The Beggar's Opera piece satirised Italian opera, which had become popular in London. According to "The New York Times": "Gay wrote the work more as an anti-opera than an opera, one of its attractions to its 18th-century London public being its lampooning of the Italian opera style and the English public's fascination with it." Instead of the grand music and themes of opera, the work uses familiar tunes and characters that were ordinary people. Some of the songs were by opera composers like Handel, but only the most popular of these were used. The audience could hum along with the music and identify
History of music publishing de Autores y Editores (SGAE), in 1899. The predecessor to the Gesellschaft für Musikalische Aufführungs und Mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (GEMA) was formed in Germany by composer Richard Strauss in 1903. It became GEMA in 1915 when it merged with another small society. So, by the end of the 19th century, the foundation had been laid for the modern music publishing industry. As England was a leader in developing copyright systems and France was ahead in developing performing rights, Germany was the pioneering country in modern music publishing. The first German music publishing enterprises date from the 18th century. Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf