Warfare, for all its accompanying destruction, misery and death, has always created opportunities, especially in the world of commerce. Within months of the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914, the French music publisher Jacques Durand was faced with a devastating collapse in sales. As Debussy despondently observed in October, ‘who is thinking about buying music? People are much more concerned about potatoes…!’ This book focuses on Durand's response to the crisis, one that was to prove hugely rewarding in both commercial and artistic terms. Within six months of the outbreak of hostilities, his company had produced, in exceptionally challenging conditions, the first volumes of an audacious publishing venture designed to exploit a massive gap in the market, opened up when the French government banned the sale of ‘enemy’ publications. These included the immensely popular editions of the classical music repertoire produced by such German publishers as Peters, Breitkopf & Härtel and Litolff, which dominated the French market. It was with the express aim of replacing these that the Édition Classique A. Durand & Fils was launched.

In what was surely a conscious decision to distance the Édition Classique from association with these proscribed enemy editions, Jacques Durand chose to clothe it in a distinctive livery, its uniform blue-speckled covers and elegantly restrained typeface contrasting strikingly with the assertive Teutonic typography and plain background that characterise the covers of the Peters and other German editions (for illustrations, see Chapter 3, pp. 82 and 94). By contrast, some of Durand's French competitors – notably Maurice Senart, in his Édition nationale de musique classique – chose blatantly to imitate the visual appearance of the Edition Peters.

Designed and advertised as a ‘Popular’ edition, Durand wanted his new venture to have a broad reach of mainly amateur and student markets. In this respect, it was not unique, as we will see. However, Durand's achievement was distinctive on several levels. He had a particular place in the music publishing market and a highly distinguished rostrum of contemporary composers in his catalogue on whom he could draw for this project. Yet his achievement goes beyond these essentials and prompts various questions. What enabled Durand to establish the Édition Classique as arguably the standard edition for performers at all levels?