Chapter 2: The Musicians, pp. 69-71

Among such an exuberant collection of artists there were inevitably troublesome characters—the timpanist of slovenly dress; the principal oboist Louis Cras, of whom Lamoureux complained in 1874 of habitually late arrival in inappropriate attire and with his instrument in bad repair—and black sheep. Likewise in 1874, presumably during the Mendelssohn “Italian” Symphony on 29 March, the basses Lejeune and Jolivet stood just outside the stage entry to quarrel and exchange blows; the inspecteur de la salle had to be summoned to quell the disturbance. The guilty parties expressed their regret and begged indulgence for the “scandal” they had caused, but were sent letters of censure nonetheless.
     Strong drink was sometimes at issue. In 1838 Habeneck succeeded in having the trombonist Barbier dismissed for arriving at a rehearsal in an état inconvenable, thought to “compromise the dignity of the Société des Concerts,” but he was apparently reinstated shortly afterward. The oboist Verroust the elder, praised by Fétis for his “exceptional talent, delicacy, and expression, with a good sound and great certainty in the playing of the most difficult passages,” nevertheless conceived an “invincible passion for wine.” The committee first notes having received an “unfavorable” report on his account in mid-January 1853. Two days later his brother, the bassoonist, came in tears to an extended urgent committee meeting, asking that his brother’s punishment “be the most severe possible in order to return him to his senses.” He was given a blunt letter to remit to his brother, a document meant to serve as “a moral lesson.”
     Verroust was in decent enough condition by mid-year to have been appointed professor at the Conservatoire and to the new imperial chapel. But by December 1853 his salary had been attached by legal injunction, and the committee insisted that his legal situation be corrected before he could reappear with the Société des Concerts. The affaire Verroust continued: another complaint was received in May 1854 and he was dismissed, but in November Girard thought the better of this course of action and returned him to the rolls as externe at full wage. Ultimately, according to Fétis, having lost all his positions and ruined his health, he finished his life “in acute catatonia.”
     Similarly problematic, and often also related to alcohol, were the cases of musicians whose financial affairs had got out of hand, usually signaled by the arrival of an official of the court (a bâtonnier or huissier) with a stamped document attaching his salary for payment of back debts, as was the case with Verroust. The officers looked particularly askance at such situations, owing to the manner of their financial structure: one musician’s liabilities were, in a way, the liabilities of all his colleagues. They would move quickly to distance the society from such proceedings, usually by dismissing the member.
     Such was the case with the tenor Robert. A huissier came twice in early 1844 to claim 225 francs from Robert’s future earnings; on this occasion the archiviste-caissier responded that his reponsibilities concerned the whole of the society, not the complications of individual members, and sent the agent away. When another huissier presented himself in spring 1847, the archiviste-caissier complained to the committee of encountering the same problem “every year,” deploring the “sloppiness and disorder” of his colleague. Robert was dismissed on 2 November 1847, with the committee sufficiently concerned about this state of affairs to leave a lengthy extract in the minutes:

The good reputation of the Société des Concerts is a responsibility left in care of its administrators, who must watch over it without ceasing. M. ROBERT, sociétaire, one of the singers, having been warned for several years that if the disorder in his finances continued to oblige the committee to respond to claims, stamped documents, and oppositions concerning him, there would be occasion to consider the question of his dismissal; and this artist not having taken, nor taking now, any account of the multiple warnings which have been given him, it is decided that his name will be removed from the registers. This decision, reached unanimously, will be conveyed to M. Robert by the secretary, who will express to him the committee’s regret at having to meet its onerous duty, and at being forced to deprive the Société des Concerts of the participation of an artist whose zeal and talent have always been valued.

     On three or four occasions members of the Société des Concerts had more serious encounters with the law. Among these was an aspirant actif named Léonard, alias Vicini, arrested in July 1874 on a morals charge and dismissed from the society after having been condemned to prison for corruption of the public morals and resisting arrest. There were periodic grumblings afterward about assuring moral probity among the recruits, and the record shows that in the aftermath the committee was known to ask: “Que savez-vous de la moralité de la susdite?”

This sampling of the peccadillos to be traced within the Société des Concerts ought not conclude without reference to the matter of the musicians and their cigarettes, an addiction that was virtually universal by the end of the nineteenth century. The vogue for cigarettes coincided with, and aggravated, the vigorous campaigns for improved theatre safety in the 1890s—danger of fire caused by a cigarette butt remains the principal concern of the sapeurs-pompiers charged with protecting the opera theatre in the palace at Versailles—as the players were begged to extinguish their cigarettes in new receptacles put for that purpose in the foyer of the Salle des Concerts. Smoking (and the reading of newspapers) during rehearsals was strictly forbidden, but a photograph of an early recording session shows every player smoking while simultaneously fiddling.
     Whatever their individual foibles, the musicians of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire realized their common dream on a grander scale than any of the founders could have imagined. Each passing decade brought challenges and lessons that reconfirmed the permanence of the principles that associated them. Charles Münch put it simply, and well: “They know that they are completely dependent on one another, and they place all their talent at the service of the musical collective of which each is but a part. They teach us an important lesson in human solidarity."”