Anniversary, Edition Peters - 150th Anniversary of the "Green Series"

In 1800, Leipzig bookseller Carl Friedrich Peters began trading under the name 'Bureau de Musique de C.F. Peters'. It was on 9th November 1867, however, that they launched their famous Grüne Reihe (Green Series) range of publications: affordable editions made possible by the adoption of a new rotary printing press.

In order to find out more about the fascinating history behind the distinguished publishing house, we spoke to Linda Hawken, Managing Director of Edition Peters Europe. She has very kindly allowed us to reproduce her words as follows:

The Peters warehouse around the turn of the century

"Edition Peters was founded in 1800 in Leipzig, the centre of publishing and printing in Germany in the 19th century. By 1867 Peters was partly owned by Max Abraham, a remarkable business visionary, and the first music publisher to adopt the new revolutionary rotary printing press, which radically reduced printing costs. The new green Edition Peters series burst onto the market at a fifth of the price of any other sheet music, in beautifully engraved and reliably edited scores. The first title was EP1, J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier – fitting for the city of J.S. Bach.

Max Abraham

Abraham’s motto was Kürze ist Würze (Brevity is the essence), and over the coming decades all the core areas of repertoire, from Burgmüller piano studies to Lieder by Hugo Wolf and the major choral masterpieces from the great composers, were now available in the green cover. By 1874 Edition Peters was based in its new home in Talstrasse 10, Leipzig. Designed by Otto Bruckwald, architect of Wagner’s Bayreuth Festpielhaus, Talstrasse 10 was a cultural landmark. By 1933 the company was continuing to thrive under the direction of Abraham’s nephew, Henri Hinrichsen. The Edition Peters green cover series was continually developing and the company was the first to issue an Urtext publication with its edition of J.S. Bach’s Two-Part Inventions.

Henri Hinrichsen

However, tragedy was about to strike: the company was one of the first to be Aryanised by the National Socialists. Henri’s two eldest sons managed to escape – Max to London where he started Peters Edition Limited in 1938, and Walter to New York where he founded C.F. Peters Corporation. Eleven members of the family, including Henri, perished in the Holocaust. Leipzig was under Russian control and C.F. Peters became the East German state music publishing house. A West German company was created in 1951, in Frankfurt. Meanwhile in London and New York, Max and Walter’s companies were hard at work sustaining their family’s heritage. By the mid 1950s Walter had made the audacious signings of John Cage and George Crumb and he was one of the first US publishers to start to market his products in post-war Japan.

Throughout all of this, the green cover series kept on being printed, distributed and developed. In 2010 the Edition Peters Group was founded, formally bringing together the individual companies, under the shared ownership of the Hinrichsen Foundation in the UK and the heirs of Walter in the USA. In October 2014, the Frankfurt company was closed down and Edition Peters Germany made an emotional return to its home city in a beautifully restored Talstrasse 10."

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of this landmark series, we are offering 25% off the Edition Peters catalogue until the end of December.

Also, you can read even more about the history of Edition Peters in the book Music Publishing and Patronage:
C. F. Peters - 1800 to the Holocaust, written by Irene Lawford-Hinrichsen (Henri Hinrichsen's granddaughter - details below).

Edition Peters Grüne Reihe - Top Ten Best Sellers