* * * * *
3. _The Schola Cantorum_
The Lamoureux Concerts had served their purpose, and, in their turn,
their heroic mission came to an end. They had forced Wagner on Paris;
and Paris, as always, had overshot the mark, and could swear by no one
but Wagner. French musicians were translating Gounod's or Massenet's
ideas into Wagner's style; Parisian critics repeated Wagner's theories
at random, whether they understood them or not--generally when they did
not understand them. A reaction was inevitable directly Paris was well
saturated with Wagner; and it came about in 1890, among a chosen few,
some of whom had been, and were even still, under Wagner's influence. It
was at first only a mild reaction, and showed itself in a return to the
classics of the past and to the great primitives in music.
There had been several attempts in this direction before, but none of
them had succeeded in making any impression on the mass of the public.
In 1843, Joseph Napoleon Ney, Prince of Moszkowa, founded in Paris a
society for the performance of religious and classical vocal music. This
society, which the Prince himself conducted in his own house, set itself
to perform the vocal works of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
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