Harms

Harms was a music publishing house founded in New York in 1875 by the brothers Alexander T. Harms and Thomas B. Harms. Trading as T. B. Harms & Co., it devoted itself to contemporary popular music, and its early hits, such as When the robins nest again (1883) and The letter that never came (1886), prompted other Tin Pan Alley publishers to imitate its promotional methods.

In 1901 Max Dreyfus, who had worked for the firm as an arranger, acquired a 25% stake and, a few years later, full control of the management and finances, though it retained the Harms name. The firm became the leading publisher of songs for the musical theatre. In 1903 it signed Jerome Kern, later a partner, and from 1918 it published works by George Gershwin and, in the 1920s, by Richard Rodgers.

In 1929 Dreyfus sold his stake to Warner Bros., when the firm passed to the Music Publishers Holding Corporation, although he remained as an adviser until 1935, the year he founded the American branch of Chappell. In 1969 the Harms holdings associated with the heirs of Louis Dreyfus and Kern were acquired by Lawrence Welk and integrated into the Welk Music Group. Its importance lies in having consolidated the publishing model of the Broadway musical and in having housed some of its most outstanding composers.