Breitkopf & Härtel is the oldest existing music publisher in the world. Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf began publishing in 1719 in Leipzig and the company continues today. This stampless cover to Breitkopf & Härtel from 1845 is a prize in my collection. While I traditionally collect music stamps, this was a piece of musical ephemera that I could not pass up.
The Company
Originally, Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf was a publisher of general printed material. Among his first successes was a 1723 printing of the Hebrew Bible. It is a bit ironic that both the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and the publisher Breitkopf, were both in Leipzig at the same time, but never did business together. Bach did not even try to publish many of his own works during his lifetime. At that time, Breitkopf was not in the music business. It was only under the leadership of Bernhard Breitkopf’s son, Johann Gottlob Immanuel, that the firm began to concentrate on music publishing. Johann would revolutionize music printing when he introduced the use of movable types to print musical notation in 1754.
However, Breitkopf was still very important to disseminating the works of J. S. Bach. In the 1780s, Breitkopf was the publisher for Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, who was also dissatisfied with an earlier publication of his father’s four-part chorales. C.P.E. approached Breitkopf about the possibility of a new edition of his father’s chorales and the music publisher gladly took on the project. From that point forward, Breitkopf became associated with Bach’s music. They went on to publish many classical works by the most important composers of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
Financial difficulties led to Johann Gottlob Breitkopf selling the company to Gottfried Christoph Härtel in 1796. He added his name to make the company Breitkopf & Härtel, which remains the name to this day.
The Cover
The cover that I was able to acquire in the fall of 2020 is a fairly simple stampless cover. It is essentially a handmade envelope, in which, presumably there would have been placed a note or letter of some sort. The bold script across the center of the cover with the name of the music publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, dominates the piece. In the same script, in the lower right hand corner, is the name of the city of Leipzig where the publishers are located.
In the upper right hand corner is the postmark. It reveals that the sender was in the city of Posen, then the capital of the Grand Duchy of Posen within Prussia. The city is now Poznań, Poland. In addition, there are a few other words on the cover in the same handwriting, as well as some marks (presumably by later owners) in a red pencil that I have yet to decipher.
Thanks to a helpful philatelist on twitter, I was able to learn more about the postmark. This source explains how the numbers in the center: 17 over a 5, reveals the date of May 17th. Further, the numbers 11-12 are for the time of day the letter was mailed. It is amazing to me that cities had postmarks designating hours of the day!
Finally, there is writing on the inside flap. It looks to be old script, but whether it is from the original writer is unknown. The ink looks similar, and the “P” of Posen looks similar in script to the “B” of Breitkopf on the front. Whether original or not, on the inside flap the year of 1845 is written. It appears above the text “17 Mai,” or May 17 in German, corroborating the postmark on the front.
