[Footnote 212:  It is to be noted that since 1807 the Conservatoire pupils have made Beethoven’s symphonies familiar to Parisians.  The Symphony in C minor was performed by them in 1808; the Heroic in 1811.  It was in connection with one of these performances that the Tablettes de Polymnie gave a curious appreciation of Beethoven, which is quoted by M. Constant Pierre:  “This composer is often grotesque and uncouth, and sometimes flies majestically like an eagle and sometimes crawls along stony paths.  It is as though one had shut up doves and crocodiles together.”]

In later years, however, the Societe des Concerts, with M. Marty, began to consider new works.  Its orchestra, composed of eminent instrumentalists, enjoys a classical fame; though it is now no longer alone in the excellence of its performances, and has perhaps lost a little the secret that it claimed to possess for the interpretation of great classical works.  It excels in works of a neo-classic character, like those of M. Saint-Saens, which are stronger in style and taste than in life and passion.  The Conservatoire concerts have also a relative superiority over other concerts in Paris in the performance of choral works, which up to the present have been very second-rate.  But these concerts are not easy of access for the general public, as the number of seats for sale is very limited.  And so the society is representative of a little public whose taste is, broadly speaking, conservative and official; and the noise of the strife outside its doors only reaches its ears slowly, and with a deadened sound.

The influence of the Conservatoire is, in music especially, an influence of the past and of the Government.  One may say much the same of the Opera.  This ancient association, which bears the imposing name of Academie nationale de Musique and dates from 1669, is a sort of national institution which is more concerned with the history of official art than with living art.  The satire with which Jean-Jacques describes, in his Nouvelle Heloise, the stiff solemnity and mournful pomp of its performances has not lost much of its truth.  What is lacking in the Opera to-day is the enthusiasm that accompanied its former musical struggles in the times of the “Encyclopedistes” and the “guerre des coins.”  The great battles of art are now fought outside its doors; and it has become by degrees a showy salon, a little faded perhaps, where the public is more interested in itself than in the performance.  In spite of the enormous sums that it swallows up every year (nearly four million francs),[213] only one or two new pieces are produced in a year, and they are rarely works that are representative of the modern school.  And though it has at last admitted Wagner’s dramas into its repertory, one can no longer consider these works, half a century old, to be in the vanguard of music.  The most esteemed masters of the French