Lafite Publishing House
The publishing house Lafite for music books and media publishes exemplary works such as series publications on composers , interpreters and especially musicology in the context of Austrian cultural policy and in European exchange.
family business
The publishing house is managed by Marion Diederichs-Lafite and Joachim Diederichs . The publishing house was founded in 1962 by Elisabeth Lafite with a concession from the Viennese provincial government and expanded as a company in 1966.
From magazine to publisher
The need to found a company arose from the need to build up a broad basis of good cooperation in Vienna for modern music . At the “ Expo ” in Brussels, the Austrian music magazine was able to co-supervise programmatic courses and also edit Austrian music as a special issue at the world exhibition . In the following years 1959/60 the editors requested the establishment of an “Austrian Music Information Center” for all types of media for national documentation and international exchange. But initially “special volumes” could be realized under their own direction in a transitional phase 1960–62 on special occasions as the publishing house Österreichische Musikzeitschrift : Life and work of the Swiss composer Frank Martin by Rudolf Klein, who then published the contemporary documentation Die Wiener Schule and himself for great hours in the Theater an der Wien as a review of the reopening. The guiding principle were music documentations by Otto Erich Deutsch, a friend of those responsible . The two prerequisites of well-founded, wide-ranging experience and funding out of public interest thus provided the basis for starting another company to develop the music expediently outside of the operation of the magazine. In 1994, both companies were linked by the term " Musikzeit " in corporate identity to create a common presence.
Publication series
The Lafite publishing house saw it as its own task to start scientific music documentation centrally for the present by publishing everything from the first scientific studies to the information catalog as a manual. It was about clarity with rich, carefully selected image material in order to gain that condensed form in the abundance of material that guarantees completeness and concentration on the essentials.
The series of composers of the XX. Century . First of all, it considered composers who were awarded the “Grand State Prize” , then the work of politically displaced, remaining, or exiled artists - the series of monographs grew to life like works with informative directories. The nearby publisher ÖBV cooperated with the distribution. Then, in the 1990s, the edition was further developed into composers of our time . The books by Theodor W. Adorno zu Alban Berg as “Master of the Smallest Transition”, György Ligeti : Beyond Avant-garde and Postmodernism by Constantin Floros or the writings of Friedrich Cerha Ein Netzwerk, received global reviews .
As a result of the alliance with the music academies, further publications were created from 1967 onwards, from the series Basics of Harmonical Research by Hans Kayser , Josef Mertin Performance Practice of Early Music, on art singing and music education by Hans Sittner to current work at the respective institutions - on the advice of the rectors in Vienna and Graz . Individual items were translated in the foreign language market, first publications by Theodor W. Adorno such as volumes by the “Austrian Adorno” Harald Kaufmann , who taught at the Graz University of Music , immediately met with international resonance.
Focus on "Viennese School"
In 1974 the series of publications on Arnold Schönberg started with three groundbreaking congresses, which the musicologist Rudolf Stephan as editor and also president of the jointly founded “ International Schönberg Society ” had a profound spiritual influence on. In continuation, volumes appeared with excellent research by younger musicologists, broadening the view of the intellectual situation in what was then Vienna.
As a new series from 2012 onwards, Lafite Webern Studies will be published for accompanying documentation and discussion in the context of the Anton Webern Complete Edition, which is being prepared at the University of Basel (Simon Obert and Matthias Schmidt) and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna maintains another job.
Publication media
In 1994 an expansion phase began. The publishing house invested in technology for production and distribution, expanded both the multimedia production and developed electronic publishing, also for different formats. In 2003, all of the writings of the composer Josef Matthias Hauer were made electronically accessible, and then enriched with facsimiles, images and sound, in an expanded edition as DVDrom, they set new standards. The aim remains to widely publish clear documents on composer personalities or topics that should be of lasting interest.
Current publication series
- Composers of our time (from 1964, before the 20th century)
- Publications of the Vienna University of Music (1967–86, f.)
- Basic harmonic research (1968–80, f.)
- Publications of the International Schönberg Society (from 1978)
- Webern Studies (from 2012)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Otto Erich Deutsch in the ÖMZ, in: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, year 18, issue 9, Vienna 1963, p. 405 ff., Especially p. 406.
- ↑ In addition Adorno's letters with Elisabeth Lafite, published as an extended electronic edition of Volume 15, Verlag Lafite, Vienna 2010.
- ↑ Gottfried Krieger: Harald Kaufmann as the founder of “valuation research” in Austria, in: ÖMZ, year 65, issue 7–8, Vienna 2010, pp. 4–12, especially p. 9.
- ↑ Stefan Fricke: Review of Hauer Schriften, Manifeste, Documents, in: dissonanz, Heft 9, Basel 2007, p. 53.