PRIMAVERA: 30 YEARS OF CO- PUBLISHING.
In 1980, if you were a composer who wanted to be published, you had to convince one of the major
Music edition houses to take on your works. They would also take 50 % of your royalties, and quite a bit of
your freedom, how to present and distribute your work. You needed proven high profile and wide success
for that to happen.
At that time there were few women of our generation achieving that high profile: Judith Weir, Nicola
Lefanu, Jennifer Fowler, Margaret Lucy Wilkins and a few others.
We both joined the first committee of Women in Music, a radical group formed to raise the profile of
women composers.
Around that date, quite a few composers decided that the technology of desktop and specialist
photocopying was reaching a point where composers could produce their own editions, and keep all their
rights and assets.
Enid Luff and Julia Usher met at Composers’ Weekends during the late 70’s held by the Society for the
Promotion of New Music. After a lecture on composer-publishing, Enid and Julia agreed: this was the new
way forward. Primavera was set up, and
trading began with a boom.
We made a list of around 30 works each that we would like to sell eventually, producing simple
handwritten scores and getting them photocopied.
We didn’t realise that Blackwells in Oxford at that time bought 12 copies of every newly published piece
of music, to supply libraries. it was a shock - we had to produce around 500 scores for our first outing,
before our editions were quite ready............piled into the back of a car, all the way to Oxford.
We came home with the car empty, and a surprising cheque to open our account.
Publishing life has never been that astounding since. Technology swept us on; and Enid kept us up with it.
She was an early advocate of computer notation, and both of us were among the early pioneers of using
the first Sibelius programmes. There remained a backlog of handwritten scores, too big to copy to
computer.
Distribution.
Music shops across the country in most towns were the main clients.
We had to visit personally, on little sales trips, or when travelling with the family.
There were larger distributers then took over more widely, and the big corporations - and the small shops
began to disappear.
The Internet revolutionised the distribution and selling of sheet music; now often available through
specialist websites like Tutti.co.uk; as well as larger companies. You can buy from individual composers
from their webpages, and download pieces and soundtracks instantly, to customers anywhere in the
world.
Performance.
Julia and Enid mounted London Primavera concerts during the 90’s: the most notable being Primavera
Digital Opera; where Julia created “ Vocalism”, a piece for virtuoso soprano and piano which was the first
work to use a computer sequence played live from the BMIC Acorn computer.
Primavera Across Borders.
By 2000 Enid had moved to her home country Wales with her husband Alan Luff; and Julia moved out of
London with Rod Usher to live in Colchester. Distances seem far, but improved trains and the internet
breach the borders.
