and the overtures of Les Francs-Juges and La Muette.  It was impossible to set up a rival society against him; and an exclusive monopoly in music was, therefore, held by him.  According to M. Saint-Saens he was a mediocre musician, and had, in spite of his passion for music, “immense incapacity.”  In Harmonie et Melodie M. Saint-Saens says:  “The few chamber-music societies that existed were also closed to all new-comers; their programmes only contained the names of undisputed celebrities, the writers of classic symphonies.  In those times one had really to be devoid of all common sense to write music.”

A new generation was growing up, however,—­a generation that was serious and thoughtful, that was more attracted by pure music than by the theatre, that was filled with a burning desire to found a national art.  To this generation M. Saint-Saens and M. Vincent d’Indy belong.  The war of 1870 strengthened these ideas about music, and, while the war was still raging, there sprang from them the Societe Nationale de Musique.

One must speak of this society with respect, for it was the cradle and sanctuary of French art.[215] All that was great in French music from 1870 to 1900 found a home there.  Without it, the greater part of the works that are the honour of our music would never have been played; perhaps they would not ever have been written.  The Society possessed the rare merit of being able to anticipate public opinion by ten or eleven years, and in some ways it has formed the public mind and obliged it to honour those whom the Society had already recognised as great musicians.

[Footnote 215:  The facts which follow are taken from the archives of the Societe Nationale de Musique, and have been given me by M. Pierre de Breville, the Society’s secretary.]

The two founders of the Society were Romaine Bussine, professor of Singing at the Conservatoire, and M. Camille Saint-Saens.  And, following their initiative, Cesar Franck, Ernest Guiraud, Massenet, Garcin, Gabriel Faure, Henri Duparc, Theodore Dubois, and Taffanel, joined forces with them, and at a meeting on 25 February, 1871, agreed to found a musical society that should give hearings to the works of living French composers exclusively.  The first meetings were interrupted by the doings of the Commune; but they began again in October, 1871.  The Society’s early statutes were drawn up by Alexis de Castillon, a military officer and a talented composer, who, after having served in the war of 1870 at the head of the mobiles of Eure-et-Loire, was one of the founders of French chamber-music, and died prematurely in 1873, aged thirty-five.  It was these statutes, signed by Saint-Saens, Castillon, and Garcin, that gave the Society its title of Societe Nationale de Musique, and its device, “Ars gallica.”  This is what the statutes say about the aims of the Society: