Musica G. D.

DO NOT USE as a label or series name! "Musica G.D." was neither a record label nor a series. It is a trademark associated with the labels Polydor, Polyphon, Grammophon, the Belgian Reneyphone, the American Opera Disc Company, and even the Singaporean Hindenburg. Originally, "Musica G. D." was a trademark registered in 1904 by French singer and gramophone producer George Dutreih (thus G.D.) in Paris. Dutreih used this trademark on his "Musica" line of gramophones. He also produced records under the label name "Disque Dutreih". The trademark "Musica G. D." became associated with German labels after the Polyphon Musikwerke A.G., a German producer of gramophones and of records that issued the labels Polydor and Polyphon Musik, acquired the rights to this trademark. In April 1917, the same German company, which soon afterwards became the Polyphonwerke A.-G., also acquired the Grammophon label and its manufacturer, the Deutsche Grammophon-Aktiengesellschaft in Hanover, Germany, after the German government had seized the British-owned Deutsche Grammophon-Aktiengesellschaft, a subsidiary of the The Gramophone Co. Ltd., as enemy property and auctioned it off. In 1921, Polyphonwerke registered "Musica G. D." as a trademark both in France (January 28, 1921) and in the United States (trademark application #145,643, filed April 2, 1921). Consequently, the trademark was used by Opera Disc Company, a label Polyphonwerke established in 1921 in the United States as an American outlet for illegal copies of material that Polyphonwerke pressed from the Gramophone Co. matrices that came into its possession in 1917 together with the Deutsche Grammophon factory in Hanover.