Henri Ernsts

[Eric]

Well, "Henri Ernst"s. ... er, if I asked about this here before, sorry!
Several different Boston publishers (at least two, maybe three? Maybe one publisher under two different names?...) in the 1870s and 1880s or so have arrangements (and perhaps new compositions- need to check) attributed to an "Henri Ernst". I ran into some of these at memory.loc.gov, and so have other editors. Some are listed at worldcat too, i think, and mentioned in books I think but I don't see mention of the basic problem noted below- posthumousness...

Since both Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst- sometimes referred to as Henri - and Henri Ernst the flautist - died in the 1860s - there are several (er- actually, too many) possibilities here, I do think...
(1) a cache of arrangements by Ernst was held onto or found, and published - or reprinted - in the 1870s etc. by these publishers.
(2) a composer whose name was Henri Ernst was the source of these arrangements.
(3) a composer (or more than one) whose pseudonym (self- or publisher- imposed, it matters not) was Henri Ernst was the source of these arrangements.
(actually, several others, some of them very unlikely of course, but even the list of likely and fairly "precedented"/commonly encountered possibilities is still too long.

Question to ask- does anyone know anything about this situation that might clarify, that might have been mentioned somewhere, etc.? Mention of a US-local composer by that name, or anything else that bears on this? Thankee.
Eric

[Carolus]

One possibility is a pseudonym, which was a very common practice of publishers in the era. One particularly wild example was the name "Ferdinand Meyer" - which was used by the Boston publisher Arthur P. Schmidt to represent the work of at least seven different editors or arrangers, which include Arthur Foote, Ernest Henry Adams (1886-1959), O.B. Brown, Charles Denée (1863-1946), Frank Lynes (1858-1913), Edmund Parlow, Arnoldo Sartorio (1853-1936), and Charles P. Scott (1868-1926). Schmidt also use the name "Carl Erich" for Arthur Foote, Frank Lynes, Albert Biehl (1835-1899), and Joseph P. Lennon. That's just one Boston publisher.

[Eric]

ah, here I thought Carl Erich was just a Albert-Parlow-nym... I really should have known better than that (considering that Sartorio was so prolific a magazine published an article to celebrate his 1000th opus (under his own name, presumably not counting the others. Sometimes I wonder if the opus numbers of some of these composers skip a digit. *waves to James Bellak. Erm. Tangent of a tangent.*), I really should look for more scans of his music)