SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Music and the People
6. Music and the People
Thus music had almost come back to its own, as far as the higher kind of teaching and the intellectual world were concerned. It remained for a place to be found for it in other kinds of teaching; for there, and especially in secondary education, its advance was less sure. It remained for us to make it enter into the life of the nation and into the people’s education. This was a difficult task, for in France art has always had an aristocratic character; and it was a task in which neither the State nor musicians were very interested. The Republic still continued to regard music as something outside the people. There had even been opposition shown during the last thirty years towards any attempt at popular musical education. In the old days of the Pasdeloup concerts one could pay seventy-five centimes for the cheapest places, and have a seat for that; but at some of the symphony concerts to-day the cheapest seats are two and four francs. And so the people that sometimes came to the Pasdeloup concerts never come at all to the big concerts to-day.
And that is why one should applaud the enterprise of Victor Charpentier, who, in March, 1905, founded a Symphonic Society of amateurs called L’Orchestre, to give free hearings for the benefit of the people. And in that Paris, where forty years ago one would have had a good deal of trouble to get together two or three amateur quartettes, Victor Charpentier has been able to count on one hundred and fifty good performers,[240] who under his direction, or that of Saint-Saëns or Gabriel Fauré, have already given seventeen free concerts, of which ten were given at the Trocadéro.[241] It is to be hoped that the State will help forward such a generous work for the people in a rather more practical way than it has done up till now.[242]
[Footnote 240: There are ninety violins, fifteen violas, and fifteen violoncellos. Unfortunately it is much more difficult to get recruits for the wood wind and brass.]
[Footnote 241: They have performed classical music of composers like Bach, Händel, Gluck, Rameau, and Beethoven; and modern music of composers like Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Dukas, etc. This Society has just installed itself in the ancient chapel of the Dominicans of the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, who have given them the use of it.]
[Footnote 242: Of late years there has been a veritable outburst of concerts at popular prices–some of them in imitation of the German Restaurationskonzerte, such as the Concerts-Rouge, the Concerts-Touche, etc., where classical and modern symphony music may be heard. These concerts are increasing fast, and have great success among a public that is almost exclusively bourgeois, but they are yet a long way behind the popular performances of Händel in London, where places may be had for sixpence and threepence.
this was: Music And The People
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