SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
School exercises by its teaching
Outside the influence that the School exercises by its teaching, its propaganda by means of concerts and publications is very active. From its foundation up to 1904 it had given two hundred performances in one hundred and thirty provincial towns; more than one hundred and fifty concerts in Paris, of which fifty were of orchestral and choral music, sixty of organ music, and forty of chamber-music. These concerts have been well attended by enthusiastic and appreciative audiences, and have been a school for public taste. One does not look for perfect execution there,[232] but for intelligent interpretations and a thirst for a fuller knowledge of the great works of the past. They have revived Monteverde’s Orfeo and his Incoronazione di Poppea, which had been forgotten these three centuries; and it was following an interest created by repeated performances of Rameau at the Schola[233] that Dardanus was performed at Dijon under M. d’Indy’s direction, Castor et Pollux at Montpellier under M. Charles Bordes’ direction, and that in 1908 the Opera at Paris gave Hippolyte et Aricie. Branches of the Schola have, been started at Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Avignon, Montpellier, Nancy, Épinal, Montluçon, Saint-Chamond, and Saint-Jean-deLuz.[234] A publishing house has been associated with the School at Paris; and from this we get Reviews, such as the Tribune de Saint-Gervais; publications of old music, such as the Anthologie des maîtres religieux primitifs des XVe, XVIe, et XVIIe siècles, edited by Charles Bordes; the Archives des maîtres de l’orgue des XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe siècles, edited by Alexandre Guilmant and André Pirro; the Concerts spirituels de la Schola, the new editions of Orfeo, and the Incoronazione di Poppea, edited by M. Vincent d’Indy; and publications of modern music, such as the Collection du chant populaire, the Répertoire moderne de musique vocale et d’orgue, and, notably, the Édition mutuelle, published by the composers themselves, whose property it is.
[Footnote 232: The orchestra is mainly composed of pupils; and, by a generous arrangement, the financial profits from rehearsals and performances are divided among the pupils who take part in them, and credited to their account. And so besides the exhibitioners the Schola has a great number of pupils who are not well off, but who manage by these concerts to defray almost the entire expenses of their education there. «The concerts serve more especially as aesthetic exercises for the pupils, and as a means of according them teaching at small expense to themselves.» I owe this information and all that precedes it to the kindness of M. J. de la Laurencie, the general secretary of the Schola, whom I should like to thank.]
[Footnote 233: The Schola has even performed, in an open-air theatre, Ramcau’s La Guirlande.]
[Footnote 234: One may add to this list the choral societies of Nantes and Besançon, which are bodies of the same order as the Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais. And we may also attribute to the influence of the Schola an independent society, the Société J.S. Bach, started in Paris by an old Schola pupil, M. Gustave Bret, which, since 1905, has devoted itself to the performance of the great works of Bach. It is not one of the least merits of the Schola that it has helped to form good amateur choirs of the same type as the choral societies of Germany.]
this was: School Exercises By Its Teaching
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