So, who ARE Clifton Edition?

So, who ARE Clifton Edition?

Clifton Edition was formed to rescue previously published music by Spartan Press following that company’s sad demise last year. Hundreds of composers and arrangers where left ‘orphaned’ when the government saw fit to dissolve the hapless Spartan. And with it, potentially, would go hundreds of successful copyrights originally published by Spartan, Phylloscopus, EMA and Jot-a-Note. What a disaster!

Going back a few years…

Sat on a park bench on holiday one summer, my loving wife came out with this: “What d’you want to happen to Spartan Press when you snuff it”? The two of us met at the RAM in the 1970s, married, and taught music in Oxford for a decade before founding Spartan Press in 1989. Spartan gradually evolved over the next 30 years into a thriving multi-faceted organisation that published, distributed, typeset and printed educational music from a Victorian shooting lodge in the Highlands of Scotland. Here, we brought up our three children and later also ran the legendary specialist string retailers ‘Fuller Music’ which we purchased from Mark Dicken on his retirement.

“Has it all been an efficient way to feed your family that will die when you do, or do you want it to live on and continue to grow, like, say, a mini Oxford University Press”? Pat’s questions were pertinent and I thought seriously. If the company was to blossom long after we are dead and gone, big things needed to happen soon, and in the right order.

• We had to relocate the company into a sensible business premises, separate from the family.
• We had to find a suitable buyer for the company.
• We had to sell the rambling old shooting lodge which would then be mostly empty.
• We had to retire properly!

All these things were eventually achieved over a period of a few years. We were lucky to find an 8,000 sq.ft. industrial unit for sale, down the road in Kingussie. We managed to sell “Strathmashie House” to a lively family who owned ‘Daffy’s Gin’: a family run distillery business — the locals loved them! We retired to the centre of Glasgow as an antidote to living in the Cairngorms — [civilisation at last!]. We eventually migrated even further south to Clifton in Bristol.

All was well… until the phone started ringing…

“I know you’re nothing to do with it these days Mark, but what’s happing at Spartan? They’re not returning my calls”. These sorts of calls became increasingly regular and progressively more alarming in nature throughout 2022.

Witnessing the gradual decline and final demise of one’s life’s work was painful to witness. The reasons why? That’s another, longer (and rather boring) story for another day. Despite being supposedly retired, on a hunch Pat and I visited the Music and Drama Education Expo in Islington last year. Always a good place to air one’s thoughts and compare notes about the music profession. I’m so glad we made the effort, because it was there that we experienced a kind of “Epiphany”… a sort of “business vision” if you will. Virtually every one we spoke to said the same thing: “Mark — you need to start from scratch. Sign up all those talented composers once again, rescue all those copyrights and rise from the ashes like a musical Phoenix…”! This is not what we’d planned for our retirement of course, but we simply couldn’t resist.

We have since been humbled by overwhelming encouragement from a wide range of music industry stalwarts; music teachers, performers, dealers, publishers and distributors alike. Nearly all the composers and arrangers from the old Spartan empire who I telephoned said “Yes, I’ll re-assign my copyrights to Clifton Edition. Lets GO!” Household names like Alan Bullard, Mark Tanner, Bryan Kelly, Julian Lloyd Webber, Paul Harris and many others signed up promptly. The wonderful Stainer and Bell were quick to offer worldwide distribution — they’ve been brilliant to work with.

The various exam boards where totally supportive and the MPA provided ISMN numbers and barcodes. Specialist music printers Caligraving offered valuable advice. We had to re-typeset all the music and took the opportunity to develop a fresh looking ‘Clifton House Style’. We’ve benefitted from generous offers of free help with typesetting and proofing chores. All the covers have been completely redesigned and all in all, we feel that each new edition is a positive improvement over its corresponding original.

A new website www.cliftonedition.com presents the growing catalogue as it unfolds.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’ll take some time (and continued pillaging of our pension fund!), but we feel excited to be “back in the game” again after our five year ‘hoax retirement’. We’re enjoying every minute.