ond very warmly to M. Guilmant's efforts, and seemed
from the first only to find an historical interest in the masterpieces,
and to miss their depth and life altogether.

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 w