SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
the keenest musical passion
It is also at the Châtelet that the keenest musical passion has been preserved in the public, even to this day. Thanks to the size of the theatre, which is one of the largest in Paris, and to the great number of cheap seats, you may always find there a number of young students who make the most interested kind of public possible. And the music is something more than a pleasure to them–it is a necessity. There are some that make great sacrifices in order to have a seat at the Sunday concerts. And many of these young men and women live all the week on the thought of forgetting the world for a few hours in musical enjoyment. Such a public did not exist in France before 1870. It is to the honour of the Châtelet and the Pasdeloup concerts to have created it.
Édouard Colonne has done more than educate musical taste in France; for no one has worked harder than he to break down the barriers that separated the French public from the art of other lands; and, at the same time, he has himself helped to make French art known to foreigners. When he himself was conducting concerts all over Europe he entrusted the conductorship at the Châtelet to the great German Kapellmeister and to foreign composers–to Richard Strauss, Grieg, Tschaikowsky, Hans Richter, Hermann Levi, Mottl, Nikisch, Mengelberg, Siegfried Wagner, and many others. No other conductor has done so much for Parisian music during the last thirty years; and we must not forget it.[219]
[Footnote 219: It is known that M. Colonne has now a helper in M. Gabriel Pierné, who will succeed him when he retires.]
this was: The Keenest Musical Passion
go to next chapter: The Lamoureux concerts
