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Agency and Change: Berlioz in Britain, 1870–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Leanne Langley
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Abstract

Far from being always unjustly neglected until the late twentieth century, as a recent view would have it, Berlioz's music enjoyed dedicated attention and considerable admiration a century earlier. His orchestral works, in particular, were taken up by a range of skilful players and conductors in Britain from the 1870s, yielding performances in the English regions, the London suburbs and in Scotland that impressed ordinary listeners much more than many experienced ones. I argue that structural change and professional competition within the British concert industry to 1920 assisted this remarkable reception – largely ignored in the historiography of Berlioz's reputation as well as in that of British musical culture – while imaginative musicians, astute promoters, writers and thousands of listeners continued to benefit from contact with his work. Berlioz's challenging music indeed became an agent of aesthetic change in Britain – a benchmark, and a calling-card, of modern orchestral presentation that was both standard and commonly accessible before the First World War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 132 , Issue 2 , 2007 , pp. 306 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2007

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References

This article is an expanded version of a paper given at the Conference ‘Interpreting Berlioz: Music 1803–2003’ in London (2002), and subsequently in altered form at the Fourth Biennial Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference (Leeds, 2003) and the Sixty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (Houston, 2003). For financial support through the ‘Transformation of London Concert Life, 1880–1914’ project at Goldsmiths College, University of London, I amgrateful to the Arts andHumanities Research Council. For intellectual support and unfailing encouragement, I particularly wish to acknowledge my colleague the late Cyril Ehrlich, to whose memory this article is dedicated.Google Scholar

1 For a cogent summary of the first Berlioz revival in France, fostered by Ernest Reyer and the concerts of Pasdeloup, Colonne, Lamoureux and the Concerts du Conservatoire, see Wright, Lesley, ‘Berlioz's Impact in France’, The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz, ed. Peter Bloom (Cambridge, 2000), 253–68.Google Scholar

2 See Simon McVeigh and Cyril Ehrlich, ‘The Modernisation of London Concert Life around 1900‘, The Business of Music, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool, 2002), 96–120.Google Scholar

3 The fickleness of London audiences was well known; see Edward A. Baughan, ‘London's Apathy and Caprice’, Monthly Musical Record, 33 (1903), 222–4.Google Scholar

4 As at Birmingham, Bradford, Liverpool, Leeds and Belfast. See Johnston, Roy, ‘“Here will we sit”: The Creation of the Ulster Hall’, Music and British Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. Christina Bashford and Leanne Langley (Oxford, 2000), 215–32.Google Scholar

5 From 1874 the Glasgow Choral Union gave an annual six-week season. Orchestral repertory, chamber concerts and newer music gradually took hold, leading in 1891 to the founding of the Scottish Orchestra (now the Royal Scottish National Orchestra). The Birmingham Festival had a longer tradition of orchestral accompaniment but also a sterling choral reputation. Divided loyalties fuelled more than 20 attempts to establish a permanent orchestra there before 1920, when municipal funding secured what is now the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In both cities local aspiration, entrepreneurism and working opportunities for players contributed to growth of orchestral culture despite choralists' objections.Google Scholar

6 Jullien had been one of the first impresarios to take large groups on provincial tours, in the 1840s when the railways were new. Percy Harrison, the Birmingham promoter, continued that enterprise, bringing celebrity performers to the city from the 1860s (including Nikisch and the London Symphony Orchestra in 1908, 1909, 1912 and 1914). The Hallé organization toured in the north of England as well as occasionally to London and Birmingham, while Richter's Concert Orchestra often made provincial autumn tours in the 1880s and 1890s. Strauss's agents ensured performances for him in Glasgow and Birmingham when he visited Britain, a sign of high playing standards outside London by 1900.Google Scholar

7 Dave Russell, ‘Musicians in the English Provincial City: Manchester, c.1860–1914’, Music and British Culture, ed. Bashford and Langley, 233–53 (pp. 239–40). For Hallé, his methods and programming, see Kennedy, Michael, The Hallé Tradition: A Century of Music (Manchester, 1960). Hallé may have offered his core players weekly pay rather than the more usual fee per concert as early as 1862 (certainly from the early 1870s to 1893), probably a unique arrangement for a British touring concert orchestra in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Beale, Robert, Charles Hallé: A Musical Life (Aldershot, forthcoming); I am grateful to Robert Beale for giving me early sight of his chapter on Hallé's finances.Google Scholar

8 Russell, ‘Musicians in the English Provincial City’, 236. The city's larger catchment area, including Liverpool and Blackpool, offered sufficient work (teaching, theatres, music halls, by 1893 a conservatory) to attract and keep good players locally. Besides a serious chamber-music culture, there were also popular orchestral concerts by the DeJong and Brand Lane organizations.Google Scholar

9 Sir Thomas Beecham, A Mingled Chime: Leaves from an Autobiography (London, 1944), 21. On Hallé and Berlioz, see Kennedy, The Hallé Tradition, 13–14.Google Scholar

10 All figures based on the run of Hallé programmes in the Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester Central Library. Those from January 1858 to March 1895 are reproduced in Thomas Batley's compilation Sir Charles Hallé's Concerts in Manchester (Manchester, 1896). ‘Ballet des sylphes’ was on the very first Hallé programme; it was repeated by demand more than once in the following weeks, for a total of 11 performances before 1870. See also Figure 1.Google Scholar

11 All shown in Figure 1. The Manchester performance of the Symphonie fantastique, on 9 January 1879, was followed five days later by a repeat in Liverpool, both occasions preceding the first complete London performance, under Wilhelm Ganz, by some three months. For the lead-up to Hallé's Faust in February 1880 (in English, unlike Pasdeloup's incomplete version given at Her Majesty's Theatre in June 1878) and its enthusiastic reception, see Life andLetters of Charles Hallé, ed. Charles E. Hallé and Marie Hallé (London, 1896), 167–9. Note that when Hallé first gave Faust in London, in May 1880, the performance did not go well. Hallé blamed Chappell (the promoter), who had allowed only one rehearsal though most of the players (at Chappell's insistence) were London musicians unfamiliar with the score (Joseph Bennett, Forty Years of Music, 1865–1905, London, 1908, 172).Google Scholar

12 Young, Percy M., George Grove, 1820–1900: A Biography (London, 1980), 62, quoting Grove's letter to Edith Oldham of 1893 in which he recounts his visit to Tennyson of May 1854. The idea of approaching Berlioz may have arisen from his appearances with the then newly established New Philharmonic Society two years before. The engineer Sir Charles Fox and the wealthy contractor Thomas Brassey, both founders of the New Philharmonic Society, knew Grove and had a direct line to Crystal Palace directors. Fox's company (Fox, Henderson & Co.) had built the Palace, and Berlioz was manifestly a modern composer of international stature already associated with it.Google Scholar

13 Michael Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace (Cambridge, 1995), 67–9, relying on August Manns's Preface to Catalogue of the Principal Instrumental & Choral Works Performed at the Saturday Concerts from October 1855 to May 1895 (Sydenham, 1895), and on Henry Saxe Wyndham, August Manns and the Saturday Concerts: A Memoir and a Retrospect (London and New York, 1909). Jan R. Piggott's Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, 1854–1936 (London, 2004) contains a more thorough description of the financial and managerial difficulties behind the scenes.Google Scholar

14 Correspondance générale d'Hector Berlioz, v: 1855–1859, ed. Hugh Macdonald and François Lesure (Paris, 1989), 113, note 1; echoed in David Cairns, Berlioz, ii: Servitude and Greatness 1832–1869 (London, 1999), 576.Google Scholar

15 Willert Beale, The Light of Other Days, Seen through the Wrong End of an Opera Glass, 2 vols. (London, 1890), i, 186–92. The instrumentalists included Heinrich Ernst, Giovanni Bottesini and Hallé. Russell, who lived at Sydenham, was professionally interested in sound and water waves. It was his daughter Rachel who later translated Berlioz's Mémoires, edited by Grove and published by Macmillan in 1884 as the two-volume Autobiography.Google Scholar

16 See Marie Berlioz to Mme Duchène de Vére (2 July 1855), Correspondance générale, v, ed. Macdonald and Lesure, 123, note 1; also cited in A. W. Ganz, Berlioz in London (London, 1950), 202, referring to ‘the proposal which has been made him to be director of the music of that institution’. Berlioz's biographers have evidently conflated this reference and Berlioz's contemporary speculations about his possible future in London with the quite separate post that went to Manns.Google Scholar

17 Grove had approached Manns for the conductorship in April 1855 (‘The Crystal Palace Concert Season’, Daily Graphic, 31 October 1891), and on 21 July formally offered him the job at £30 a month. Manns took up the post in early October, with instructions to reduce band numbers from 58 to 36 in the interests of economy (Young, George Grove, 64).Google Scholar

18 Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 67; see also idem, ‘Changing Values in Nineteenth-Century Performance: The Work of Michael Costa and August Manns’, Music and British Culture, ed. Bashford and Langley, 169–91. What became known as the Palace Concert Room was developed gradually, 1855–68. For patterns, rehearsal and an overview of orchestra, choir and conductor, see Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 69–81.Google Scholar

19 Full dates of first and subsequent performances appear in Catalogue of the […] Saturday Concerts (1895). Note that a first London performance for some of these works could be claimed elsewhere at a later date, e.g. for Hans Richter's Symphonie funebre et triomphale at St James's Hall in June 1885, since Sydenham was not then within London. It must also be said that, for all his pioneering effort, Manns's bigger Berlioz performances were rarely revelatory; he encountered difficulties with spatial requirements and extra personnel, and never had an adequate choral force at his disposal (‘The Crystal Palace’, Musical World, 65 (1887), 155). The important point is that his trialling of unheard works set a prominent example, encouraging other bodies to follow. The Bach Choir, for example, took up Berlioz's Te Deum in 1887.Google Scholar

20 Advertisements in programmes for 1877–8 (British Library, shelfmark c.370, Vol. 3, pp. 478, 776) and 1885–6 (British Library, shelfmark X.439/522, advertising section behind the Fourteenth Saturday Concert). In later days the Engineering School saw John Logie Baird's first experiments with television; that building is now the only original structure on the site apart from some of the garden dinosaurs, and houses a small Crystal Palace museum. The Palace burnt down in 1936.Google Scholar

21 After about mid-century, London businesses and offices (though not shops) began to close at 1 or 2 pm on a Saturday; Sabbatarianism held strong sway until the mid-1890s, when orchestral concerts were given at the Queen's Hall, and national galleries and museums were allowed to open, for the first time on Sunday afternoons (McVeigh and Ehrlich, ‘The Modernisation of London Concert Life’, 103–7).Google Scholar

22 Bennett, in Forty Years of Music (1908): ‘What a boon the Saturday concerts were. […] Orchestral concerts in London through the winter were like the proverbial visits of angels. […] This […] sufficiently accounted for the Saturday rushes to Sydenham, not only of cultivated amateurs, but of professionals also. […] All that was great in the London musical world might have been seen at Victoria Station on the winter Saturdays, as the special trains were backing to the departure platforms’ (pp. 336–7). For Grove's view, see his ‘Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts’ and ‘Manns, August’, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. George Grove, 4 vols. (London, 1879–89), i, 422–3, and ii, 206–7, and also Charles L. Graves, The Life & Letters of Sir George Grove, C. B. (London, 1903), 52. Klein, who at the Saturday Concerts heard a symphony for the first time in his life, stressed their educational value, in his Thirty Years of Musical Life in London, 1870–1900 (London, 1903), 56–7. Similarly Walker, ‘An Orchestra of the Past’, Free Thought and the Musician, and Other Essays (London, 1946), 139–42, considered his trips to the Palace the most vivid experiences of his early musical days.Google Scholar

23 Quoted in Jerrold Northrop Moore, Edward Elgar: A Creative Life (Oxford, 1984), 79, citing the draft of a speech Elgar gave in London in November 1927.Google Scholar

24 Moore, Edward Elgar, 79, 91–2,101, 225. Corder's identity ('E. C') is given by Christina Bashford in Appendix 2, ‘Crystal Palace Programme-Note Writers’, George Grove, Music and Victorian Culture, ed. Michael Musgrave (Basingstoke, 2003), 301–18 (p. 315).Google Scholar

25 See Bashford, Christina, ‘Not Just “G.”: Towards a History of the Programme Note’, George Grove, Music and Victorian Culture, ed. Musgrave, 115–42, as well as her ‘Crystal Palace Programme-Note Writers’. Barry's work (signed ‘C. A. B.‘), including analytical notes on the Messe des morts and the Roi Lear overture (1883), the Corsaire and Waverley overtures and Roméo et Juliette (1884), the Te Deum (1885), Faust (1888) and La mort d'Ophélie (1891), was among the best English analytical writing on Berlioz at this period.Google Scholar

26 Programme of Tuesday, 8 November 1881, cited in Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 120.Google Scholar

27 According to Catalogue of the […] Saturday Concerts, Manns gave the Pilgrims' March from Harold in March 1869, then the whole symphony in 1878, 1880, 1883, 1885, 1891 and 1893; the Ball Scene from the Symphonie fantastique in May 1879, then the whole work in October 1881 (repeating the Witches' Sabbath alone a week later, then the whole work again a month later), 1885, 1887 and 1891; the second and fourth parts of Roméo in 1874, 1880 (with the ‘Queen Mab’ Scherzo) and 1884 (adding the first part), and then the entire symphony in 1894.Google Scholar

28 Now held in the Henry Watson Music Library, Central Library, Manchester (R780.69 Me 73.ms). I am grateful to Martin Thacker, formerly Librarian of the Watson Library, for help with this source, and to Ros Edwards, Music Co-ordinator, Manchester Library and Information Service: Henry Watson Music Library, for assistance in securing images of the slips and permission to reproduce them.Google Scholar

29 For the extent of piano mania in late Victorian society, exponentially greater than in Germany or France, see Ehrlich, Cyril, The Piano: A History (rev. edn, Oxford, 1990), 88–98.Google Scholar

30 Advertisement in the programme for 23 February 1878, p. 481. The cost was £2 2s. (equivalent to 3s. 6d. a week). Benedict had been associated with the Palace since 1856, his choir, the Vocal Association, giving several performances there; he was an instructor at the School from the 1860–1 season, along with Henry Leslie, Manuel Garcia, Lindsey Sloper and later Arthur Sullivan, John Stainer, Ebenezer Prout, Ernst Pauer and J. F. Bridge. See, further, Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 166–72.Google Scholar

31 Information based on programmes and committee books in the Archives of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Glasgow. I am grateful to Carol Fleming of the RSNO for allowing me access to this material. A typical Crystal Palace contingent at Glasgow, that of the 1888–9 season, consisted of 18 players – 11 string, 2 wind, 4 brass and 1 percussion – or about 26% of the Choral Union Orchestra of 68 that year. Each week the orchestra gave two concerts in Glasgow and at least one outside. Manns and Grove had both worked in Scotland before 1879, and Glasgow's use of London players (and of Grove's programme notes) in any case preceded Manns's appointment. What prompted the more direct link at this time was a combination of local aspiration (St Andrew's Hall, with its fine acoustic, was opened in 1877, the Central Rail Station in 1879), Manns's rising reputation and the competitive model of Hallé at Manchester (he also made northern tours, some to Scotland).Google Scholar

32 On Manns's strength as orchestral trainer, see Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 79–80; on his underlying educational ethos, see idem, ‘Changing Values’, 187–9. For a Scottish perspective, see Robert W. Greig, The Story of the Scottish Orchestra (Glasgow, 1945), 7: ‘It is questionable if any other individual has done anything like as much to educate public taste and inculcate a love for the greater music in both England and Scotland as [Manns] did during the 37 years of the Crystal Palace Concerts in London and the fourteen [recte fifteen] years of the Choral Union orchestral concerts all over Scotland.‘ On the Scottish Orchestra as seedbed, see Cowen, Frederic, My Art and my Friends (London, 1913), 295. Manns's predilections for orchestral and audience training, new repertory and regular infusion of young players were a model to Henry Wood and Robert Newman at the Queen's Hall, London.Google Scholar

33 T. E. Wotton (1852–?1918) appeared in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. J. A. Fuller Maitland, 5 vols. (London, 1904–10; hereafter Grove 2), v, 568, and subsequent editions, though he was already a favourite at Glasgow from 1888, according to the anonymous author of The Glasgow Choral Union: Its Orchestra and Origin (Glasgow, 1889). Wotton is pictured with 67 other members of the Glasgow band in the same pamphlet, now in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow.Google Scholar

34 With 400 voices and an efficient management, the Choral Union was a significant force; it was from the GCU that the Crystal Palace had to borrow choral scores of Berlioz's Faust for the Sydenham performance of that work in April 1889 (GCU Minute Book No. 3, entry for 3 December 1888). MacCunn, from Greenock, wrote his Lay of the Last Minstrel for the Choral Union in 1888; Lamond, a native of Glasgow, first appeared with the Choral Union Orchestra as composer and pianist in late 1889. Both musicians were also associated with Manns at the Crystal Palace. D'Albert, though born in Glasgow, appeared there only rarely, starting in 1896–7.Google Scholar

35 The plebiscite had first been used in Glasgow at the end of the 1877–8 season, the first to be held in St Andrew's Hall and the only one conducted by Hans von Bülow As an idea, it brought marked improvement in attendance and receipts (Greig, The Story of the Scottish Orchestra, 5), and may well have prompted Manns to adopt the same device for the Crystal Palace concerts from 1879–80, his own first season at Glasgow.Google Scholar

36 ‘Result of the Plébiscite’ lists were published at the end of each season, sometimes paginated to follow a set of programme notes in an annual bound volume. Exact votes for a range of musical works played at both series, subscription and popular, were included – each voter being allowed one choice in each of four categories (symphonies, overtures, ballet airs and dance music, miscellaneous pieces; concertos were never on the ballot). Examination of five seasons' returns in GCU volumes for the 1880s suggests that the size of a Saturday (box-office) audience ranged from being about 43% (1882–3) to 105% (1886–7) larger than a mid-week (subscription) audience in the same week. Total audience figures are unrecorded; the hall's capacity at this date was an astonishing 4,500.Google Scholar

37 Figures from the return at the back of GCU programmes for 1882–3. Cowen conducted his own symphony, which may have helped him: he was later to become assistant to Manns at Glasgow, and from 1900–01 to 1909–10 chief conductor of the Scottish Orchestra. A similar result occurred the very next season: in 1883–4 the Fantastique beat the ‘Pastoral’ by some 50 votes, attributable to the enthusiasm of box-office ticket-buyers. For anecdotal reference to the reception gap between sceptical Berlioz critics and appreciative Berlioz audiences, see Pearsall, Ronald, Edwardian Popular Music (Newton Abbot, 1975), 101–2.Google Scholar

38 ‘Orchestral Concert’, unidentified press clipping bound at the back of the GCU programmes volume for 1880–1, discussing the Scottish première of Harold en Italie conducted by Manns (Glasgow, 4 January 1881).Google Scholar

39 Cyril Ehrlich, First Philharmonic: A History of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford, 1995), 81: ‘In this manner tight budgeting robbed London of a seminal work for a generation.‘Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 136, citing the Athenaeum critic after the first performance on 10 March (a subsequent performance was given on 7 April). Berlioz himself had presented the first four movements of Roméo with the New Philharmonic Society in 1852 (twice); Wilhelm Ganz gave the same selection with the NPS in 1879 (Ganz, Berlioz in London, 214).Google Scholar

41 Close comparison of orchestral lists for the Philharmonic Society, Crystal Palace and Richter bands of 1890–1 shows roughly a 30% overlap between any two of them, across all sections (11 players were common to all three bands that season). Since Manns gave five London-area performances of the Symphonie fantastique before 1895, and Richter two, it is entirely likely that many of Mackenzie's Philharmonic players already knew it. Moreover G. B. Shaw reports yet another Fantastique performance, part of the short-lived ‘Brinsmead Symphony Concerts’ at St James's Hall in December 1885, under Ganz, at which the orchestra consisted of ‘seventy of the Philharmonic band’. They played ‘very finely indeed’ in a rendition that, for Shaw, was better than Manns's at Sydenham the previous month; see Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism in Three Volumes, ed. Dan H. Laurence (London, 1981; 2nd rev. edn, 1989), i, 396, 428–32.Google Scholar

42 Bridget Duckenfield, 0 Lovely Knight: A Biography of Sir Landon Ronald (London, 1991), 57–8. Although Myles Birket Foster (History of the Philharmonic Society of London, 1813–1912, London, 1912, 497, 500) claims this was Cléopâtre's London première, there was at least one earlier performance, at a Berlioz centenary concert conducted by Felix Weingartner at Queen's Hall on 12 November 1903.Google Scholar

43 Hallé gave orchestral concerts in London in 1881 and 1882, besides his Faust and L'enfance performances; his band had the best ensemble sound in the country ('Mr. Hallé's Concerts’, Musical Times, 22 (1881), 28). For his series at St James's Hall in May-June 1882, he used some 22 of his own players and many more of Manns's; they gave much Beethoven, Berlioz's Harold and the English première of Mozart's ‘Haffner’ Serenade (BL d.488.1 (6)). From 1889 Hallé began taking his whole 100-piece orchestra to London for shorter periods, eliciting glowing reviews: see Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, i, 910, on excerpts from Roméo et Juliette (January 1890); ii, 221–3, on Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (December 1890); ii, 231–2, on the Fantastique (also December 1890); ii, 283, on the Hallé's outdistancing even the Crystal Palace Orchestra (recollected, March 1891); and ii, 518–20, on their superior performances of Faust, compared with those of London orchestras (January 1892). These concerts were not always well attended (Kennedy, The Hallé Tradition, 75), some even financial failures ('Concerts’, Daily Telegraph, 18 November 1890). Shaw and others variously credited bad weather, insufficient advertising, the hall's discomfort and poor sound insulation, overquick tempos, old-fashioned programming (too much ‘absolute music’ in a ‘poetic’ age) and sheer London jealousy.Google Scholar

44 Manns's daily orchestra was disbanded in April 1900, the last Saturday concert under his direction held on 19 May. For a summary of the reasons, including competition from orchestral concerts in central London, see Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 73–5. Manns had been under pressure from Palace directors since at least 1895 to reduce his reliance on unknown composers and untried works in favour of more commercially attractive music.Google Scholar

45 For the New Philharmonic Society, see Chitty, Alexis, ‘Wylde, Henry’, George Grove, ‘New Philharmonic Society, The’, and J. A. Fuller Maitland, ‘Ganz, 5. Wilhelm’, Grove 2, v, 572–3, iii, 366, and ii, 142; Wilhelm Ganz, Memories of a Musician: Reminiscences of Seventy Years of Musical Life (London, 1913), 125–53; and Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, 97–8. For the Richter concerts, see Gehring, Franz, ‘Richter, Hans’, in Grove 2, iv, 93–4; Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, 123–4; and note 49 below.Google Scholar

46 Karine Simon, ‘Étude de la réception de la Symphonie Fantastique lors de ses créations anglaise (Manchester, 1879) et londonienne (1881)‘ (M.M. thesis, Université de Rouen, 2002), esp. pp. 145–53 and Annexe, 23–9. In instrumentation, spatial arrangement and rehearsal time, Ganz more nearly approached Berlioz's directions than Hallé did, as his grandson A. W. Ganz suggested (Berlioz in London, 214). I am grateful to Karine Simon for sharing a copy of her work with me.Google Scholar

47 Calkin, named in the Musical Standard of 21 May 1881 (‘The “Symphonie fantastique” of Berlioz’, 324–5), was a violinist and viola player, which may explain why in Ganz's original performing material the annotation ‘Bells behind the scene’ appears in a viola part (Simon, ‘Etude de la réception’, 149). Pollitzer, named in an advertisement in The Times of 26 April 1881, a Musical World review of 7 May and in Ganz's Memories of a Musician, had been leader of the Covent Garden opera orchestra under Michael Costa, was Wylde's violin professor at the London Academy of Music, and also played for Manns; he was the only teacher Elgar ever had (Moore, Edward Elgar, 74–5, 79). See also Edward Heron-Allen, ‘Pollitzer, Adolphe’, Grove 2, iii, 783.Google Scholar

48 Hollander (1853–1942) settled in London in 1876, and played in Leopold Auer's quartet at the Musical Union and frequently at the Popular Concerts before becoming associated with Richter, the Guildhall School of Music, Henschel, Ysaÿe, Saint-Saëns and ultimately Beecham. Hollander's account of meeting Berlioz in 1865 appears in Ganz, Berlioz in London, 213. The details of his career in Grove 2 are amplified by the Hollander Papers in the British Library (Add. MSS 53767–53770).Google Scholar

49 The Richter programmes in the British Library (d.481) inform the following discussion, as do the unsigned article ‘Hans Richter’ in Musical Times, 40 (1899), 440–7, and Christopher Fifield's True Artist and True Friend: A Biography of Hans Richter (Oxford, 1993). From 1879 to 1894 the London Richter Concerts were given at St James's Hall; from 1894 to 1902 they fluctuated between there and Queen's Hall. Shaw was unequivocal on Richter's impact: ‘The increased alertness of our older [concert-giving] institutions dates from the year in which Herr Richter gave them something tolerable to compete with. I have a particularly deadly-lively recollection of the seasons which immediately preceded his invasion; and I do not think he came a day too soon, nor have I ever met a musician who did’ (‘Herr Richter and his Blue Ribbon’, Dramatic Review, 8 February 1885; repr. in Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, i, 208–13 (p. 2.12.)).Google Scholar

50 Direct testimony comes from Rosa. Newmarch, in 1904: ‘The Richter Concerts […] appealed […] especially to “cultured” London. […] Their atmosphere was charged, like that of some church services, with a kind of sacerdotal dignity, an aroma of cultured superiority, which kept aloof the deserving poor’ (Henry J. Wood, London, 1904, 11). Seen as expensive, the concerts attracted mostly middle-class and wealthy amateurs, ‘many of whom are persons of commend-ably lofty views and serious aims’ (Shaw, ‘Richter's Gems’, Dramatic Review, 20 June 1885; repr. in Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, i, 270–2 (p. 270)). Yet Newmarch and Shaw noted how keenly the cheaper seats were taken up, suggesting that many ordinary Londoners were ready and willing to pay for good orchestral music.Google Scholar

51 Parry's diary for 26 August 1888, quoted in Fifield, True Artist and True Friend, 246. See also Charles Villiers Stanford, Interludes: Records and Reflections (London, 1922), 32: ‘Richter was all for straightforwardness. He hated extravagance, and even took the diablerie out of Berlioz.’ Richter conducted nine Birmingham Festivals, 1885–1909, and programmed Berlioz steadily, including Absence (Les nuits d'été) in 1885, Faust in 1891, 1897 and 1909, the Te Deum in 1894, the Roi Lear overture in 1900, Harold in 1903 and Le carnaval romain in 1906.Google Scholar

52 St James's Hall, 24 October 1881, as ‘Summer Nights’, possibly the world première. The songs were translated into English by Francis Hueffer and sung by Louise Pyk, Ellen Orridge, William Shakespeare and Frederic King. The Ninth Symphony, with the Richter Chorus, closed the concert, ‘largely attended and in every respect successful’ (‘Richter Concerts’, Musical Times, 22 (1881), 570). Elgar was in the audience, having come to London specifically to hear Les nuits d'été and, five days later, Lélio at the Crystal Palace (Moore, Edward Elgar, 92).Google Scholar

53 ‘Call no conductor sensitive in the highest degree […] until you have heard him in Berlioz and Mozart. I never unreservedly took my hat off to Richter until I saw him conduct Mozart's great symphony in E flat [no. 39]. Now, having heard him conduct Berlioz's Faust, I repeat the salutation’ (‘The Masterly Richter’, The Star, 9 July 1889, repr. in Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, i, 692–4 (p. 692)). By 1892, Faust was a stock work. To Shaw, Joseph Barnby's version with the Royal Choral Society was tedious, and pious like an oratorio; Manns was conscientious but not really sympathetic; Richter, ‘by dint of incessant vigilance and urgency, only gets here and there a stroke of fancy, power, or delicacy out of his orchestra’, whereas Hallé's band understood every bar of the score and brought it to life, totally surpassing London players (see Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, ii, 518–20 (January 1892)). Latterly Richter gave Faust with the LSO and the Hanley Glee and Madrigal Society, at Queen's Hall in 1911.Google Scholar

54 Wotton, Tom S., Hector Berlioz (London, 1935), 159–60, relates that Richter had only eight clarinets instead of the 33 marked in the score but partly atoned by adding violas to the clarinets.Google Scholar

55 See Henschel's Musings and Memories of a Musician (New York, 1919), 318–30, for his description of the enterprise and list of original guarantors. Two incomplete programme sets, in the British Library (c.374) and the Royal College of Music (Centre for Performance History), provide a view of the music performed. Each series ran from late October to late February or early March and had from six to 16 concerts, depending on financial confidence. Joseph Bennett wrote the programme notes. Experiments with weekday afternoon concerts (targeted at leisured women – 32% of the guarantors – and men), young people's concerts (in 1890) and audience-training devices (to discourage latecomers and the encoring of individual movements) were among Henschel's innovations. Note that this organization had nothing to do with the later London Symphony Orchestra founded in 1904, although Henschel coined that name for his band during its last two seasons and later claimed the concerts he had founded were ‘still flourishing’ (Musings and Memories, 322).Google Scholar

56 J. T. Carrodus of the Philharmonic Society orchestra was Henschel's original leader, but this position soon went to Benno Hollander, with Maurice Sons as deputy from autumn 1887 (BL Add. MS 53770, fol. 106); W. B. Wotton was chief bassoonist. Shaw thought the band small at first. More research is needed to determine the relationship between Henschel's series and Richter's. Clearly Franke knew the value of ‘Richter Concerts’ as a brand name (which he claimed to own), yet by 1886 he was in serious financial difficulty, unable to pay Richter's players. It is possible that the idea of a winter Richter-like series under a different conductor may have been partly his, not just to fill the calendar but to help bail himself out: see ‘The Truth about the Richter Concerts’, Musical World, 64 (1886), 761–2.Google Scholar

57 The Henschels gave their first joint recital around 1880. Later they often sang together on orchestral programmes at the Crystal Palace and St James's Hall, and gave joint recitals at Prince's Hall (BL c.374.a). Henschel added a well-trained choir to the London Symphony Concerts in 1892, and was more typical than Richter of English concert practice in his use of vocal numbers. Impressed by Mrs Henschel's rendering of the ‘Duo nocturne’ (with Hope Glenn), Shaw suggested that Richard D'Oyly Carte should produce the whole of Béatrice et Benedict (Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, ii, 561 (February 1892)).Google Scholar

58 Shaw praised Henschel's conducting only from 1893; see Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, ii, 798–801 (February 1893), making a pointed contrast with the inferior Philharmonic Society. Earlier he had found Henschel's band rough, out of tune or under-rehearsed – a November 1892 performance of Le roi Lear sounded ‘positively music-hally’, making a great noise but giving no satisfaction (ibid., ii, 734). On the Concerts' improved financial position, see Bennett, Joseph, ‘Music of the Day’, Daily Telegraph (28 February 1894).Google Scholar

59 See Shaw, ‘Herr Mottl's Insight’, The World, 25 April 1894; repr. in Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, iii, 186–92. Motti gave the first complete performance anywhere of Les Troyens, in German, in December 1890 – ‘unforgettable in its statuesque beauty’ and extraordinary anticipation of Götterdämmerung, according to J. A. Fuller-Maitland (A Door-Keeper of Music, London, 1929, 247).Google Scholar

60 A cumulative index appears at the back of the programme for 18 May 1897 (Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection, Trinity College of Music, London). The Berlioz repertory was similar to that of Richter and Henschel programmes, including the Benvenuto Cellini, Roi Lear and Carnaval romain overtures, Harold, Absence and the ‘Duo nocturne’ from Béatrice et Benedict.Google Scholar

61 Newman was scathing about a Richter performance of Roméo with the Hallé in Manchester in early 1906 (Kennedy, The Hallé Tradition, 158–9), and had been impressed not only with Weingartner's superior interpretations but with his candid admission of his own conversion to the composer (see his ‘Berlioz, Romantic and Classic’, Musical Studies, London, 1905; 3rd edn, 1914, 3–67 (p. 5)).Google Scholar

62 For the 1881 visit, using 104 London players in works by Gouvy, Lalo, Godard, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Reyer, Widor, Delibes and Berlioz, see ‘Lamoureux Concerts’, Musical World, 59 (1881), 174, 179, 193–4, 196. For the 1896 and 1897 festivals, see Percy A. Scholes, The Mirror of Music, 1844–1944: A Century of Musical Life in Britain as Reflected in the Pages of the ‘Musical Times’, 2 vols. (London, 1947), i, 390–1, and the programmes themselves (BL d.485). It was Shaw who, noting in January 1892 how much better the Hallé performed Faust than London players did, made a passing remark on Lamoureux's speed: ‘[Hallé's] Hungarian March, taken at about half the speed at which Lamoureux vainly tries to make it “go”, is encored with yells – literally with yells – in St James's Hall’ (Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, ii, 519).Google Scholar

63 On what was widely termed the ‘orchestral craze’, see Newmarch, Henry J. Wood (1904): ‘The taste for orchestral music developed with remarkable rapidity until, at the present time, it has reached a pitch of enthusiasm which some regard as ill-balanced and inimical to the interests of art’ (p. 14); Charles L. Graves, ‘The Modern Orchestra’, Spectator (21 November 1908): ‘No one who has watched the course of music in the last twenty or thirty years can fail to realise the enormous change that has been wrought by the multiplication of orchestral concerts’; and William Johnson Galloway, Musical England (London, 1910) : ‘It remains to be seen whether there is room for four first-class orchestras in London in addition to the Philharmonic Society: the number is large, but the growth of interest in orchestral music has been so extraordinary of late that it is to be hoped that no one of them will be forced to discontinue its efforts’ (pp. 128–9).Google Scholar

64 Edward Dannreuther's Berlioz article in the first Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1879), i, 232–4, was remarkably forward-thinking. He knew much of the music first-hand and stressed its technical achievement, but also referred to ‘occasional failures’, sailing ‘beyond [the] mark’ and ‘reprehensible pieces’ depicting blood-thirsty orgies ('one must draw the line somewhere'). Hueffer, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh, 1875) and in his Haifa Century of Music in England, 1837–1887: Essays towards a History (London, 1889), never doubted Berlioz's serious intent but reserved judgment on his creative power, offering sympathy instead of real confidence in the music. Charles Maclean's ‘Berlioz and England’, Sammelbände der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaf, 5 (1904), 314–28, though a useful survey of English performance and reception, overplayed the negative influence of early critics. W. H. Hadow in Grove 2 (i, 310–15) was more articulate but still attributed Berlioz's ‘defects’ (his reliance on programme music, lack of skill in formal procedures) to biographical causes, rendering them inescapable.Google Scholar

65 James D. Brown surmised: ‘A great array of forces managed with skill denotes an ambitious mechanic rather than an inspired architect; […] there must be some considerable weakness to hide beneath all this weight of the machinery of genius’ (Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Paisley and London, 1886, 85). J. S. Shedlock, after referring to ‘the spasmodic character of his musical education’, decided that ‘the brilliancy of the scoring throws a halo around [Berlioz's music] which prevents calm judgment – the lack of a solid foundation is felt’ (‘Hector Berlioz’, Monthly Musical Record, 33 (1903), 221–2). A dour reviewer of recent centenary concerts in London, poorly attended, concluded: ‘The truth is that Berlioz had a second-rate mind, that his conceptions had no true nobility, and that the better they are expressed the more their inherent deficiencies are made plain’ (‘In the Concert Room’, Monthly Musical Record, 34 (1904), 15–17 (p. 15)).Google Scholar

66 Richter's programme (3 November 1903) contained the overtures Le carnaval romain, Béatrice et Benedict, Le roi Lear and Benvenuto Cellini, as well as the Hungarian March and Harold; Weingartner's (12 November 1903) featured Cléopâtre, the Symphonie fantastique and the Carnaval romain and Rob Roy overtures; Strauss's programme (11 December 1903) included three movements from Roméo et Juliette, the Rêverie et caprice and the overture Les Francs-juges. Cowen conducted the Scottish Orchestra in Le carnaval romain at Glasgow (15 December 1903), Colonne performing a Faust selection with the same orchestra a month later (12 January 1904). Godfrey programmed three selections from Roméo et Juliette (with Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel) in December 1903. Richter had given Harold at the Birmingham Festival in October 1903, having already marked the centenary with the Hallé in Manchester a year early, 11 December 1902, performing Faust.Google Scholar

67 Stanford's students at the RCM gave Roméo et Juliette complete and the ‘Hamlet’ March (8 December 1903). The Stock Exchange Orchestral programme (Queen's Hall, 9 December 1903) included the Symphonie fantastique and the Benvenuto Cellini overture. Bantock's Midland Institute concert (12 December 1904) contained the Carnaval romain and Benvenuto Cellini overtures, the Trio for two flutes and harp from L'enfance du Christ, Villanelle (Les nuits d'été) and the Symphonie fantastique. Not only did such events give Berlioz experience to aspirational players, they spoke volumes about the ambition and achievement of these particular groups.Google Scholar

68 ‘In the Concert Room’, Monthly Musical Record, 34 (1904), 15–17 (p. 16). The overture to Les Francs-juges, moreover, ‘proved remarkably interesting […] wildly, weirdly romantic, […] showing a wonderful command of the orchestra and a marvellous instinct for tonal effect. […] It is strange that it should have dropped so completely out of the modern repertory’.Google Scholar

69 Baughan, ‘London's Apathy and Caprice’, on a theme that would carry even more force as London orchestras multiplied. ‘Paying listeners’ points the prevalence of the opposite tendency, i.e. the ‘papering’ of halls through managers' liberal distribution of complimentary tickets.Google Scholar

70 ‘Hector Berlioz’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 30 (1904), 15–36.Google Scholar

71‘Einige Missverständnisse betreffs Berlioz’, Die Musik, 3/1 (1903), 358–65; ‘Stray Notes on Berlioz’, Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, 5 (1904), 395–9; ‘The Scores of Berlioz and Some Modern Editing’, Musical Times, 56 (1915), 651–6; ‘A Berlioz Caprice and its Programme’, Musical Times, 69 (1927), 704–6; Berlioz – Four Works (London, 1929); ‘Berlioz as Melodist’, Musical Times, 70 (1929), 808–12; Hector Berlioz (London, 1935); ‘Infernal Language: A Berlioz Hoax’, Musical Times, 78 (1937), 209–10; and ‘An Unknown Score of Berlioz’, Music Review, 4 (1943), 224–8. Wotton's A Dictionary of Foreign Musical Terms and Handbook of Orchestral Instruments (Leipzig, 1907) draws on his knowledge of Berlioz's scores.Google Scholar

72 Ernest Newman, ‘Berlioz, Romantic and Classic’, Musical Studies (London, 1905; 3rd edn 1914), 3–67. Part of this essay usefully considers the larger critical quarrel over Berlioz, exploring its unprecedented nature and ‘what it is in Berlioz that makes so many worthy people quite unsympathetic towards him’ (p. 7).Google Scholar

73 Ibid., 40, 60–1. Hadow, usually so ‘careful’, is accused of overwriting with phrases such as ‘[Berlioz's] eloquence pours forth in a turbid, impetuous torrent which levels all obstacles and overpowers all restraint’. Newman replies: ‘One really gets rather tired of this perpetual harping upon the extravagance of Berlioz. The picture is pure caricature, not a portrait; one or two features in the physiognomy are selected and exaggerated, posed in the strongest light, and facetiously made to appear as the essential points of the man. Yet a baby with any knowledge of Berlioz could demonstrate the falsity of the picture’ (p. 60).Google Scholar

74 Newman, ‘Berlioz, Romantic and Classic’, 54–5, 66–7.Google Scholar

75 Ibid., 4–5. Donajowski was a Leipzig firm specializing in miniature scores; its London office had been taken over by Ernst Eulenburg in 1894.Google Scholar

76 (London, 1914; repr. 1945), 43–4. Arthur Hugh Sidgwick (1882–1917) was a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, which figures in the story, and a civil servant at the Board of Education. His father was the classical scholar and champion of women's education, Arthur Sidgwick, younger brother of the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick.Google Scholar

77 The March was already well known from its place in Berlioz's most widely performed work, La damnation de Faust, and its pomp and jollity made a direct emotional hit (see note 62 above). For the impact the Faust excerpts made on a real listener at the Proms before 1914, see Gollancz, Victor, Journey Towards Music: A Memoir (London, 1964), 38, 199.Google Scholar

78 Leanne Langley, ‘Building an Orchestra, Creating an Audience: Robert Newman and the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts, 1895–1926‘, The Proms: A New History, ed. Jenny Doctor, David Wright and Nicholas Kenyon (London, 2007), 32–73.Google Scholar

79 From 1895 to 1914 a season ticket for arena promenading cost a guinea (21s.), or about 4d. a concert – well below the cheapest standing entry each evening (1s.) and remarkable in any country for the programme quality. Transferability encouraged groups of people to share the cost and pass the ticket around, thus attracting inexperienced or sceptical listeners with some ease – a key element in Newman's strategy. Season tickets were discontinued between 1915 and 1929.Google Scholar

80 Sidgwick, The Promenade Ticket, 2–3.Google Scholar

81 See the entry for ‘Tuesday, 28th August’, Nigel's report of a discussion among four of the friends: himself (the sensible narrator), his brainy colleague Henry, Nigel's cousin Rhoda (who worships Brahms), and her friend Flavia ('a folksong expert, awaiting a national folk-school of music, [who] sees modal influences in places where the young composers only meant to defy the academics'). When Henry ‘got loose on the subject of orchestration’ he unluckily ‘let fall the remark that Brahms was the fourteenth best orchestrator of the nineteenth century, and began enumerating the thirteen, leading off with Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Tschaikowsky Rhoda instantly fell upon him, and all that Flavia and I could do above the uproar was to disagree spasmodically about programme music’ (pp. 37–8). Elsewhere Wagner, Nietzsche, Strauss, Higher Thought, religion, relations between the sexes, and J. R. H.'s desire not to ‘make an ass of myself more than usual’ drive the story.Google Scholar

82 Including the Overture Cockaigne, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (of which Wood gave the British première, 1904), Finlandia and En saga, Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel and Tod und Verklärung. Delius's Piano Concerto is the only new English work described in any detail (actually given, October 1907), sensitively, though ‘it sounded strange and unaccustomed’ (pp. 72–3). Sidgwick avoids comment on the most radical work heard at the Proms in this period, Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces (world première, 3 September 1912), though he is liberal with jaundiced references to turn-of-the-century British music, poking fun at folksong (passini), alluding to an invented nineteenth-century ‘English’ composer ‘Mackintosh’ as boring (p. 86), and knocking Sullivan's songwriting (‘He knew how to do it! None of your heart-searchings for him. Give him a piece of paper and a pen and a stale idea and a simple tune and somebody's else's harmonic effects, and he could whack out his twenty guineas at a sitting!‘; p. 111).Google Scholar

83 For access to the programmes and in-house data containing these records, I would like to thank Nicholas Kenyon, formerly Controller, BBC Proms, Live Events and TV Classical Music. The total number of Queen's Hall Promenade performances of individual items for this period is 16, 127.Google Scholar

84 End-of-season summary for 1913 (25 October 1913), bound inside the last-night programme for that year in the British Library set (h.5470). Note that when Berlioz's figure of 209 is spread evenly across the period 1895–1914, he averages more than ten performances a season, or about one a week – more than would be typical in a current Proms season.Google Scholar

85 First half of the concert on 7 October 1909. It was called an aria, ‘Hear'st thou the birds in cover calling?‘, and sung by Horatio Connell. First published in a French music periodical in December 1844, the song was orchestrated in 1845 and performed in Germany, then published by Berlioz in a collection in 1863, reissued in 1903.Google Scholar

86 The Symphonie fantastique was indeed given complete at a winter Promenade concert in late January 1902 – a performance linked to yet another the previous week in the more prestigious Saturday Symphony series, thus allocating the work's preparation to the hall's most generously funded series.Google Scholar

87 See Yeomans, Walter, ‘London's Municipal Orchestra’, Musical Times, 53 (1912), 657–8, for the forces, repertory and bandstand locations, Clapham Common to Finsbury Park. The conductor was John Mackinnon, and the leader Frederick Stock, a member of the Queen's Hall Orchestra. From 1901 the LCC music adviser behind the park programmes was Carl Armbruster, an old colleague of Richter's; he formed this summer orchestra in 1907, though the Council had funded wind-band concerts for open-air London performance from many years earlier. The overture in question was probably Benvenuto Cellini or Le carnaval romain.Google Scholar

88 Advertisement, ‘Mr. Robert Newman's Holiday Entertainments Till January 14, 1899’ (Mander & Mitchenson Collection, Trinity College of Music, London). For the pervasive tradition in which English military bands or resort orchestras played Berlioz (e.g. well-known overtures or the second movement of Symphonie fantastique), see Anthony, Francis, A Man's a Man (London, 1932), 68–9; and Nicholas Temperley, ‘Ballroom and Drawing-Room Music’, Music in Britain: The Romantic Age, 1800–1914, ed. Temperley (London, 1981), 109–34 (p. 115).Google Scholar

89 Details from HMV catalogues of 1910–11, and from Claude Graveley Arnold, The Orchestra on Record, 1896–1926 (Westport, CT, 1997), 32–7. Coppola conducted the Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup, and Monteux the Paris Symphony Orchestra. I am grateful to Lewis Foreman for his advice on this subject.Google Scholar

90 Fuller Maitland typified the second category. In his Times review of Strauss's London début in late 1897, he compared Tod und Verklärung unfavourably with the Symphonie fantastique: A prodigious noise is occasionally made, and the entire stock-in-trade of the theatrical music-maker is employed; but when that portion of the composition is reached which treats of the regeneration of the after-life the strains become almost conventional in their suavity. There is much use of leading themes, but few of them have either individuality or convincing beauty. It is only necessary to mention Berlioz's “Symphonie fantastique” as an example of the entirely successful treatment of what is virtually the same subject' (8 December 1897; claimed in A Door-Keeper of Music, 149). Stanford took a similar position on Berlioz's importance, and the principle of programming him even if all the music was not to one's personal taste; see From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters, 1900–1945, compiled by Lewis Foreman (London, 1987), 9–11.Google Scholar

91 Efforts since the late 1860s to lower the pitch in Britain by roughly half a tone had been unsuccessful. In 1895 Newman took decisive action, insisting that all groups using the new hall come into line. He imported the Lamoureux Orchestra in spring 1896, subsequently in autumn 1896 – as also the Colonne Orchestra – and again in spring 1897, which in turn gave rise to his London orchestral festivals at which visiting and ‘home’ orchestras could play, competitively or together, at the same pitch. Programmes often drew attention to the issue: ‘Mr. Robert Newman is pleased to think that, by the performances of the Lamoureux Orchestra […] music-lovers […] have been able to test the effect of the “French pitch” […] which has recently been adopted by the Philharmonic Society, the Bach Choir, the Queen's Hall Choral Society, and other prominent musical associations whose concerts take place at Queen's Hall. […] He trusts that its adoption throughout Great Britain will not long be delayed’ (BL d.485, Queen's Hall Lamoureux programme, 13 April 1896).Google Scholar

92 See Scholes, Mirror of Music, 390–2. Colonne's four concerts of October 1896 (BL d.488.b) show an enterprising range of music, from Bach, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and E. Schütt to Godard, Charpentier, Massenet, Bizet, Gounod, Franck, Widor, Saint-Saëns, Chaminade and A. Holmès, besides Berlioz (the only composer on every programme). He used a young Pierre Monteux as solo viola, and two pianists well known to London audiences, Mark Hambourg and Frederick Dawson.Google Scholar

93 [Robert Turnbull], ‘Choral and Orchestral Union: Edouard Colonne’, Glasgow Herald (13 January 1904). Colonne returned to Glasgow in January 1905 presenting the ‘Scène d'amour’ from Roméo, conducted the LSO at Queen's Hall that year and again in 1906 doing Le carnaval romain, returned to Glasgow in the 1905–6 season, and conducted the Benvenuto Cellini overture for the Philharmonic Society at Queen's Hall in 1907. The LSO Paris visit was in January 1906 (Théâtre du Châtelet). I am grateful to Simon McVeigh for his assistance with LSO documentation.Google Scholar

94 Elgar's Incidental Music to Grania and Diarmid, the first concert performance, 18 January 1902. Earlier in the same Queen's Hall series, a Saturday Symphony concert of 29 May 1897, Wood programmed Berlioz (‘Queen Mab’ Scherzo, and ‘Je vais mourir’ from Act Vof Les Troyens) in the context of Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky.Google Scholar

95 Wood's other, selective Berlioz line in early symphony concerts was vocal, notably La captive or Sur les lagunes (Les nuits d'été) in the context of Liszt or Strauss.Google Scholar

96 See Beecham, A Mingled Chime, 34, for one source of his antipathy, Hans Richter: ‘In those days he enjoyed a commanding prestige which owed more to his personal association with Richard Wagner than to a talent which had decided limitations. A few things he interpreted admirably, a great many more indifferently, and the rest worse than any other conductor of eminence I have ever known. But his readings of Beethoven and Wagner were considered sacrosanct, and from them there was no right of appeal.‘Google Scholar

97 A flair for reinventing himself and selecting the best players were key elements of his success. As founder or principal conductor he was associated with the New Symphony Orchestra (November 1906–June 1908), Beecham Symphony Orchestra (January 1909–November 1914), Beecham Wind Orchestra (October 1912), New Birmingham Orchestra (October 1917) and a range of opera and ballet initiatives, besides the London Philharmonic (1932) and Royal Philharmonic (1946) Orchestras.Google Scholar

98 Running from 1899 to 1918 and covering St Helens, Birmingham, Hanley, Manchester, London, Torquay, Bournemouth, Bedford, Cambridge, Bradford and Liverpool – a record only barely exceeding Hallé's. For dates and programme details see Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart, C.H. (1879–1961): A Calendar of his Concert and Theatrical Performances, compiled by Maurice Parker (n.p., 1985), and its Supplement, ed. Tony Benson (1998).Google Scholar

99 Brian's remark, on the Hanley performance of 28 October 1909 by the Beecham Symphony Orchestra and North Staffordshire District Choral Society, is reported in Benson's Supplement to the Parker Calendar, 22; Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise and Elgar's First Symphony preceded the Te Deum. Six months earlier, on 22 February 1909, Beecham had conducted the Te Deum with the same forces at Queen's Hall, on a programme with Vaughan Williams's In the Fen Country (première) and Delius's Sea Drift (London première); Philip Cathie and Albert Sammons were principal violins. For the 1914 performance, Beecham financed the Hallé Choir's participation (Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, 191).Google Scholar

100 View of the Musical Times critic (March 1915), cited in Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, 191. Beecham gave a shortened Symphonie fantastique (movements 2, 4 and 5) with the New Symphony Orchestra at an Albert Hall Prom in June 1915.Google Scholar

101 See Cowen, My Art and my Friends, 279–81. Mounted by the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, the performance was unstaged and given in English, with repeats at Manchester and Bradford the following season.Google Scholar