical instrument business which Hawkes found dull. It was discovered that Hawkes had borrowed capital of £100,000 during the war without the permission of the exchange control authorities, and Boosey was forced to clear up the situation at great personal cost. However, from the late 1940s, strains had begun to appear in the relationship between Leslie Boosey and Ralph Hawkes, and this led to factions supporting each man forming in the company. Stein was instrumental in founding the modern-music journal Tempo in 1939, which began as Boosey & Hawkes' own newsletter but later became a more independent publication.īy 1950, Boosey & Hawkes was a leading international music company with an extensive catalogue of serious composers and offices in Bonn, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Toronto and Sydney. Another significant figure from Vienna who occupied an editorial role was composer Arnold Schoenberg's pupil Erwin Stein, and after the war the composer Leopold Spinner, a pupil of Anton Webern, was also on the editorial staff. One such employee in particular, Ernst Roth, facilitated the signing of Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky, and was instrumental in the production of Strauss's Vier letzte Lieder ( Four Last Songs) (1948 premièred 1950) and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (premièred 1951). Boosey & Hawkes seized the opportunity to sign up composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and also rescued Universal's Jewish staff, who later played an important role in developing the company.
The 1938 Anschlussâthe annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regimeâled to the Nazification of Viennese publishing house Universal Edition.