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La Trompette (musical society)

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La Trompette was a chamber music society based in Paris, founded by Émile Lemoine in January 1861. It has been credited with a major role in the propagation of chamber music in France. Performers included Camille Saint-Saëns, Louis Diémer, Paul Taffanel, Felix Weingartner, Pablo Casals, Harold Bauer, Wanda Landowska, Alfred Cortot, and Serge Koussevitzky.

History

The society was founded in 1861 by Lemoine and three fellow students at the École Polytechnique, who enjoyed playing quartets. The name "La Trompette" stemmed from a "non-sympathetic remark a teacher once made to quiet the quartet". With increasing popularity, it became a weekly private concert series. In 1878, the society moved to the hall of the Horticultural Society at 84 Rue de Grenelle, which seated 850.

Lemoine kept the nature of the society informal, considering himself not a manager or director but a host, and members of the society not to be subscribers but his friends, even though an annual monetary contribution was requested from each guest.

The concerts were invitation-only, Lemoine considering the audiences "very musical and ultra-select, with distinction and intellectual value but without snobbery". They began in the late evening, often with a quartet, and were held late December to early May. Most concerts combined a variety of styles, periods, and genres.

After Lemoine died in 1913, his wife continued the society.

Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns, a friend of Lemoine, was a longtime associate of La Trompette. He wrote his Septet specifically for the society, after Lemoine had "pestered" him years for a special piece to justify the name of the society.

Compositions by Saint-Saëns that were premiered at La Trompette include:

References

  1. ^ Grove, George, ed. (1890). "Trompette, La". A Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan and Company.
  2. Cooper, Jeffrey Hawley (1983). A Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century. The rise of instrumental music and concert series in Paris, 1828-1871. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press. p. 526. ISBN 0-8357-1403-9.
  3. Baron, John H. (2010). Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide (Third ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-138-88402-1.
  4. ^ Pasler, Jann (1993). "Concert Programs and their Narratives as Emblems of Ideology". International Journal of Musicology. 2: 249–308. ISSN 0941-9535. JSTOR 24617987.
  5. Ratner, Sabina Teller (2005). Notes to Hyperion CD Saint-Saëns Chamber Music. London: Hyperion Records. OCLC 61134605.
  6. Ratner, Sabina Teller (2002). Camille Saint-Saëns, 1835–1922: A Thematic Catalogue of his Complete Works, Volume 1: The Instrumental Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816320-6.

Further reading

  • Augé de Lassur, Lucien (1911). La Trompette: Un Demi-Siècle de Musique de Chambre. Paris: Ch. Delagrave.
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