Background
Max Dreyfus was born on April 1, 1874, in Kuppenheim, Germany, the son of Elias Dreyfus, a farmer, and of Amelia Esther Hertz.
Max Dreyfus was born on April 1, 1874, in Kuppenheim, Germany, the son of Elias Dreyfus, a farmer, and of Amelia Esther Hertz.
At the age of fourteen, Dreyfus immigrated to New York City, hoping to become a composer. He had little success but found intermittent work as a pianist. He also arranged songs for his friend Paul Dresser, who helped him establish contacts with Every Month, a music-publishing magazine edited by Dresser's brother, the novelist Theodore Dreiser.
In 1895 Dreyfus took his compositions to M. Witmark and Sons, a New York City music-publishing house. Witmark rejected his music but hired him as a demonstration pianist.
In 1900, under the pseudonym "Max Eugene, " Dreyfus published a wordless ballad, "Cupid's Garden, " which was popular briefly as background music for silent films. But by this time he had largely abandoned his ambitions as a composer, concentrating instead on becoming a music publisher. In 1901 he purchased a 25 percent interest in T. B. Harms, Inc. , a Witmark rival, and over the next few years achieved managerial and financial control of the company.
Dreyfus met the aspiring composer Jerome Kern in 1904 and promptly hired him to sell music for Harms in the Hudson Valley region, which he later called "the toughest job I know. " Kern succeeded as a salesman, and Dreyfus retained him as a rehearsal pianist and arranger.
In 1905 he engineered Kern's first big break, a song-writing credit ("Howd You Like to Spoon with Me?") in Ivan Caryil's The Earl and the Girl. In 1912 Dreyfus gave the composer Charles Rudolph Friml an entree into musical theater by recommending him to replace Victor Herbert in Arthur Hammerstein's production of The Firefly.
In 1914 Dreyfus helped to found the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), on whose board of directors he served until his death.
In 1917 a young rehearsal pianist, George Gershwin, showed several of his songs to Dreyfus ("You-oo, Just You" and "There's More to a Kiss Than XXX"). Dreyfus gave Gershwin a $35-a-week retainer. Dreyfus' faith in Gershwin was rewarded; Dreyfus-controlled firms published all of Gershwin's subsequent work beginning in 1918 with "Some Wondeful Sort of Someone. " During this period, Dreyfus wooed such established composers as Herbert from Witmark to Harms and inaugurated a retainer system to support the development of beginning composers.
In succeeding years, Dreyfus-controlled companies published the work of virtually every major musical theater composer and lyricist except Irving Berlin. Among these, besides Kern and George and Ira Gershwin, were Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sigmund Romberg, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Kurt Weill, Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, Stephen Sondheim, Adolph Green, and Johnny Mercer.
With several of these talents, Dreyfus pioneered partnership agreements. In 1929 Dreyfus sold his interest in Harms to the Music Publishing Holding Corporation, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. , for a reported $8 million to $10 million. Warners retained Dreyfus as president and director until 1935, but it was essentially a consultant's role.
Dreyfus acquired control of the British music publishing concern Chappell and Company, Inc. , in 1935. His younger brother, Louis, became president, while Max Dreyfus assumed control of its New York City branch. The two dominated the music publishing industry in the western hemisphere. On May 6, 1964, the London offices of Chappell were destroyed by fire. Many precious musical manuscripts were lost. Six days later Dreyfus died at his 700-acre estate near Brewster, New York.
In reality, Dreyfus was "a soft-spoken, slightly-built man who was reserved almost to a fault. " "He betrayed little elation when he heard a tune he liked, " said Richard Rodgers. "He was not very enthusiastic, but his work was. .. . He knew how and where to promote a song. "
Quotes from others about the person
"Max Dreyfus did not build a publishing company. He forged an empire that is as big abroad as it is in this country. The shape of the new music business will make it impossible for anyone else to duplicate Dreyfus' achievement. " - Irving Caesar
On October 18, 1897, Dreyfus married Victoria Brill; they had no children.