t Pollux_ at the Montpellier theatre. The
man's activity was incredible, and nothing seemed to tire him. He was
planning to start a dramatic training-school at Montpellier for the
production of seventeenth and eighteenth century operas, when he died,
in November, 1909, at the age of forty-four, and so deprived French art
of one of its best and most unselfish servants.]

But M. d'Indy, like a courageous apostle, has continued the direction of
the _Schola_ with a firm hand and unwearying care, despite his varied
activities as composer, professor, and _Kapellmeister_; and he is one of
the surest and most reliable guides for a young school of French music.
And if his mind is rather given to abstractions, and his moods are
sometimes rather combative, and certain prejudices (which are not always
musical ones) make him lean towards ideals of reason and immovable
faith--and if at times his followers unconsciously distort his ideas,
and try to dam the stream which flows from life itself, I am convinced
it is only the passing evidence of a reaction, perhaps a natural one,
against the exaggerations they have encountered, and that the _Schola_
will always know how to avoid the rocks where revolutionaries of the
past have run aground and become the conservatives of the morrow. I hope
the _Schola_ will never grow into the kind of aristocratic school that
builds walls about itself, but will always open wide its doors and
welcome every new force in music, even to such as have ideals opposed to
its own. Its future renown and the well-being of French art can only
thus be maintained.

* * * * *

4. _The Chamber-Music Societies_

On parallel lines with the big symphony concerts and the new
_conservatoires_, societies were formed to spread the knowledge of, and
form a taste for, chamber-music. This music, so common in Germany, was
almost unknown in Paris before 1870. There was nothing but the Maurin
Quartette, which gave five or six concerts every winter in the Salle
Pleyel, and played Beethoven's last quartettes there. But these
performances only attracted a small number of artists;[236] and so far
as the general public was concerned the _Societe des derniers quartuors
de Beethoven_ had the reputation for devoting itself to a singular and
incomprehensible kind of music that had been written by a deaf man.

[Footnote 236: The quality of the audience atoned, it is true, for its
small numbers. Berlioz use