Accenting the Classics: Durand's Édition classique (c. 1915-25) as a French Prism on the Musical Past

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This project will explore the music French publisher Durand's major edition in its centenary year to deliver scholarly and educational outputs, whose outcomes have the potential to change practice in French music research. The Édition classique is a significant, large, but little explored, collection of European piano music from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, supported by editorial prefaces, published by Durand in Paris from 1915 onwards. Its repertoire comprises music by well-known and since-forgotten composers, which was edited by well- and lesser-known early twentieth-century French composers, together with musicologists and teachers at the Paris Conservatoire. Other fin-de-siècle editions (for example, Henry Expert's edition, or Saint-Saëns's Oeuvres complètes de Rameau) have been the subject of thriving research, but the contribution of the Édition classique to this forum is not yet known. This timely project (with most music now in the public domain) will investigate the edition in its first fruitful decade (c. 1915-25), as a prism through which to reinterpret the musical past. Three temporal positions are implied: the edition's World War I setting; the earlier period(s) of the original music; our present day. Enquiries will focus on the 'French accent' given to these 'Classics', involving interplay between musical subject and object; attitudes relating to time and place; French heritage and internationalism. Investigation will start with detailed analytical case studies of edited music, which will uphold the highest levels of collaborative scholarship. These are selected on the basis of: a balance of musics; well- and lesser-known composers/editors; source availability; use of volumes with editorial commentary; comparative editions; and analytical interest. The initial group will include Ravel (editing Mendelssohn) and Debussy (Chopin); Emmanuel, Garban and Roger-Ducasse (Bach and Burgundian folksongs); balanced by music of the eighteenth-century French harpsichordists, including Couperin (edited by Tiersot) and Rameau (Diémer). A second group will likely include: Closson (editing Les Classiques belges), Ropartz (Handel), Riéra (Liszt) and Roussel (Mendelssohn's chamber music). Access to sources will be secured via the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Durand and Paris Conservatoire archives, online resources and private collections.Secondly, using blended archival, historical and interpretative skills, assessment of the role and wider cultural network of the Édition classique will offer new insights into early twentieth-century French cultural identity (e.g. incipient neoclassicism); relations with twentieth-century French composers' own music; canonic issues; Conservatoire pedagogy; wartime publishing, in the context of editions by Expert, Saint-Saëns and Heugel. The project will also embrace how today's users - students, scholars, musicians and the wider public - can benefit from (test out and inflect) this knowledge, including alternative interpretations for pianists and the promotion of 'lost' repertoire. The main outputs will comprise: a catalogue of the Édition classique's contents (c. 1915-25; approx. 120 edited volumes, 18 editors, 22 earlier composers); three case study articles/chapters, some co-authored (about Ravel and Roussel on Mendelssohn; Debussy's Chopin edition and his own Études and sonatas; Francophone harpsichord music); three further articles (on revisionist implications of the edition's canon; Conservatoire pedagogy; cultural-economic issues of wartime publishing); associated conference papers; performance workshop(s); a hosted international conference and public concert, with follow-on co-edited volume (which may house some chapters above); and a BBC Radio 3 programme. Pilot tests suggest that the 'French accent' can vary from a subtle re-inflection - often relating to phrasing and accentuation - through to a much more fundamental re-writing of musical history.