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?

Jacques Durand's Édition Classique was born in response to a moment of national crisis when the French government banned the sale of ‘enemy’ publications. It gave Durand the chance to exploit a sudden and substantial gap in the market. The project was not unique despite initial hopes that publishers would work together to establish a single French edition of European classics. In the event, Durand's was one of several rival French editions that suddenly entered the musical marketplace. This study, based on extensive archival research, has shown the myriad ways in which it was distinctive and highly successful in remaining a viable collection of editions with numerous reprints well into the late twentieth century. The project was also both culturally and musically revealing about the war and post-war period as European nations asserted their musical priorities and institutions established mechanisms to protect and project their musical values, assets and markets.

Durand's achievement

Although the Édition Classique was not unique, Jacques Durand had influence as the head of the syndicate of publishers. He also had the most notable contemporary composers on his books, many of whom became editors of the Édition Classique: Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Dukas and Roussel. That some of them were his classmates at the Paris Conservatoire shows that he built on the network that his father had established before him. A number of these composers had previous experience of editing (Saint-Saëns, Dukas and even Debussy), but none could claim to be experts in this activity. Durand also included key teachers at the Conservatoire and prominent performers, all of whom ensured the dissemination and circulation of the edition for generations. While this gave the Édition Classique prominence, it did not protect some of his editors from criticism. Furthermore, due to wartime restraints and the urgency of replacing Peters and Breitkopf editions, few of the editors were able to consult original sources. There were exceptions of course, notably Debussy's scrutiny of Chopin manuscripts that belonged to Saint-Saëns, and Dukas's and Ropartz's consultation of the composers’ own editions for their Scarlatti and Handel volumes. The purpose was not to establish a scholarly edition, but to embed the Édition Classique within the musical marketplace as a reliable, cheap and easily available body of editions. Durand's policy of including prominent names shows that he had a keen eye for marketing and knew that recognisable names would improve sales.

The rocky shores of the north-east Atlantic have been long studied. Our focus is from Gibraltar to Norway plus the Azores and Iceland. Phylogeographic processes shape biogeographic patterns of biodiversity. Long-term and broadscale studies have shown the responses of biota to past climate fluctuations and more recent anthropogenic climate change. Inter- and intra-specific species interactions along sharp local environmental gradients shape distributions and community structure and hence ecosystem functioning. Shifts in domination by fucoids in shelter to barnacles/mussels in exposure are mediated by grazing by patellid limpets. Further south fucoids become increasingly rare, with species disappearing or restricted to estuarine refuges, caused by greater desiccation and grazing pressure. Mesoscale processes influence bottom-up nutrient forcing and larval supply, hence affecting species abundance and distribution, and can be proximate factors setting range edges (e.g., the English Channel, the Iberian Peninsula). Impacts of invasive non-native species are reviewed. Knowledge gaps such as the work on rockpools and host–parasite dynamics are also outlined.