It is a new aim
for the _Societe Nationale_." But it does not seem that it has yet
attained this goal, nor that it is near attaining it, despite some not
quite happy attempts.
But at least the _Societe Nationale_ has gloriously achieved the task it
set itself. In thirty years it has created in Paris a little centre of
earnest composers of symphonies and chamber-music, and a cultured public
that seems able to understand them.
* * * * *
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-Saens,
Massenet, Delibes, Lalo, A. de Castillon, Th. Dubois, Guiraud, Godard,
Paladilhe, and Joncieres--and undertook to produce their works in
public.
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