SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
Universités Populaires
I do not attach very much importance to the courageous, though not always very intelligent movement of the Universités Populaires, where since 1886 a collection of amateurs, of fashionable people and artists, meet to make themselves heard, and pretend to initiate the people into what are sometimes the most complicated and aristocratic works of a classic or decadent art. While honouring this propaganda–whose ardour has now abated somewhat–one must say that it has shown more good-will than common-sense. The people do not need amusing, still less should they be bored; what they need is to learn something about music. This is not always easy; for it is not noisy deeds we want, but patience and self-sacrifice. Good intentions are not enough. One knows the final failure of the Conservatoire populaire de Mimi Pinson, started by Gustave Charpentier, for giving musical education to the work-girls of Paris.]
Attempts have been made at different times to found a Théâtre Lyrique Populaire. But up to the present time none has succeeded. The first attempts were made in 1847. M. Carvalho’s old Théâtre-Lyrique was never a financial success, though quite distinguished performances of operas were given there, such as Gounod’s Faust and Gluck’s Orfeo, with Mme. Viardot as an interpreter and Berlioz as conductor; and the directors who followed Carvalho–Rety, Pasdeloup, etc.–did not succeed any better. In 1875 Vizentini took over the Gaîté, with a grant of two hundred thousand francs and excellent artists; but he had to give it up. Since then all sorts of other schemes have been tried by Viollet-le-Duc, Guimet, Lamoureux, Melchior de Vogüé and Julien Goujon, Gabriel Parisot, Colonne and Milliet, Deville, Lagoanère, Corneille, Gailhard, and Carré; but none of them achieved any success. At the moment, a new attempt is being made; and this time the thing seems to show every sign of being a success.
But whatever may be the educational value of the theatre and concerts, they are not complete enough in themselves for the people. To make their influence deep and enduring it must be combined with teaching. Music, no less than every other expression of thought, has no use for the illiterate.
So in this case there was everything to be done. There was no other popular teaching but that of the numerous Galin-Paris-Chevé schools. These schools have rendered great service, and are continuing to render it; but their simplified methods are not without drawbacks and gaps. Their purpose is to teach the people a musical language different from that of cultured people; and although it may not be as difficult as is supposed to go from a knowledge of the one to a knowledge of the other, it is always wrong to raise up a fresh barrier–however small it is–between the cultured people and the other people, who in our own country are already too widely separated.
And besides, it is not enough to know one’s letters; one must also have books to read. What books have the people had?–so far songs sung at the café concerts and the stupid repertoires of choral societies. The folk-song had practically disappeared, and was not yet ready for re-birth; for the populace, even more readily than the cultured people, are inclined to blush at anything which suggests «popularity.»[243]
[Footnote 243: M. Maurice Buchor relates an anecdote which typifies what I mean. «I begged the conductor of a good men’s choral society,» he says, «to have one of Händel’s choruses sung. But he seemed to hesitate. I had made the suggestion tentatively, and then tried to enlarge on the sincerity and breadth of its musical idea. ‘Ah, very good,’ he said, ‘if you really want to hear it, it is easily done; but I was afraid that perhaps it was rather too popular.'» (Poème de la Vie Humaine: Introduction to the Second Series, 1905.) One may add to this the words of a professor of singing in a primary school for Higher Education in Paris: «Folk-music–well, it is very good for the provinces.» (Quoted by Buchor in the Introduction to the Second Series of the Poème, 1902.)]
this was: Universites Populaires
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