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?

From its inception, Durand's Édition Classique had strong connections with educational institutions, and particularly with the Paris Conservatoire. The Conservatoire had been directly involved in wider French discussions during the First World War on the need for French editions of music to replace those of German firms, such as the Leipzig-based Breitkopf & Härtel and Litolff. It is thus unsurprising that so many volumes in Durand's Édition were edited by professors at the Paris Conservatoire. As noted in Chapter 2, a large part of Durand's focus in the Édition was on works for pedagogical use, ranging from pieces for young pianists, to graded anthologies, and methods, studies and exercises for a range of instruments. Chapter 9 explores the reciprocal relationship between Durand's Édition and music education and performance. It considers the important involvement of educational institutions in shaping the output of Durand's series. It also explores the efforts of Durand and the Département des Beaux-Arts to encourage dissemination of French editions to educational institutions beyond the capital city.

The focus then moves from pedagogy to performance, although the demarcations are not clear-cut since most performers also taught, both at the major institutions and privately. Among the Édition Classique's editors were many performers. Some were well-known figures, such as Marguerite Long (pianist), Louis Fleury (flautist) and Louis Fournier (cellist). Others advised on instrumental technique (violinist, Augustin Lefort) or piano fingering (Blanche Selva). All were active as performers, often in small ensembles, or with major orchestras. This chapter considers the repertoire they edited and their role in disseminating the edition through performance. Although it can be hard to pinpoint exactly which editions were used for particular performances, we can establish the repertoire they promoted in their professional lives.

Chapter 9 homes in on the case of Robert and Gaby Casadesus who owned and used many volumes of the Édition Classique alongside other contemporary editions. It is easy to determine which scores Robert used in his international concert circuit because of the detailed annotations on the scores, with lists of cities and dates where he performed. Drawing on documents at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and in the musical press in France, Britain and the Americas, we identify concerts in which these works figured, and discuss Robert Casadesus's particular approach to performing this repertoire.

This chapter examines the significance of Mozart as a symbol of the ‘classic’ in early twentieth-century France. It considers the symbolic value of Mozart as an Austro-Germanic composer who appeared to be above the battlefield and part of a wider European tradition, whilst also being deeply implicated in French musical and scholarly patriotism. I focus on the Mozart volumes in the Édition Classique, which were edited by the composer-performer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); the composer-conductor Joseph Guy Ropartz (1864–1955); the musicologist Adolphe Boschot (1871–1955); and composer-performer Louis Fournier (1877–1963). This determination to preserve Mozart for French performers is in sharp contrast to Saint-Saëns's high-profile campaign to ban Wagner and exclude contemporary Austro-Germanic music during the so-called Great War.

I concentrate on Saint-Saëns's editions and the controversy they caused because of the ageing composer's failure to take into account contemporary (French) scholarship on Mozart, notably by the arch-Wagnerian Teodor de Wyzewa and musicologist Georges de Saint Foix. For Jean Marnold, Saint-Saëns's editions represented a humiliation for the French in the cultural battle to claim Mozart as theirs. The chapter follows the critical reaction to these editions in the press: in particular, the controversy over the editor's lack of engagement with contemporaneous scholarship on Mozart in France and the rival Mozart Sonatas edited by Édouard Risler (1873–1929) for the Collection Orphée. The controversy reflects the status of Saint-Saëns, who was already considered to be out of step with his time and a ‘classic’ in his own right, at the end of his exceptionally long musical career.

Chapter 4 also examines the Mozart editions prepared by Ropartz, Boschot and Fournier and their very different approaches to editing Mozart and engaging with scholarship; there was clearly not a unified editorial approach to representing this musical giant. It also looks at subsequent attempts to formalise French interest in Mozart in the establishment of the Société d’études mozartiennes, which was part of a pan-European arm of the Association internationale Mozartienne de Salzbourg. This research provides new insights into the status of Mozart in France during and after the First World War, complementing recent research on the appropriation of Mozart during the Second World War, showing Mozart's significance and value in France and Europe during the First World War and the interwar period.

Saint-Saëns as editor

Saint-Saëns had an important role in Durand's Édition Classique, as Chapter 1 has indicated.