The music world owes a debt of gratitude to two rival organizations that were at the center of the Parisian arts scene during France’s “Golden Age” of music.
A May 4, 1914 Société musicale indépendante recital program featuring music by Spanish composers, presented by French and Iberian musicians at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.
Well into the latter part of the nineteenth century, the symphonic tradition continued to be regarded as the near-exclusive domain of the Austro-German school of music. There had been attempts to broaden its geographic scope (Berlioz in France comes to mind), but late into the 1800s Central Europe continued to be considered the center of the instrumental realm — even as Italy meant “opera” and France laid claim to ballet along with opera.
Announcement of a January 12, 1922 SMI memorial concert devoted to the music of Achille-Claude Debussy.
In France, we do see evidence of certain composers attempting to establish a “pure music” tradition, as illustrated by the early symphonies of composers like Gounod and Bizet. Even so, these and others were to find their greatest success in their stage works, while composers such as Meyerbeer, Auber, Delibes and Massenet were the beneficiaries of substantial artistic (and monetary) success due to devoting the bulk of their attentions to creating music for the stage.
Still another group of French composers devoted themselves to “pure” music with a seriousness that was more pronounced. Yet those composers didn’t totally eschew operatic works, either; even César Franck composed operas.
Société nationale de musique (1871-1939)
The Franco-Prussian War contributed mightily to the perceived need to cultivate a specifically French instrumental tradition. France’s defeat was as much a psychological blow as it was a military one, and one consequence of this “wounded pride” was the founding of the Société nationale de musique. It was an organization established with the express purpose of promoting French music and giving rising French composers a vehicle to present their works in public.
The logo of the Société nationale de musique. Notice the Latin motto adopted by the organization: “Ars Gallica.”
The Société nationale came into being in February 1871 during the brief lull between the end of the siege of Paris and the rise and fall of the Paris Commune, riding a wave of French national (and anti-German) sentiment. (Before the war with Prussia, Beethoven and other Austro-German repertoire had dominated orchestral concerts in Paris, but unsurprisingly that state of affairs had become intolerable for many concert-goers.)
Romain Bussine (1830-1899)
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine (a professor of voice at the Paris Conservatoire) led the formation of the new society, joined by other founding members Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, Jules Massenet, Henri Duparc, Théodore Dubois, Ernest Guiraud and Paul Taffanel.
French composer Marie-Alexis de Castillon (1838-1873) didn’t live long following the formation of the Societé national de musique.
Fellow founding member Alexis de Castillon drafted the nationalist principles of the Society, which stated in part:
“The proposed purpose of the Society is to aid the production and popularization of all serious works, whether published or not, by French composers. To encourage and bring to light, as far as lies within its power, all musical attempts, whatever their form, on condition that they give evidence of lofty artistic aspirations on the part of their author.
Fraternally … the members will unite their efforts, each in his own sphere of action, to the study and performance of the works which they shall be called upon to select and interpret.”
Significantly, another clause in the Society’s constitution stipulated:
“No one can be part of the Society as an active member unless he is French.”
The first concert of the Societé nationale, held in November 1871, drew on repertoire from the founding members, including chamber music and vocal pieces by Dubois, de Castillon, Franck, Saint-Saëns and Fauré. (Programs in the early years leaned heavily towards chamber music, with restricted finances precluding all but just a handful of orchestral concerts.)
Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) (1911 photo)
But within 15 years of the Société nationale’s founding, dissension in the ranks had began to build. A faction of the Society determined that its French nationalistic character had become too limiting. Led by Vincent d’Indy, who had been appointed a joint secretary of the Society in 1885, this faction enlisted the support of Franck to open the Society to non-French music and musicians. By 1886 the first music by a non-French composer had been presented (a composition by Edvard Grieg), and in 1890 d’Indy himself had become president of the organization.
This May 1897 Société nationale de musique concert program included the premiere performance of Paul Dukas’ L’Apprenti sorcier.
The opening of the Societé musicale to non-French musicians, coupled with its increasingly close connections to the musically conservative Schola Cantorum (where Franck and d’Indy taught), led to the organization losing some of its luster among the younger generation of composers then coming of age in Paris. And this is where the story takes its next major turn.
Enter Les Apaches (1902-1915)
To be a young composer, painter or writer in Paris at the turn of the last century meant being among a group of avant-garde artists for which the future promised seemingly limitless possibilities. To these fresh-faced creative artists, nothing could stand in their way — except the hidebound conservatives who held sway in the city’s established arts and academic institutions.
One can imagine the sense of breathless excitement that swirled around these “bright young things” as they talked of the future — even as they cast aspersions on the stuffy establishmentarians in the academy and in society. Florent Schmitt found himself at the center of this intoxicating brew.
It seemed only natural that such an artistically electric atmosphere would eventually turn into something of a movement, and the catalyst was the 1902 premiere of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande — a stage work that essentially threw out the old operatic playbook. Shortly after the premiere of Debussy’s opera, the most precocious of these non-conformist artists would establish a loose confederation that they dubbed the Société des Apaches.
Why that name? Reportedly, this term (an early twentieth century term describing European street gangs as “hooligans”) had been used as a slur against the group as they departed noisily from the premiere performance of Debussy’s opera. Finding the sobriquet amusing, the young creatives also saw the term as affirming their art being directly at odds with conservative, establishmentarian tastes.
Among the founding members of Les Apaches were the following young creatives:
- Édouard Bénédictus (painter)
- Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (author and critic)
- Maurice Delage (composer)
- Manuel de Falla (composer)
- Léon-Paul Fargue (poet)
- Lucien Garban (editor)
- Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (conductor)
- Tristan Kingsor (poet and painter)
- Maurice Ravel (composer)
- Albert Roussel (composer)
- Florent Schmitt (composer)
- Paul Sordes (painter)
- Ricardo Viñes (pianist)
- Émile Vuillermoz (music critic)
Members of Les Apaches, pictured in Georges d’Espagnat’s painting of 1910. Florent Schmitt is at far left, Maurice Ravel on the right, Ricardo Viñnes is at the piano and Albert Roussel stands to his immediate left.
From 1903 onward, the group would meet each Saturday at members’ homes. Such meetings were lively affairs, often lasting long into the night (to the consternation of neighbors, necessitating the eventual move to rented quarters of Maurice Delage in an industrial section of the city). Invariably, discussion among Apache members centered on the arts, contemporary issues of the day, plus performing music and reading poetry along with imbibing copious quantities of alcohol, strong coffee and smoking products.
Symbolism, Russian composers, Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande, Javanese music, Stéphane Mallarmé, Edgar Allan Poe and Paul Cézanne — these were among the varied topics of fascination at Apache get-togethers.
Igor Stravinsky (l.), photographed with Florent Schmitt in about 1910.
Moreover, new members were welcomed to the loosely organized group — most notably Igor Stravinsky upon his arrival in the French capital in 1909.
Outside of their meetings, Apache members would support each other in various ways. Ricardo Viñes premiered piano works by the composers, the music critics would encourage new music through their articles of advocacy in the press, and poets would collaborate with their musician counterparts in setting their words to music.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). His most intimate friends in the arts were fellow members of Les Apaches. At the premiere of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé in 1912, the four attendees invited to join the composer in his box at the Palais Garnier were the composer’s mother and brother, plus Igor Stravinsky and Florent Schmitt.
Because of the close-knit nature of the Les Apaches, many of the members became intimate friends. As an example of such relationships, in their book A French Song Companion, co-authors Graham Johnson and Richard Stokes report that Ravel used the French familiar form tu with only three friends outside his close family — and all three of them were members of Les Apaches (Fargue, Schmitt and Stravinsky).
Not surprisingly, regular meetings of Les Apaches would become a casualty of World War I as members found themselves scattered (some at the war front), and the group eventually dissolved. However, Les Apaches’ existence had been consequential well-beyond merely the meetings and the shared friendships of its members; the group was also a significant catalyst in the creation of an alternative music society that would be set up as a rival to the Societé nationale, as our story continues …
Société musicale indépendante (1910-1935)
Les Apaches may have been merely a loose confederation of like-minded artistic souls, but the group happened to form the foundation of a new music society that rose up in competition with the Societé nationale de musique. When the Société musicale indépendante (SMI) was formed in 1910, it was as a direct challenge to the Societé nationale, which had slowly lost favor for its perceived conservatism and “frankly Franckian” bias. Several of Ravel’s works had been poorly received at Societé nationale concerts, while compositions by Koechlin, Delage and Vaughan Williams had been refused performance out of hand.
This news item announcing the formation of the Société musicale indépendante appeared in the April 15, 1910 issue of Henry Prunières’ La Revue musicale magazine.
The SMI’s express aim was to support contemporary musical creation, freeing it from restrictions linked to “establishment” forms, genres and styles.
Florent Schmitt was one of the four founding members of the SMI, which proceeded to name Schmitt’s respected teacher and mentor Gabriel Fauré as the new organization’s president. The SMI’s executive committee would come to consist of a veritable “who’s who” of the leading young composers and music scholars of the time, including:
Jules-Armand-Joseph Écorcheville (1872-1915) was a French musicologist and collector of ancient instruments. Like Robert d’Humières who created the staging for Florent Schmitt’s 1907 original version of La Tragédie de Salomé, Écorcheville was one of many French creative artists who would not survive World War I — in his case being killed during a French army assault on a German trench in Northern France. The composer André Caplet, although not killed in the war, was the victim of a poison gas attack at the front, which compromised his health and led to his premature death in 1925 at the age of just 47 years.
- Louis Aubert
- Béla Bartók
- Nadia Boulanger
- André Caplet
- Jules Écorcheville
- Manuel de Falla
- Arthur Honegger
- Jean Huré
- Jacques Ibert
- Charles Koechlin
- Maurice Ravel
- Jean Roger-Ducasse
- Albert Roussel
- Florent Schmitt
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Igor Stravinsky
- Émile Vuillermoz
Polish-born, French-trained composer and artist Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa (1876-1948), pictured with fellow composer and artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, at right. A student of André Gédalge and Camille Chevillard at the Paris Conservatoire, Morawski’s Symphony No. 1 shared billing with Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII on the first SMI orchestral program, held in Paris in June 1910. Morawski headed the Music Institute (Warsaw Conservatoire) between 1932 and 1939, returning to the city following World War II. The bulk of his creative output was lost by fire during the Warsaw Uprising in late 1944. (1900 photo)
The inaugural orchestral concert of the SMI was held on June 9, 1910 in Paris. Among the works presented on that first program was Florent Schmitt’s Psaume XLVII. Also featured in the concert was the Symphony No. 1 by the Polish-born composer Eugeniusz Morawski.
Looking at the programming practices of the two rivals, during the period 1910 to 1930 I think it is fair to conclude that the SMI’s activities eclipsed those of the Societé nationale — if not in quantity, then in terms of the importance of the musical offerings presented to the Parisian public.
Although a sense of French nationalism had clearly reasserted itself in the wake of the First World War, the SMI did not confine itself to promoting the music of French composers exclusively; instead, its outlook was global — and focused on the “modern.”
Mainly French music: A poster for a January 1912 SMI chamber music recital, presented at the Salle Gaveau in Paris.
An SMI recital program of premieres, presented on June 15,1923 at the Salle des agriculteurs in the 8th arr. of Paris.
Florent Schmitt and Arnold Schoenberg, together aboard ship (North Sea, 1920). At the time, Schmitt was a vociferous advocate for Schoenberg’s avant-garde output even as he was dismissive of the core Austro-German canon which he often referred to as “solennités rituelles” (solemn rituals). In 1920 Schmitt wrote: “People demand Wagner without knowing why. I cannot think without a shudder of the countless overtures of Lohengrin and Rienzi that the war, as its only merit, at least spared us for some time.”
Among the numerous international composers whose music was given exposure in France thanks to the efforts of the SMI were the Austrians Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. The significance of the SMI’s advocacy on behalf of the avant-garde in music was underscored in a letter that Webern wrote to Ravel in 1927 which stated, in part:
“Thanks to your vision, the Societé musicale indépendante exists to combat musical censorship, permitting voices and styles to be heard that would otherwise be stifled by Vincent d’Indy’s exclusive and demanding aesthetic requirements … d’Indy’s criteria for ‘serious musical works’ is so rigid that the performances of new works becomes as tedious as a university examination …
Anton Friedrich von Webern (1883-1945) (1912 photo)
The SMI makes Paris globally connected, rather than localized and isolated. Although the SMI has produced only a fifth of the concert volume of the Société nationale, it has welcomed numerous experimental, foreign or otherwise avant-garde works. In our postwar reality, when French pride permeates every aspect of Paris, such a venue for foreign music is a rare treasure …
I am aware that these opportunities do not exist without great controversy, and I thank you for your tireless efforts to cultivate new international music … Such an international embrace of new works signifies the SMI’s high standards for compositional excellence — where a composer’s worth is based not on nationality but on style, aesthetics, and quality.”
Over its consequential 25-year existence, the SMI would organize more than 170 concerts consisting of some 435 pieces of music — many of them premiere performances.
A 1926 SMI concert featuring the music of Arnold Schoenberg, including Pierrot lunaire. This wasn’t the first presentation of Pierrot in Paris; it had been played there as far back as 1921, under the direction of Darius Milhaud. Present at the earlier concert, music critic Louis Fleury would later report: “I hope Messieurs Ravel and Schmitt will not mind my revealing the fact that they were among the warmest of Schoenberg’s admirers — but even they were hard put to defend their opinion with musicians of their own mettle.”
Over its 25 years of existence, the Société musicale indépendante presented a total of 435 different compositions. This graphic, prepared by Brazilian pianist and music scholar Danieli Longo Benedetti, shows which composers were presented most often: Ravel, Fauré, Debussy and Schmitt. (Source: Dezède Online)
Final Years and Legacy
At the center of it all: The first office of the SMI was located at 9 Rue de l’Isly in the 8th arr. (pictured above in May 2022) — just a short walk from the Palais Garnier via Rue Auber. Later, the SMI would move to an office at 47 Rue Blanche in the 9th arr., situated in between today’s Place Lili Boulanger and the Musée de la vie romantique (Museum of the Romantic Age).
Over the years, the two rival music societies were characterized by both divergence and convergence. Recognizing that the higher aims of both groups shared significant similarities, efforts were even made to bring the two rival music societies together. An attempt at a merger, proposed in the mid-1920s, ultimately failed due to unbridgeable differences in vision between the younger SMI members and the “old guard.”
But the Societé nationale itself was changing as well. By 1930, Vincent d’Indy’s influence had waned considerably (he would die in 1931), and in the event the Societé nationale began presenting more daring new works by composers such as Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, Bohuslav Martinů, Déodat de Severac and Olivier Messiaen.
More modern: This April 1932 Société nationale de musique concert program featured new compositions by Robert Casadesus and Maurice Emmanuel.
With such convergence in programming happening, the need for two distinct organizations began to seem less and less necessary. By 1935, the SMI would cease its operations and the Societé nationale once again became the flagship proponent of new music in France — and it would continue in that role until the onset of World War II.
Florent Schmitt, photographed in 1937 during his tenure as the final president of the Société nationale de musique (Photo: ©Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet)
As the final surprise in “coming full circle,” it’s interesting to discover that Florent Schmitt — who had been at the center of establishing the “counter-cultural” Apaches and SMI groups — ended up serving as the last president of the Société nationale (1937-39). Ultimately, the clamorous “outsiders” had become the consummate “insiders.”
The dissolution of the Société nationale — ending not with a bang but with a whimper as declarations of war were being announced all across Europe — seems at first blush a rather dispiriting ending to the story. But the French essayist Romain Rolland penned a memorable epitaph that helps remind us of the consequential role that the organization played in the musical life of France over nearly seven decades, and particularly during its early years:
Romain Rolland (1866-1944)
“It is with respect that we must speak of the Société Nationale, which was truly the cradle and sanctuary of French art. Everything that was great in French music, from 1870 to 1900, came through it. Without the Societé Nationale, most of the works that are the honor of our music not only would not have been performed, but perhaps never even created.”