f vast
compositions like the oratorios were given. An author who was still
alive was looked upon as an intruder. However, the conductor was
permitted to introduce a solo of his own selection. Thus my friend
Auguste Tolbecque, who was over eighty, was permitted to give--he still
played beautifully--my first _concerto_ for the violoncello which I had
written for him. Deldevez, the conductor of the famous orchestra at the
time, did not overlook the chance to tell me that he had put my
_concerto_ on the programme only through consideration for Tolbecque.
Otherwise, he added, he would have preferred Messieurs So-and-so's.

Not only did the Conservatoire audiences know little music, but the
larger public knew none at all. The symphonies of the three great
classic masters were known to amateurs for the most part only through
Czerny's arrangement for two pianos.

This was the situation when Seghers left the Societe des Concerts and
founded the Societe St. Cecile. He led the orchestra himself. The new
society took its name from the St. Cecile hall which was then in the Rue
de la Chaussee d'Antin. It was a large square hall and was excellent in
spite of the prejudice in favor of halls with curved lines for music.
Curved surfaces, as Cavaille-Coll, who was an expert in this matter,
once told me, distort sound as curved mirrors distort images. Halls used
for music should, therefore, have only straight lines. The St. Cecile
hall was sufficiently large to allow a complete orchestra and chorus to
be placed properly and heard as well.

Seghers managed to assemble an excellent and sizable orchestra and he
also secured soloists who were young then but who have since become
celebrities. The orchestra was poorly paid and also very unruly. I have
seen them rebel at the difficulties in Beethoven, and it was even worse
when Seghers undertook to give Schumann who was considered the _ne plus
ultra_ of modernism. Oftentimes there were real riots. But we heard
there for the first time the overture of _Manfred_, Mendelssohn's
_Symphony in A minor_, and the overture to _Tannhauser_.

The modern French school found the doors in the Rue Bergere closed to
them, but they were welcomed with open arms at the Chaussee d'Antin.
Among them were Reber, Gounod, and Gouvy, and even beginners like
Georges Bizet and myself. I made my first venture there with my
_Symphony in E flat_ which I wrote when I was seventeen. In order to get
the committee to adopt it