Background
Arthur Paul was born on April 1, 1846 at Altona, Germany. Little is known about either his parents or his early life.
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Arthur Paul Schmidt
Edit ProfileEducation
There is no information about his education.
Career
Arthur Paul Schmidt emigrated to the United States at age nineteen, arriving in New York City on 16 January 1866. After working for ten years as a clerk in the music store of G. D. Russell & Company in Boston, in October 1876 he began a prosperous and valuable career as a publisher and importer of music (chiefly at first as agent of the well-known Litolff edition), with branches later at Leipzig and New York. The publications listed in the catalogue in 1932 reached the number of nearly fifteen thousand.
In January 1916 he transferred the business to Henry R. Austin, Harry B. Crosby, and Florence J. Emery as partners in the Arthur P. Schmidt Company.
Most important, he was the first who began the publication of works in larger forms (orchestral scores and parts, for example) that had no possibility of being commercially successful. The first score of an important composition of the kind in the United States was the second symphony, "Im Fruhling, " of John Knowles Paine, published in 1880 by subscription. For the large number of such works that followed in the form of orchestral and chamber music Schmidt himself was financially responsible, a remarkable undertaking when the cost of publishing such works is considered.
He died in 1921.
Achievements
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Arthur Paul Schmidt was a pioneer in the publication of works in larger forms. During forty years of his career he published among others the larger works of such composers as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, Arthur Bird, George W. Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Henry Hadley, Edward MacDowell, and Sigismond Stojowski. He thus gave encouragement to composers, often gave new writers their first opportunity and brought to better notice others who were already somewhat known.
Views
As a German who had come to the United States and found success, Schmidt wished (as he sometimes said) to repay the country in some way for his good fortune.
Personality
Generous in all ways and not satisfied to restrict himself to the commercial and profitable side of the business, Schmidt was quite willing to spend money for an ideal.
Connections
Schmidt was married on December 24, 1868, to Helene Philippine Suck, many of whose family were musicians (her brother was a cellist, August P. F. Suck); his wife survived him but their one child, a daughter, died before him.
