n indication of the change in public taste. In
1890, Cesar Franck died in Paris. Belgian by birth and temperament, and
French in feeling and by musical education, he had remained outside the
Wagnerian movement in his own serene and fecund solitude. To his
intellectual greatness and the charm his personal genius held for the
little band of friends who knew and revered him he added the authority
of his knowledge. Unconsciously he brought back to us the soul of
Sebastian Bach, with its infinite richness and depth; and through this
he found himself the head of a school (without having wished it) and the
greatest teacher of contemporary French music. After his death, his
name was the means of rallying together the younger school of
musicians. In 1892, the _Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais_, under the
direction of M. Charles Bordes, reinstated to honour and popularised
Gregorian and Palestrinian music; and, following the initiative of their
director, the _Schola Cantorum_ was founded in 1894 for the revival of
religious music. Ambition grew with success; and from the _Schola_
sprang the _Ecole Superieure de Musique_, under the direction of
Franck's most famous pupil, M. Vincent d'Indy. This school, founded on a
solid knowledge, not only of the classics, but of the primitives in
music, took from its very beginning in 1900 a frankly national
character, and was in some ways opposed to German art. At the same time,
performances of Bach and seventeenth-and eighteenth-century music became
more and more frequent; and more intimate relationship with the artists
of other countries, repeated visits of the great _Kapellmeister_,
foreign virtuosi and composers (especially Richard Strauss), and,
lastly, of Russian composers, completed the education of the Parisian
musical public, who, after repeated rebukes from the critics, became
conscious of the awakening of a national personality, and of an
impatient desire to free itself from German tutelage. By turns it
gratefully and warmly received M. Bruneau's _Le Reve_ (1891), M.
d'Indy's _Fervaal_ (1898), M. Gustave Charpentier's _Louise_ (1900)--all
of which seemed like works of liberation. But, as a matter of fact,
these lyric dramas were by no means free from foreign influences, and
especially from Wagnerian influences. M. Debussy's _Pelleas et
Melisande_, in 1902, seemed to mark more truly the emancipation of
French music. From this time on, French music felt that it had left
school, and claimed t