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In 1895, as the result of a meeting organised by the Correspondance générale de l'Instruction primaire, delightful collections of folk-songs were distributed in the schools. The melodies were taken from old airs collected by M. Julien Tiersot, and M. Maurice Buchor had put some fresh and sparkling verses to them.
"M. Buchor," I wrote at the time, "will enjoy a pleasure not common to poets of our day: his songs will soar up into the open air, like the lark in his Chanson de labour. The populace may even recognise its own spirit in them, and one day take possession of them, as if they were of their own contriving."
It is curious, and rather sad, that out of eighty pieces chosen by M. Buchor only nine of them are French; and this is reckoning the Italians, Lully and Cherubini, as Frenchmen. M. Buchor has had to go to German classical musicians almost entirely, and, generally speaking, his choice has been a happy one.
Had they heard the same music at a concert they would probably not have been very much moved. And that makes M. Buchor in the right. Let the French people enrich themselves with the musical treasures of Germany until the time comes when they are able to create a music of their own! This is a kind of peaceful conquest to which our art is accustomed.
The great thing is that the music has really got hold of them, and that now one may hear the provincial Écoles Normales performing choruses from Fidelio, The Messiah, Schumann's Faust, or Bach cantatas. The honour of this remarkable achievement, which no one could have believed possible twenty years ago, belongs almost entirely to M. Maurice Buchor.
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