Henle Publications in Munich is one of the largest traditional German publishers that specialise in classical music. Since it was founded in 1948, Henle has published almost exclusively Urtexts, original editions, by composers from all eras, especially Baroque to Classical Modern.
Günter Henle, an enthusiastic amateur pianist, founded Henle Publications on October 20th 1948 in Munich, where the company’s headquarters are still situated to this day. Henle found, when he sat at the piano, he was often frustrated by changes and corrections made to the original scores by editors and publishers. In his opinion, these new editions ignored the true intensions of the composers, so he decided to produce new editions based on original scores, and to make them accessible to everyone. He decided to use the term ’Urtext’, which he had read in a few critical editions, and it is this term which has now become so famous.
Today the Henle catalogue includes more than 1250 Urtext scores, mainly for solo instruments and chamber music ensembles, as well as several hundred music theory books. This also includes the complete works of many important composers, including Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and Joseph Haydn, and many anthologies, including the series The Legacy of German Music.
Henle’s scores are prepared by a team of around 30 people, and are printed and bound in Germany. Since 1995, in addition to the famous blue Urtext editions, Henle Publications also offers study scores of selected works, and in 2016 they launched their digital sheet music collections, downloadable via their App.