Hansen

early decorative cover (1888)

early conventional cover (1893)

cover (1900-1910)

typical cover with the Viking character (1919)

History

Hansen of Copenhagen, Denmark has been the major publisher of Scandinavian music. Founded in 1853 by Jens Wilhelm Hansen. Hansen's two sons Jonas (1850-1919) and Alfred (1854-1923) joined the firm in 1874, the year before acquisition of the Copenhagen publisher C. E. Horneman.

The period 1875-1914 saw vigorous growth: works by Danish composers like Niels Gade and J. P. E. Hartmann and the Norwegian Christian Sinding were added in this period, and there were several acquisitions: C.C. Lose (1872), Horneman & Erslev (1875), Carl Warmuth (Oslo, 1908) and Nordisk (1910). Notable Scandinavian composers added in the 20th century include Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Emil Hartmann, Wilhelm Stenhammar, and Selim Palmgren.

Hansen opened branches in Leipzig (1887-1940), New York (ca.1974) and subsidiaries included Norsk (Oslo, from 1908), Nordiska (Stockholm, from 1915), Wilhelmiana (Frankfurt, from 1951), and J. & W. Chester (London, from 1957). The Hansen group was absorbed by Music Sales in late 1980s, then in 2018 Music Sales sold its printed music division to Hal Leonard.

Imprints

Incomplete list

• Wilhelm Hansen
• Nordiska Musikforlaget (from 1915)
• A.B. Nordiska Musikförlaget

Hansen plates.

Plate Numbers

As with many publishers, Hansen more often provided scores with edition numbers than with plates in the 20th century (or at least both: so Henk Badings' 4th piano sonata has plate 26533 and is "Wilhelm Hansen edition, nr. 3816", the latter bit of information more often provided- in library catalogs anyway? - than the former...) Imprints use other plates (Nordiska Musikforlaget kept N M S even after purchase by Hansen, for example.)

IMSLP Entries

Sources

• Rapoport, Paul. The Compositions of Vagn Holmboe. Hansen, 1996. ISBN 87 598 0813 6. (Contains - unusually - along with an attempt at a complete-up-to-1996 worklist, publishers, plate numbers and edition numbers for the first publications where known of each composition.)
• Hofmeister-Verlag. Hofmeisters Monatsberichte.
• Worldcat.org (to a point...)

Authority control

• VIAF (Edition Wilhelm Hansen AS)

Further notes

• By some point (certainly by 1961), some works were published with only edition numbers, not plates (e.g. the Krenek string trio Op.118, published with, it seems, Edition No.4063a. This was a co-production/co-issue with Frankfurt's M. Wilhelmiana-Musikverlag, whose edition number (or plate?) that might be, so until someone (this editor?) has looked at the parts, this remark is tentative. I see from above that Wilhelmiana was in any case a subsidiary, not an independent operation.)