Music: Labor of Love

Before Richard Leo Simon and M. (for Max) Lincoln Schuster formed a publishing firm in Manhattan a dozen years ago, nervous young Simon had been a salesman for Aeolian pianos, shrewd young Schuster a newshawk who played the violin for fun. Though they never play together, Publishers Simon & Schuster are both still impassioned amateurs of music. Lately it became evident that the duet, whose profitable puzzle-&-game volumes set the book-publishing business by its ears, was venturing into the stodgy realm of music publishing.

Last November “Essandess,” as Simon & Schuster sign their chirrupy advertisements, came out with the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas newly edited by Pianist Artur Schnabel. Last January the firm hired a music editor, German-born Emil Hilb, who conducted the Denver Philharmonic in 1932-33. Last week Simon & Schuster published “Four Operatic Masterpieces”*—excerpts from Carmen, Faust, Tannhduser, II Trovatore, transcribed for players of average ability by Pianist Leopold Godowsky. Handsomely illustrated and containing notes on opera plots and composers, the venture, if it clears expenses, will belie Simon & Schuster’s assertion that music publishing is for them no more than a labor of love.

*75¢ each.