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Updated: June 27, 2025
Richter and Mottl, the only considerable conductors besides Lamoureux whom we had heard in England up to 1896, may be compared with a couple of organists who come here, expecting to find their instruments ready, in fair working order, and accurately in tune.
That difference lies partly in the personality of the two conductors, and partly in the fact that the Lamoureux concerts, although of later date than the Colonne concerts by less than ten years, represent a new generation in music.
Both made mistakes at times; and a seemingly paradoxical thing is that when a Lamoureux man stumbled all the world was bound to hear it, whereas in our English orchestras a score of mistakes might be made in an evening without many of us being much the wiser.
Its great analogy to several sea-plants, with adiantum leaves, especially the genus caulerpa of M. Lamoureux, of which the Fucus proliter of Forskael is one of the numerous species, engaged us to rank it provisionally among the sea-wracks, and give it the name of Fucus vitifolius. The vine-leaved fucus presents a physiological phenomenon of the greatest interest.
Lamoureux had need, to a certain extent, to be himself directed either by the living traditions of Bayreuth, or by the thought of modern and living 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.
Lamoureux attempted in 1873 to perform the great choral works of Bach and Händel; and in 1878 the celebrated French organist, M. Alexandre Guilmant, ventured to give concerts at the Trocadéro for the organ and orchestra, which were devoted to religious music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It proved how a passion and enthusiasm for music had been roused in France; and the passion, though unjust in its expression, was more fruitful and of far greater worth than indifference. The Schola Cantorum The Lamoureux Concerts had served their purpose, and, in their turn, their heroic mission came to an end.
The most devoted admirers of Lamoureux and I was his fairly devoted admirer myself will not deny that the slow movement is full of poetry, the scherzo of a remote, mystical emotion, and the Finale of a wondrous combination of sadness, regret and high triumphant joy; and anyone who claims that Lamoureux gave us the slightest hint of those qualities must be more than his admirer must be his infatuated slave.
When I wrote the preceding paragraphs on Lamoureux, some of my colleagues were good enough to neglect their own proper business while they put me right about orchestral playing in general and that of Lamoureux in particular. All which I flatly deny, and describe as the foolish ravings of uninformed theorists. Only unpractical dreamers fancy that a composer thinks of "notes" when he composes.
But Lamoureux was not long before he returned to the conductorship of the concerts, which had now returned to the Château-d'Eau theatre; and a few months before his death, in 1899, he conducted the first performance of Tristan at the Nouveau theatre. And so he had the happiness of being present at the complete triumph of the cause for which he had fought so stubbornly for nearly twenty years.
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