urgent still that that indifference should be attacked, and that music
should be brought within reach of ordinary people. It was a matter of
taking up and completing Pasdeloup's work in a more artistic and more
modern spirit.

A publisher of music, Georges Hartmann, feeling the forces that were
drawing together in French art, gathered about him the greater part of
the talented men of the young school--Franck, Bizet, Saint-Saens,
Massenet, Delibes, Lalo, A. de Castillon, Th. Dubois, Guiraud, Godard,
Paladilhe, and Joncieres--and undertook to produce their works in
public. He rented the Odeon theatre, and got together an orchestra, the
conductorship of which he entrusted to M. Edouard Colonne. And on 2
March, 1873, the _Concert National_ was inaugurated in a musical
matinee, where M. Saint-Saens played his _Concerto in G minor_ and Mme.
Viardot sang Schubert's _Roi des Aulnes_. In the first year six ordinary
concerts were given, and, besides that, two sacred concerts with choirs,
at which Cesar Franck's _Redemption_ and Massenet's _Marie-Magdeleine_
were performed. In 1874 the Odeon was abandoned for the Chatelet. This
venture attracted some attention, and the concerts were patronised by
the public; but the financial results were not great.[216] Hartmann was
discouraged and wished to give the whole thing up. But M. Edouard
Colonne conceived the idea of turning his orchestra into a society, and
of continuing the work under the name of _Association Artistique_. Among
the artist-founders were MM. Bruneau, Benjamin Godard, and Paul
Hillemacher. Its early days were full of struggle; but owing to the
perseverance of the Association all obstacles were finally overcome. In
1903 a festival was held to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. During
these thirty years it had given more than eight hundred concerts, and
had performed the works of about three hundred composers, of which half
were French. The four composers most frequently heard at the Chatelet
were Saint-Saens, Wagner, Beethoven, and Berlioz.[217]

[Footnote 216: It must be remembered that the prices of the seats were
much cheaper than they are to-day; the best were only three francs.]

[Footnote 217: There were about 340 performances of Saint-Saens' works,
380 of Wagner's, 390 of Beethoven's, and 470 of Berlioz's. I owe these
details to the kind information of M. Charles Malherbe and M. Leon
Petitjean, the secretary of the Colonne concerts.]

Berlioz is almost the exc