SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
The Grand Symphony Concert
2. The Grand Symphony Concerts
Although it was an urgent matter that young French composers should unite to withstand the general indifference of the public, it was more urgent still that that indifference should be attacked, and that music should be brought within reach of ordinary people. It was a matter of taking up and completing Pasdeloup’s work in a more artistic and more modern spirit.
A publisher of music, Georges Hartmann, feeling the forces that were drawing together in French art, gathered about him the greater part of the talented men of the young school–Franck, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Delibes, Lalo, A. de Castillon, Th. Dubois, Guiraud, Godard, Paladilhe, and Joncières–and undertook to produce their works in public. He rented the Odéon theatre, and got together an orchestra, the conductorship of which he entrusted to M. Édouard Colonne. And on 2 March, 1873, the Concert National was inaugurated in a musical matinée, where M. Saint-Saëns played his Concerto in G minor and Mme. Viardot sang Schubert’s Roi des Aulnes. In the first year six ordinary concerts were given, and, besides that, two sacred concerts with choirs, at which César Franck’s Rédemption and Massenet’s Marie-Magdeleine were performed. In 1874 the Odéon was abandoned for the Châtelet. This venture attracted some attention, and the concerts were patronised by the public; but the financial results were not great.[216] Hartmann was discouraged and wished to give the whole thing up. But M. Édouard Colonne conceived the idea of turning his orchestra into a society, and of continuing the work under the name of Association Artistique. Among the artist-founders were MM. Bruneau, Benjamin Godard, and Paul Hillemacher. Its early days were full of struggle; but owing to the perseverance of the Association all obstacles were finally overcome. In 1903 a festival was held to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. During these thirty years it had given more than eight hundred concerts, and had performed the works of about three hundred composers, of which half were French. The four composers most frequently heard at the Châtelet were Saint-Saëns, Wagner, Beethoven, and Berlioz.[217]
[Footnote 216: It must be remembered that the prices of the seats were much cheaper than they are to-day; the best were only three francs.]
[Footnote 217: There were about 340 performances of Saint-Saëns’ works, 380 of Wagner’s, 390 of Beethoven’s, and 470 of Berlioz’s. I owe these details to the kind information of M. Charles Malherbe and M. Léon Petitjean, the secretary of the Colonne concerts.]
Berlioz is almost the exclusive property of the Châtelet. Not only have they performed his works there more frequently than anywhere else,[218] but they are better understood there than in other places. The Colonne orchestra and its conductor, gifted with great warmth of spirit,–though it is sometimes a little intemperate–are rather bothered by works of a classic nature and by those that show contemplative feeling; but they give wonderful expression to Berlioz’s tumultuous romanticism, his poetic enthusiasm, and the bright and delicate colouring of his paintings and his musical landscapes. Although Berlioz has his place at the Chevillard and Conservatoire concerts, it is to the Châtelet that his followers flock; and their enthusiasm has not been affected by the campaign that for several years has been directed against Berlioz by some French critics under the influence of the younger musical party–the followers of d’Indy and Debussy.
[Footnote 218: The Damnation de Faust alone was given in its entirety a hundred and fifty times in thirty years.]
this was: The Grand Symphony Concert
go to next chapter: the keenest musical passion
