Our story begins in 1896, when Louis Billaudot took over the management of Alphonse Laurens in 1902.

His two sons, Robert and Gérard, joined the publishing house - in 1927 and 1928 respectively - and ran it from his death in 1936.

Robert left the publishing house in 1957 for health reasons and left the ownership and management of the publishing company to his brother Gérard.

François Derveaux, one of Gérard Billaudot's sons-in-law, took over the publishing house and transformed its legal form into a limited company on 19 July 1979. He is still the president. Florence, his second daughter, was director from 2007 to 2018 and was succeeded by Jean-Michel Issartel, his brother-in-law.

The constitution of our house is characterised by a double development carried out in parallel: external and internal.

External development

Catalogue purchase : Auguste Cordie (1903), Victor Lory (1905), Edmond Gobert (1907), Georges Tilliard (1907), Jules Guille (1918), Virgile Thomas (1921), Albert Pinatel (1926), Albert Béthune (1945), Jacques Pitault (1961), Andrieu Frères (1962), Fougeray-Leblanc (1964), Louis Jacquot (1973), Henri Maquaire (1980), Petit Duc (1987), La Forêt de Retz (1993)

But also:

1958: Éditions Costallat, themselves owners of the Richault collection since 1903. In the 19th century, the Richault collection was one of the most important in France, as publisher of Berlioz, Liszt, Alkan, Hummel, Moscheles, Boëly...

1966: Noël collection. In 1878, Albert Noël, in association with Félix Mackar, became the concessionary publisher of Tchaikovsky's works, some of which still appear in their original editions in our catalogue. Albert Noël's son, Pierre Noël, reoriented the publishing house at a time when Tchaikovsky's works were no longer protected, by publishing, after the Second World War, good teaching works and by giving young composers, such as Maurice Ohana, André Jolivet, Jean Rivier, Georges Delerue and Antoine Tisné, their chance.

1988: Éditions Françaises de Musique, created by Henry Barraud, then director of music at Radio (now Radio France), a publishing collection that reflects contemporary creation from 1947 to 1975 but also includes works from the great repertoire.

2015 : 8 works from the La Stravaganza edition (including "La technique de l'embouchure" by Philippe Bernold).

2018: Editions Hit Diffusion, specialised in collections and methods for piano and guitar mainly, more oriented towards students of music schools, private lessons and self-taught.

Internal development

• 1959-79: The new orientation determined by Gérard Billaudot, who remained alone at the head of the house, consisted of two branches: on the one hand, works for teaching music, and on the other, instrumental and orchestral scores.

The educational sector was based on existing texts and developed by the exploitation of and numerous new editions from the Costallat-Richault catalogues.

Moreover, numerous new educational titles were published, such as Alain Grimoin and Marie-Jeanne Bourdeaux's Solfège, L’ABC de la flûte by Robert Hériché and Six cordes... une guitare by Jean-Maurice Mourat, which accompanied the plan for teaching music set up by Marcel Landowski, Director of Music for the Ministry of Culture (read Jacques Castérède's article below). Instrumental works for young people were published at the same time as others for experienced instrumentalists. Finally, orchestral works by composers such as André Jolivet, Maurice Ohana, Pierre-Max Dubois and Antoine Tisné saw the day.

This was also the period of the creation of collections headed by instrumentalists seeking to develop a repertoire for their instrument. Thus, Maurice André, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Jacques Lancelot, Maurice Allard, Pierre Pierlot, Robert Veyron-Lacroix, Maxence Larrieu and Marie-Claire Alain, in particular, joined the house.

• 1980-1996: The previous orientation was accentuated by adapting the works to new teaching methods such as musical training. In accordance with the FNUCMU (National Federation of Music Conservatory Unions), of which Maurice Gevaudan was president at the time, a series of musical training books was published, co-authored by Michel Vergnault, Henri-Claude Fantapié, Maris-Luce Lucas and Dia Succari.

A collection headed by Aline Holstein, Jacques Dauchy and Marc Bleuse would publish the works of Jean-Clément Jollet with considerable success. In addition, an opening was made with the publication of works for teaching music in school.

• Since the 2000s, the collection, directed by Emmanuel Gaultier and Chantal Boulay, has revealed a variety of pedagogical and vocal works. New editors complete the catalogue such as Philippe Bernold, Philippe Fritsch, Jean-Yves Fourmeau, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon...

But our company is also the publisher of many current composers, such as Patrick Burgan, Jacques Castérède, Qigang Chen, Marc-André Dalbavie, Jean-Michel Damase, Edison Denisov, Bertrand Dubedout, Thierry Escaich, Graciane Finzi, Philippe Hurel, Philippe Leroux, Betsy Jolas, Fabien Lévy, Serge Nigg, Germaine Tailleferre, Alexandre Tansman, Guillaume Connesson, Martín Matalon, Ondřej Adámek, Oscar Strasnoy, Henri Dutilleux, Karol Beffa, Franck Bedrossian, Pascal Zavaro, Laurent Cuniot, Anthony Girard, and more recently Elise Bertrand, Jean-Baptise Robin, Yves Chauris, Camille Pépin, Jules Matton, and this, without any aesthetic exclusivity.

Finally, in the context of the revelation of French musical heritage, our publishing house has published between 1993 and 2002 seventeen works of the Edition Monumentale of the works of Jean-Philippe Rameau, with the support in particular of Musica Gallica.