For generations of American string players, International Music Company (IMC) editions were simply the editions. If you studied the Lalo Concerto or Popper’s High School in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century, there is a good chance that your first encounter with the piece came through an IMC part.
Founded in New York in 1941 by A. W. Haendler (ca. 1894–1979), IMC played a significant role in the dissemination of standard string repertoire in the United States. Haendler also published under the pseudonym “Waldo Lyman,” a name that appears in a number of early IMC editions. After Haendler’s death, the company’s leadership passed to Frank Marx. Today, International Music Company is owned by Bourne Co. Music Publishers.
The “Waldo” reference is more than historical trivia.
These editions were practical, widely distributed, and often included fingerings and bowings by prominent performers such as Leonard Rose, Josef Gingold, or Zino Francescatti. In many studios, they became the default working texts through which performance traditions were transmitted.
But what, exactly, are we looking at when we open one?
Not Newly Engraved Editions
In a number of early IMC performing editions, visual inspection of the printing suggests that the musical text was not newly engraved for publication. Rather, these editions appear to have been produced by modifying photographic reproductions of earlier public domain prints, typically first or second editions.
In some cases, traces of the underlying notation remain visible beneath added fingerings or slurs. Elements of the original engraving, such as articulation, dynamics, or rehearsal indications, appear to have been obscured, replaced, or supplemented in order to accommodate newly added performance markings. The result is a layered text:
- an inherited nineteenth-century engraving
- selectively modified or suppressed notation
- performer bowings and fingerings added in the mid twentieth century
This production method helps explain why certain discrepancies in IMC parts correspond closely to variant readings found in early printed sources. In other words, some of the “errors” associated with IMC editions may reflect inherited readings rather than newly introduced editorial decisions.
The Performer Layer
The editorial additions found in many IMC publications are frequently attributed to major pedagogical figures of the time. In the case of the cello literature, the fingerings associated with Leonard Rose are especially well known, though anecdotal evidence suggests that some of these derive from earlier studio traditions, including that of Felix Salmond.
Through this process, IMC editions became not only performance materials but vehicles for transmitting interpretive approaches. For many American players, phrasing, bow distribution, and fingering solutions entered the pedagogical bloodstream through these printed overlays.
What later came to be described as “tradition” was often, quite literally, what appeared in the IMC part.
A Shift Toward In-House Engraving
By the later twentieth century, IMC appears to have transitioned more consistently toward in-house engraving, including the use of SCORE notation software in editions associated with editors such as Edmund Kurtz.
This shift is visible in changes to engraving style and layout across their catalogue. In some instances, these newer engravings introduced their own readability challenges when compared to contemporaneous publications produced by firms with long-established engraving departments.
A Different Role: Soviet Repertoire
It should be noted that IMC played an important role in the Western dissemination of mid-century Soviet repertoire. Their editions of works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Kabalevsky often served as primary access points for performers outside the Eastern Bloc and remain widely used in performance contexts.
Reading IMC as a Historical Document
None of this diminishes the historical importance of IMC’s catalogue. Rather, it suggests that their editions are best understood as pedagogical artifacts of a particular publishing ecosystem.
Performers working from IMC parts may find it useful to consider:
- which elements derive from early printed sources
- which reflect mid-century performance traditions
- which represent later editorial intervention
In this sense, studying an IMC edition can become an exercise in textual archaeology. The question is not simply what is printed on the page, but which layer of musical history it represents.
Sometimes, the nineteenth-century composer is still there beneath the mid-twentieth-century performer. The trick is knowing where to look