Then a pupil of Franck’s, M. Henry Expert, who began his admirable works on Musical History in 1882, laid the foundation of the Societe J.S.  Bach, in order to spread the knowledge of ancient music written between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries.  And he succeeded in interesting in his undertaking, not only the principal French musicians, such as Cesar Franck, Saint-Saens, and Gounod, but also foreigners, such as Hans von Buelow, Tschaikowsky, Grieg, Sgambati, and Gevaert.  Unhappily this society never got farther than arranging what it wanted to do, and only sketched out the plans that were realised later by Charles Bordes.

The general public were not really interested in the art of the old musicians until the Association des Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais was founded in 1892 by Charles Bordes, the choirmaster of the church of Saint-Gervais.  The immediate success and the noisy renown of the Society were due to other things besides the talent of its conductor, who combined with a lively artistic intelligence both common-sense and energy and a remarkable gift for organisation—­it was due partly to the help of favourable circumstances, partly to the surfeit of Wagnerism, of which I have just spoken, and partly to the birth of a new religious art, which had sprung up since the death of Cesar Franck round the memory of that great musician.

It is not my intention here to write an appreciation of Cesar Franck’s genius, but it is not possible to understand the musical movement in Paris of the last fifteen years if one does not take into account the importance of his teaching.  The organ class at the Conservatoire, where in 1872 Franck succeeded his old master Benoist, was for a long time, as M. Vincent d’Indy says, “the true centre for the study of Composition at the Conservatoire.  Many of his fellow-workers could never bring themselves to look upon him as one of themselves, because he had the boldness to see in art something other than the means of earning a living.  Indeed, Cesar Franck was not of them; and they made him feel this.”  But the young students made no mistake about the matter.  “At this time,” M. d’Indy also tells us,[222] “that is to say from 1872 to 1876, the three courses of Advanced Musical Composition were given by three professors who were not at all fitted for their work.  One was Victor Masse, a composer of simple light operas and a man with no understanding of a symphony, who was very frequently ill and had to entrust his teaching to one of his pupils; another was Henri Reber, an oldish musician with narrow and dogmatic ideas; and the third was Francois Bazin, who was not capable of distinguishing in his pupil’s fugues a false answer from a true one, and whose highest title to glory is derived from a composition called Le Voyage en Chine.  So it is not surprising that Cesar Franck’s teaching, founded on that of Bach and Beethoven, but admitting, as well, imagination and all new and liberal ideas, did, at that time, draw to him all young minds that had lofty ambitions and that were really in love with their art.  And so, quite unconsciously, the master attracted to himself all the sincere and artistic talent that was scattered about the different classes of the Conservatoire, as well as that of his outside pupils.”