ing composers; and the greatest service he
rendered to French music was his creation, thanks to his extreme care
for material perfection, of an orchestra that was marvellously equipped
for symphonic music.

This seeking for perfection has been carried on by his successor, M.
Camille Chevillard, whose orchestra is even more refined still. One may
say, I think, that it is to-day the best in Paris. M. Chevillard is more
attracted by pure music than Lamoureux was; and he rightly finds that
dramatic music has been occupying too large a place in Parisian
concerts. In a letter published by the _Mercure de France_, in January,
1903, he reproaches the educators of public taste with having fostered a
liking for opera, and with not having awakened a respect for pure music:
"Any four bars from one of Mozart's quartettes have," he says, "a
greater educational value than a showy scene from an opera." No one in
Paris conducts classic works better than he, especially the works that
possess clean, plastic beauty; and in Germany itself it would be
difficult to find anyone who would give a more delicate interpretation
of some of Haendel's and Mozart's symphonic works. His orchestra has
kept, moreover, the superiority that it had already acquired in its
repertory of Wagner's works. But M. Chevillard has communicated a warmth
and energy of rhythm to it that it did not possess before. His
interpretations of Beethoven, even if they are somewhat superficial, are
very full of life. Like Lamoureux, he has hardly caught the spirit of
French romantic works--of Berlioz, and still less of Franck and his
school; and he seems to have but lukewarm sympathy for the more recent
developments of French music. But he understands well the German
romantic composers, especially Schumann, for whom he has a marked
liking; and he tried, though without great success, to introduce Liszt
and Brahms into France, and was the first among us to attract real
attention to Russian music, whose brilliant and delicate colouring he
excels in rendering. And, like M. Colonne, he has brought the great
German _Kapellmeister_ among us--Weingartner, Nikisch, and Richard
Strauss, the last mentioned having directed the first performance in
Paris of his symphonic poems, _Zarathustra_, _Don Quixote_, and
_Heldenleben_, at the Lamoureux concerts.

Nothing could have better completed the musical education of the public
than this continuous defile, for the past ten years, of _Kapellmeist