Strange & Co.

Strange & Co.

Strange & Co. Established in Toronto ca 1881 as Strange & Billing, wholesale and retail dealers in cheap editions of printed music. By 1883 the partnership had dissolved, and Frederic Strange remained independent until the firm's end, ca 1900. He was one of the few Canadian publishers who were also typographers, and his publications bore an S & Co plate number (those of the Strange & Billing period often a cryptic H.S.). About half of his numerous publications - some 560 vocal and instrumental pieces - appeared in a series, the Canadian Musical Library, about which the most noteworthy fact is the lack of Canadian content. Some specimens lack an imprint. However, Strange did publish some Canadian compositions, eg, Annie Douglas' Sir John A. Macdonald Waltz (1882) and pieces by Edwin Gledhill, Carl Martens, and G.W. Strathy.