Musical Heritage Society was an American mail-order

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the pr ...

founded in New York City in 1962 by Michael "Mischa" Naida (1900–1991), co-founder of Westminster Records, and T. C. Fry Jr. (1926–1996).

Background

After a small initial group of pseudonymous issues—licensed from the Telemann Society and

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

—MHS issued many recordings licensed from

Erato In Greek mythology, Erato (; grc, Ἐρατώ) is one of the Greek Muses, which were inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. The name would mean "desired" or "lovely", if derived from the same root as Eros, as Apollonius ...

. Eventually the label issued most of the Erato catalogue, including discs previously issued on several US retail labels. MHS also drew on such catalogues as Amadeo, Angelicum, Arcophon, Boston,

Christophorus Records Christophorus Records is a German classical music label based originally in Freiburg im Breisgau specializing in Catholic church and early music. History The history of the Herder family in publishing in Freiburg goes back to Bartholomä Herder ...

, Da Camera, Expériences Anonymes, Hispavox, Iramac, Library of Recorded Masterpieces,

Lyrichord Discs Lyrichord Discs is a record label specializing in world music and classical music. In 2015, Multicultural Media acquired the catalog of Lyrichord. History The label was founded in 1950 by Peter Fritsch, an Austrian immigrant who moved to America ...

, Muza, Pelca, Somerset, Supraphon, Unicorn-Kanchana, Valois, and Harmonia Mundi. The company operated on a subscription basis similar to book clubs, offering monthly selections and the opportunity to order further from catalogues regularly issued to subscribers. MHS also offered albums of jazz music through their Jazz Heritage Society subsidiary, also as a club-style subscription service, licensing and re-releasing under their Jazz Heritage label older titles from other labels such as Verve, RCA, Blue Note, and others.

Company changeovers and catalogue

In 1976, Naida sold the firm to Albert Nissim (1923–2010), who moved the offices to

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. Albert Nissim's two sons, Jeffrey R. (born 1954) and Robert, assumed most of the duties for the family business. By 1980, the label had a catalog of over 3,000 discs, most of which were licensed from small European companies. From May 1981 until 1999, MHS produced and sold retail its own recordings using the label MusicMasters. After that, MHS licensed standard repertory from EMI and

PolyGram PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...

. In July 2011, Passionato LLC, based in Montclair, New Jersey, purchased Musical Heritage Society, which at the time, had over 100,000 CD, DVD, and

SACD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows multiple au ...

titles in its database. Passionato is a commercial provider of DRM-free classical music downloads. James G. Glicker (born 1954) is CEO and founder of Passionato. In 2022, they reactivated their website, hosting archival information about past releases and links to external sites where digital versions of some of those releases could be streamed or purchased.The Musical Heritage Society
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References

{{Authority control Defunct record labels of the United States Jazz record labels