The publisher who cashed in

Among the jewellers on this street, at number nine, you'd have found Artaria, the publisher who printed Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and sold their music far beyond the empire's borders.

 

The arrangement was simple, and a raw deal for the composer. You sold a piece for a fixed sum, once and for all, and whatever the publisher earned from it afterwards passed you by entirely, no matter how often it was reprinted.

 

Of the three, Beethoven was the shrewdest businessman. He played publishers off against one another, sometimes offered the same work in Vienna and Leipzig at once, and his letters could hold both pleasantries and threats in a single paragraph.

 

The shop was a meeting place too, since anyone who wanted to know what was new came here to leaf through the latest scores.

 

At the end of the street, the square opens up in front of the Hofburg, once the imperial palace of the Habsburgs.