Pierre Monteux was one of the most distinguished conductors of the 20th century. Highly respected by players and in his later years beloved by audiences, he had a phenomenally acute ear and keen sense of rhythm. Monteux made many recordings and was an important teacher. He is perhaps best known as the conductor who led the notorious premiere of STRAVINSKY’S The Rite of Spring in 1913.
Monteux was born in Paris on April 4, 1875, and began violin studies at age six, entering the Paris Conservatory at age nine. He made his conducting debut at 12 with renowned pianist Alfred Cortot as soloist. At age 21, Monteux won the violin prize at the conservatory, and was engaged as violist at both the Opéra-Comique and Concerts Colonne, a private orchestra organised by the Berlioz specialist, Edouard Colonne. Monteux was promoted to assistant conductor of the latter ensemble. In 1908, he took charge of the Casino Orchestra at the spa town of Dieppe and, in 1911, Monteux organised his own orchestra, the Concerts Berlioz, in honour of Colonne.
Monteux was working for Sergey Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, and had already conducted the premiere of RAVEL’S Daphnis et Chloé and supervised the rehearsal preparation for Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka, an innovative work with strong roots in Russian folk music. Stravinsky was impressed with Monteux’s appreciation and understanding of Petrusbka, and invited him to listen to the piano arrangement of The Rite of Spring. Monteux agreed to conduct the work, although he did not care for it on first hearing. After 17 orchestral rehearsals, the premiere took place at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, on May 29, 1913. The audience rioted and a terrified Diaghilev hid himself backstage. Monteux continued to conduct until the final bar, though the music was drowned out by boos. (Later, however, Monteux was to program The Rite of Spring as a concert piece, and it became so popular that it was used in the Disney film Fantasia.)
In 1916, Monteux was appointed guest conductor of French and Russian works for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He did not, however, wish to remain a ballet and opera specialist, and so accepted the music directorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1919. But it was a difficult time for the BSO: a strike resulted in the simultaneous departure of 45 players.
At the BSO, Monteux introduced much contemporary music with mixed audience reaction. By 1924, he was replaced by Sergey KOUSSEVITZKY, and Monteux became Mengelberg’s assistant at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. Monteux’s friend from conservatory days, Alfred Cortot, was influential in securing for him the directorship of the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris.
Monteux had a strong commitment to teaching as well as performing, and in 1932 he founded a school for conductors, the Ecole Monteux, in Paris. Later, he continued this work in America at the Domaine School in Hancock, Maine, counting among his students Neville Marriner, André PREVIN, David Zinman, and Leon Fleischer.
Monteux was music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1936 to 1952, raising the orchestra to international status. In 1942, he became a citizen of the United States. He married three times; his last wife wrote two books about him, one of which she attributed to their poodle, Fifi. Monteux died on July 1, 1964, three years after signing a 25-year contract with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Alan Blackwood
SEE ALSO:
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC.
Monteux, Doris. It’s All in the Music (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965); O’Connell, Charles. The Other Side of the Record (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970).
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9; Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique; Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring; Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 4–6.