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Seghers was a member of the Societe des Concerts at the Conservatoire.  This reached only a restricted public and there was no other symphony concert worthy of the name in Paris at the time.  And if the public was limited, the repertoire was even more so.  Haydn’s, Mozart’s and Beethoven’s symphonies were played almost exclusively, and Mendelssohn’s were introduced with the greatest difficulty.  Only fragments of vast compositions like the oratorios were given.  An author who was still alive was looked upon as an intruder.  However, the conductor was permitted to introduce a solo of his own selection.  Thus my friend Auguste Tolbecque, who was over eighty, was permitted to give—­he still played beautifully—­my first concerto for the violoncello which I had written for him.  Deldevez, the conductor of the famous orchestra at the time, did not overlook the chance to tell me that he had put my concerto on the programme only through consideration for Tolbecque.  Otherwise, he added, he would have preferred Messieurs So-and-so’s.

Not only did the Conservatoire audiences know little music, but the larger public knew none at all.  The symphonies of the three great classic masters were known to amateurs for the most part only through Czerny’s arrangement for two pianos.

This was the situation when Seghers left the Societe des Concerts and founded the Societe St. Cecile.  He led the orchestra himself.  The new society took its name from the St. Cecile hall which was then in the Rue de la Chaussee d’Antin.  It was a large square hall and was excellent in spite of the prejudice in favor of halls with curved lines for music.  Curved surfaces, as Cavaille-Coll, who was an expert in this matter, once told me, distort sound as curved mirrors distort images.  Halls used for music should, therefore, have only straight lines.  The St. Cecile hall was sufficiently large to allow a complete orchestra and chorus to be placed properly and heard as well.

Seghers managed to assemble an excellent and sizable orchestra and he also secured soloists who were young then but who have since become celebrities.  The orchestra was poorly paid and also very unruly.  I have seen them rebel at the difficulties in Beethoven, and it was even worse when Seghers undertook to give Schumann who was considered the ne plus ultra of modernism.  Oftentimes there were real riots.  But we heard there for the first time the overture of Manfred, Mendelssohn’s Symphony in A minor, and the overture to Tannhauser.

The modern French school found the doors in the Rue Bergere closed to them, but they were welcomed with open arms at the Chaussee d’Antin.  Among them were Reber, Gounod, and Gouvy, and even beginners like Georges Bizet and myself.  I made my first venture there with my Symphony in E flat which I wrote when I was seventeen.  In order to get the committee to adopt it, Seghers offered it as a symphony by an unknown author, which had been sent to him from Germany.  The committees swallowed the bait, and the symphony, which would probably not had a hearing if my name had been signed, was praised to the skies.