(b Caen, 1665/6; d Amsterdam,7 July 1722). French music printer, active in the Netherlands. He and his family, as Protestants, left Normandy after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and moved to Amsterdam where Estienne Roger registered as a member of the Walloon church in February 1686. He soon went into the printing trade, apprenticed successively between 1691 and 1695 to Antoine Pointel and Jean-Louis de Lorme. On 11 August 1691, listed in the records as ‘marchand’, he married Marie-Suzanne de Magneville (c1670–1712). On 7 November 1695 he was on the rolls of the association of booksellers, printers and binders. During 1696 he published in association with his former master, de Lorme, but by the following year he was publishing music and other books (including histories, grammars and a dictionary of antiquities) under his own name.
Roger had two daughters. He designated the younger, Jeanne (1701–22), as his successor in the business in a will dated 11 September 1716, and from that date he used her name alone on the titles of the books he printed. The elder daughter, Françoise (1694–1723), married Michel-Charles Le Cène (b Honfleur, c1684; d Amsterdam, 29 April 1743) in May 1716. Le Cène worked with his father-in-law for a few years after his marriage (on non-musical publications only), but by 1720 was operating his own printing establishment producing non-musical books.
After Roger’s death Jeanne maintained her father’s business with the help of a faithful employee, Gerrit Drinkman. But she soon fell ill, and died in December of the same year, after cutting Françoise out of her will (because, she said, her sister had left her ill and did not help her in her weakness), and leaving the business to Drinkman. Within a short time Drinkman was also dead. At this point Le Cène arranged to buy the printing firm from Drinkman’s widow. In an advertisement in the Gazette d’Amsterdam of June 1723 he was able to announce that he was continuing ‘the business of the late Mr Estienne Roger, his father-in-law, which had been interrupted since his demise’. His wife Françoise, the last of the Rogers, died two months later.
Le Cène carried on the business for 20 years more until his death in 1743. Although he was not as active as Roger, he added the works of many new composers to the house’s roster. He frequently reprinted from Roger’s plates, listing the firm’s name then as ‘Estienne Roger & Le Cène’. Music books for which Le Cène was the originator carried only his name. Since the earlier firm had used the names of ‘Estienne Roger’ and ‘Jeanne Roger’ there were then four names under which the business was identified.
After Le Cène’s death his inventory was bought by the bookseller E.-J. de la Coste (fl 1743–6). Shortly after this La Coste published a catalogue of ‘the books of music, printed at Amsterdam, by Estienne Roger and Michel-Charles Le Cène’. There is no evidence that he was engaged in any printing activity. In 1746 La Coste sold the business to Antoine Chareau, a former employee of Le Cène. Chareau left the firm in 1748, after which the stock and plates were dispersed.
In the period from 1696 to 1743, 600 titles (not including reprints) were printed by the firm. More than 500 of them were issued by Roger between 1696 and 1722 and less than 100 during Le Cène’s regime, although Le Cène continued to republish and to retain in stock most of Roger’s output. Under both Roger and Le Cène the firm’s music books were carefully edited and beautifully printed from copperplate engravings; they were valued for their quality.
Besides seeking new manuscripts through direct contacts with composers, Roger’s practice from the beginning was to copy music of publishers in other countries and since there were no copyright laws he could do so with impunity. While most other music printers had little distribution outside their own countries or even outside their own cities and printed the works of local composers only, Roger’s distinction was that he could offer an international repertory. Furthermore his distribution network was highly effective. At various times he had agents in Rotterdam, London, Cologne, Berlin, Liège, Leipzig, Halle, Paris, Brussels and Hamburg.
Early in the 18th century, as engraving superseded movable type, music printers discontinued the practice of dating their books. Roger was the first to use publishers’ numbers, a practice soon imitated by others (such as Walsh and Balthasar Schmid) and one that continued to identify books through the 18th century and part of the 19th. In about 1712–13 he assigned numbers to all the books in stock, without regard, however, to their chronological order of printing. The numbers after that time follow directly in chronological order.
Though the plate numbers of books printed before 1713 do not help in dating them, another of Roger’s practices provides an approximation. From 1698 to 1716 he printed catalogues of his music books in the back of dated non-musical books. He also placed advertisements in the Amsterdam and London papers over this period of time. Thus the listing of a new work in these sources serves as a terminus ante quem.
Roger’s repertory was particularly strong in works by Italian composers. He printed the second editions of Vivaldi’s opp.1 and 2, and beginning with op.3, L’estro armonico, the first editions of all but two of Vivaldi’s printed works were published by Roger or his successors. Roger also published all Corelli’s works. The trios opp.1–4 were copied from Italian sources, as were the solos op.5 in the first instance; the latter were reprinted with added ornamentation in 1710, nearly certainly authentic (see illustration). In 1712 Roger concluded a contract with Corelli concerning his op.6 which was published posthumously in 1714. Other Italian composers in Roger’s catalogues were Albinoni, Bassani, Bonporti, Caldara, Gentili, Marcello, C.A. Marino, Alessandro Scarlatti, Taglietti, Torelli, Valentini and Veracini. There are first editions of works by Albinoni, Torelli, Pistocchi, Bernardi, Valentini, Mossi, G.B. Somis and others. From Ballard in Paris he reprinted works by La Barre, Lebègue, Lully, Marais and Mouton, and Ballard’s annual Airs sérieux et à boire. In fact, Roger was the main publisher of many composers working in the Netherlands, England and northern Germany, including Albicastro, de Konink, Schenk, Pepusch and Schickhardt. During Le Cène’s time Geminiani, Handel, Locatelli (whom Le Cène evidently knew as a friend), Quantz, Tartini and Telemann, among others, were added to the catalogue. First editions include works by Locatelli, Tartini, Geminiani, San Martini and G.B. Martini.
Although Roger copied the music of others, he also had to defend himself against plagiarism of his own publications. There were many altercations with john Walsh (i) of London from 1700 onwards. More serious was the threat from the Amsterdam printer Pierre Mortier, who copied many of Roger’s books in 1708 and advertised them for sale at a lower price. This problem was only resolved with Mortier’s death in 1711, when Roger bought his plates and later even issued some of Mortier’s editions under his own name. The importance of the firm in the distribution of music in the first half of the 18th century cannot be overestimated.
J.W. Enschede: ‘Quelques mots sur E. Roger, marchand libraire à Amsterdam’, Bulletin de la Commission de l’histoire des églises wallonnes, 2nd ser., i (1896), 209–15
C. Veerman: ‘Estienne Roger, muziekuitgever te Amsterdam omstreaks 1700’, De muziek, vii (1932–3), 337–45
M. Pincherle: ‘De la piraterie dans l’édition musicale aux environs de 1700’,RdM, xiv (1933), 136–40
M. Pincherle: ‘Note sur E. Roger et M.C. Le Cène’, RBM, i (1946–7), 82–92
F. Lesure: ‘Un épisode de la guerre des contrafaçons à Amsterdam: Estienne Roger et P. Mortier’, RdM, xxxviii (1956), 35–48
C.G. Kneppers and A.J. Heuwekemeijer: ‘De muziekuitgever E. Roger’,Ons Amsterdam, xi (1959), 187–92
I.H. van Eeghen: De Amsterdamse boekhandel 1680–1725 (Amsterdam, 1960–78)
F. Lesure: Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Estienne Roger et Michel-Charles Le Cène (Amsterdam 1696–1743) (Paris, 1969)
K. Hortschansky: ‘Die Datierung der frühen Musikdrucken Etienne Rogers: Ergänzungen und Berichtigungen’, TVNM, xxii (1971–2), 252–86
J.B. Young: ‘An Account of Printed Musick c.a. 1724’, FAM, xxix (1982), 129–36
R. Rasch: ‘De muziekoorlog tussen Estienne Roger en Pieter Mortier (1708–1711)’, De Zeventien-de Eeuw, vi (1990), 89–97
R. Rasch: ‘Estienne Roger en Michel-Charles le Cène: europese muziekuitgevers te Amsterdam, 1696–1743’, Holland, xxvi (1994), 292–313
R. Rasch: ‘Estienne Roger and John Walsh: Patterns of Competition between Early-18th-Century Dutch and English Music Publishing’, The North Sea and Culture (1550–1800): Leiden 1995, 396–407
R. Rasch: ‘I manoscritti nel lascito di Michel-Charles le Cène (1743)’, Intorno a Locatelli, ed. A. Dunning (Lucca, 1995), 1039–70
R. Rasch: ‘Corelli's Contract: Notes on the Publication History of the Concerti grossi … Opera sesta [1714]’, TVNM, xlvi (1996), 83–136
R. Rasch: ‘La famosa mano di Monsieur Roger: Antonio Vivaldi and his Dutch Publishers’, Informazioni e studi vivaldiani, xvii (1996), 89–137
SAMUEL F. POGUE/RUDOLF A. RASCH