The Music Trades (magazine)

The Music Trades was founded in 1890 by John Christian Freund (1848–1924) and Milton Weil (1871–1935). Eight years later, they founded Musical America, the oldest American magazine on classical music.[2][3]

Freund, who matriculated in 1868 at Exeter College, Oxford, but left after three years without a degree, had first been a playwright and actor.[4] He emigrated to New York in 1871.[5] In 1875, he founded The Music Trade Review,[lower-alpha 2] a fortnightly publication that he later renamed The Musical and Dramatic Times and Music Trade Review. The publication ran for about two years. In 1878, Freund founded the Musical Times, soon renamed the Musical and Dramatic Times. On January 7, 1882, Freund launched a weekly magazine, Music: A Review,[lower-roman 1] which contained an insert called The Music Trade. Sometime on or before July 8, 1882, Freund changed the magazine's name to Music and Drama, supplemented by Freund's Daily Music and Drama. Music and Drama evolved into The Music Trades.[4]

In 1884, Freund and John Travis Quigg (1839–1893) co-founded The American Musician, which during its seven-year run became the official publication of the National League of Musicians union, the forerunner of the American Federation of Musicians.[6][7] Before founding the American Musician, Henry Cood Watson (1818–1875) began in 1864 the publication Watson's Art Journal, devoted to music criticism and trade. Watson died in 1875 and his Journal was taken over by his pupil, William M. Thoms, who improved it, renamed it American Art Journal, edited it until his retirement in 1906, then, upon his retirement, merged it with the American Musician.[8][9]

Around 1895, Freund's younger brother, Harry Edward Freund (1863–1950), was editor of Musical Weekly,[10][11] which continued as a weekly with a new name, beginning January 1896, as The Musical Age. The publication was aimed at piano dealers.

Milton Weil, 1926

Freund and Weil were exponents of American classical music, although Freund had become a naturalized United States citizen on November 2, 1903. Their publications Musical America and The Music Trades complemented each other, and gave their editors a unique view of the growth of classical music in America and its international rank, as an art form and in commerce. Both publications reached an international readership. Freund and Weil held sway as impresarios and movement leaders of American classical music. Their publications flourished during the early 1900s — on a new wave of American composers, including those of the Second New England School — joined by foreign composers who emigrated to America in a flood of nearly 25 million Europeans after 1880. In commerce, 1875 to 1932 represented a golden age of piano making — nearly 364,545 were sold at the peak in 1909, according to the National Piano Manufacturers Association,[12] notably in New York City and Chicago.

Freund and Weil's publications gave them broad access in the field of music. They served as bridges between the art and the money, connecting artists, organizations, commerce, and public policy. The spectrum that both publications collectively chronicled gave Freund and Weil a strong platform to serve as advocates, opinion leaders, conciliators, counselors, arbiters, and ambassadors for music and the music trades in America. As an example, Freund and Weil helped found the National Music Managers Association (for national managers) and the National Concert Managers' Association (for local managers), aimed at improving cooperation between the two for the benefit of musicians.[13][lower-alpha 3] In 1918, Freund and Weil helped found the Musical Alliance of the United States,[14][15] an organization that endures today. Weil served as founding secretary-treasurer, while Freund, the founding president, called upon the group to organize "all workers in the field, from the man at the bench in a piano factory to the conductor of the great symphony."[16]

Music Trades staff in 1926

On June 13, 1927, three years after Freund died, Weil put The Music Trades and Musical America up for sale.

One bid came from John Francis Majeski, Sr. (1892–1971), who in 1910 had joined the staff of Musical America and become Weil's assistant. Majeski offered a quarter-million dollars for the pair, but was outbid by a new syndicate that also acquired four other publications (The American Architect, The Barbers' Journal, Beauty Culture, and Perfumers' Journal[17]) and consolidated them all into a new company called Trade Publications, Inc.

The deal was handled by investment bankers Schluter & Company and Shields & Company, which issued $1,100,000 (equivalent to $18,531,418 in 2022) in preferred and common stock.[18] Shields & Company and Nixon & Company, of Philadelphia, also made a public offering of ten-year 6+1⁄2 percent gold bonds of Trade Publications, that carried warrants to purchase common stock at a price that closely corresponded with the value of the stock.[17]

Trade Publication's officers included Walter Crawford Howey (1882–1954), president; Verne Hardin Porter (1888–1942), vice president and secretary; and Edwin John Rosencrans (1870–1935), treasurer. The board of directors included these three plus G. Murray Hulbert, John Zollikoffer Lowe, Jr. (1884–1951), and Joseph Urban. Howey and Porter had been executives of the Hearst Corporation.[18] Rosencrans, a civil engineer, was the managing editor of The American Architect; years earlier, he and architect John F. Jackson (1867–1948) had a partnership that designed more than 70 YMCAs.[19][20] Lowe, a lawyer, had been a partner in a law firm with Samuel Seabury.

Howey, who had been the founding managing editor of the New York Daily Mirror, left Trade Publications on August 1, 1928, to retake his old job.[21]

The following year, Trade Publications filed for bankruptcy. The Irving Trust Co. was appointed receiver for the company, which had liabilities of $716,839 (equivalent to $12,216,826 in 2022) and assets of $59,511.

On July 19, 1929, bankruptcy referee John Logan Lyttle (1879–1930) oversaw the auction of the magazines. Majeski, Weil's former assistant, bought four of the six for $45,200: Musical America, The Music Trades, The Barbers' Journal, and Beauty Culture.[22] About $11,000 of the total went for Musical America and The Music Trades, the publications for which Majeski had offered a quarter-million dollars three years earlier. The acquisition included the publications' names, a collection of back issues, and a few months of office space in the Steinway Building.[23]

A few months before the bankruptcy auction, Weil was said to have sold his interest in Trade Publications for $200,000 (equivalent to $3,408,527 in 2022) in preferred stock. He and his wife—Henrietta Lander (née Rich; 1874–1935)[24]—then moved to Paris with $5,000. Weil's father, Jacob A. Weil (1835–1913), was a Paris-born American and his mother, Dina (née Lilienthal; born 1843), was a German-born American.

Hotel Scribe, Paris, 2011

The bankruptcy sale wiped out Weil's stake, built up over a lifetime. Distraught over the loss of their fortune during the pre-Crash of 1929, then the Crash, and their subsequent inability to recover during the Great Depression, Milton and Henrietta Weil carried out a double suicide pact on May 22, 1935, leaving a note and taking the barbiturate Veronal in their room of the Hotel Scribe in the Opera District of Paris.[25] Henrietta died the next morning, May 23, 7:40 am at the American Hospital;[26] Milton died 23 hours and 25 minutes later, May 24, 7:05 am, at the same hospital.[27] They are buried next to each other at the New Cemetery of Neuilly-sur-Seine.[28]

John F. Majeski, Sr., 1926

On August 22, 1929, some five weeks after Majeski acquired the publications at bankruptcy auction, he formed three holding companies: The Music Trades Corporation, for The Music Trades; The Musical America Corporation, for Musical America, and Beauty Culture Publishing Corporation, for Barbers Journal and Beauty Culture.[29]

In 1959, Majeski sold Musical America—which would merge with High Fidelity in 1964—but retained his interest in The Musical Trades, and served as its publisher until his death in 1971. The publisher's job was taken over by his son, John Francis Majeski, Jr. (1921–2011), who was already the magazine's editor.[30][31][32] The younger Majeski served as editor until 1982 and publisher until 1985.[23]

In 2005, he received the American Music Conference Lifetime Achievement Award for his achievements, contribution to music, and long tenure as editor of The Music Trades.[33][34]