81 Facts About Pierre Monteux

Pierre Monteux came to prominence when, for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company between 1911 and 1914, he conducted the world premieres of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and other prominent works including Petrushka, The Nightingale, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, and Debussy's Jeux.

From 1917 to 1919 Monteux was the principal conductor of the French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Pierre Monteux conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Paris and San Francisco Symphony.

Pierre Monteux disliked recording, finding it incompatible with spontaneity, but he nevertheless made a substantial number of records.

Pierre Monteux was born in Paris, the third son and the fifth of six children of Gustave Elie Monteux, a shoe salesman, and his wife, Clemence Rebecca nee Brisac.

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The Pierre Monteux family was descended from Sephardic Jews who settled in the south of France.

The Pierre Monteux ancestors included at least one rabbi, but Gustave Pierre Monteux and his family were not religious.

Gustave Pierre Monteux was not musical, but his wife was a graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Marseille and gave piano lessons.

Pierre Monteux studied the violin with Jules Garcin and Henri Berthelier, composition with Charles Lenepveu, and harmony and theory with Albert Lavignac.

At the age of twelve, Pierre Monteux organised and conducted a small orchestra of Conservatoire students to accompany Cortot in performances of concertos in and around Paris.

Pierre Monteux attended the world premiere of Cesar Franck's Symphony in February 1889.

Pierre Monteux studied privately with Benjamin Godard, with whom he performed in the premiere of Saint-Saens's Septet, with the composer at the keyboard.

Pierre Monteux joined the Geloso Quartet as violist; he played many concerts with them, including a performance of Faure's Second Piano Quartet with the composer at the piano.

In 1893, when he was eighteen, Pierre Monteux married a fellow student, the pianist Victoria Barriere.

Colonne had known Berlioz, and through the older conductor Pierre Monteux was able to mark his scores with notes based on the composer's intentions.

Pierre Monteux was employed on a freelance basis at the Opera-Comique, where he continued to play from time to time for several years; he led the viola section at the 1902 premiere of Pelleas et Melisande under the baton of Andre Messager.

Pierre Monteux was a member of the orchestra engaged for a performance of Saint-Saens's oratorio La lyre et la harpe, to be conducted by the composer.

Pierre Monteux later described himself as "the most pitifully inadequate soldier that the 132nd Infantry had ever seen".

Pierre Monteux had inherited from his mother not only her musical talent but her short and portly build and was physically unsuited to soldiering.

In December 1900 Pierre Monteux played the solo viola part in Berlioz's Harold in Italy, rarely heard in Paris at the time, with the Colonne Orchestra conducted by Felix Mottl.

Some time, Pierre Monteux's marriage had been under strain, exacerbated by his wife's frequent absences on concert tours.

The couple were divorced in 1909; Pierre Monteux married one of her former pupils, Germaine Benedictus, the following year.

Pierre Monteux continued to play in the Concerts Colonne through the first decade of the century.

Pierre Monteux played under Pierne in the world premiere of Stravinsky's The Firebird.

Pierre Monteux conducted the preliminary rehearsals before Tcherepnin arrived; Stravinsky was so impressed that he insisted that Pierre Monteux conduct the premiere.

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In later years Pierre Monteux disapproved of the appropriation of symphonic music for ballets, but he made an exception for Scheherazade, and, as his biographer John Canarina observes, at that stage in his career his views on the matter carried little weight.

Pierre Monteux was the conductor for the two outstanding works of the season, Vaslav Nijinsky's ballet version of Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, made with the composer's approval, and Fokine's Daphnis et Chloe to a score commissioned from Ravel.

Pierre Monteux had been appalled when Stravinsky first played the score at the piano:.

Together they worked on the score from March to May 1913, and to get the orchestra of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees to cope with the unfamiliar and difficult music Pierre Monteux held seventeen rehearsals, an unusually large number.

Pierre Monteux pressed on, continuing to conduct the orchestra regardless of the turmoil behind him.

Pierre Monteux stood there apparently impervious and as nerveless as a crocodile.

Pierre Monteux presented the Rite during its London season a few weeks later.

Pierre Monteux believed that most of the anger aroused by the work was due not to the music but to Nijinsky's choreography, described by Stravinsky as "knock-kneed and long-haired Lolitas jumping up and down".

That performance was part of a series of "Concerts Pierre Monteux", presented between February and April 1914, in which Pierre Monteux conducted the orchestra of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in a wide range of symphonic and concertante works, including the concert premiere of the orchestral version of Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales.

Pierre Monteux later described much of this period as one of "filth and boredom", although he formed a scratch band to divert his fellow soldiers.

In New York in 1916 Pierre Monteux refused to conduct Nijinsky's new ballet Till Eulenspiegel as the music was by a German – Richard Strauss – so a conductor had to be engaged for those performances.

At the Met, Pierre Monteux conducted familiar French works such as Faust, Carmen and Samson and Delilah, with singers including Enrico Caruso, Geraldine Farrar, Louise Homer and Giovanni Martinelli.

Pierre Monteux's performances were well received, but, though he later returned to the Met as a guest, opera did not loom large in his career.

In 1919 Pierre Monteux was appointed chief conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Shortly before Pierre Monteux took up the conductorship the autocratic founder and proprietor of the orchestra, Henry Lee Higginson, died.

Pierre Monteux had steadfastly resisted unionisation, and after his death a substantial minority of the players resumed the struggle for union recognition.

Pierre Monteux set about rebuilding the orchestra, auditioning players from all kinds of musical background, some of whom had not played symphonic music before.

Pierre Monteux regularly introduced new compositions in Boston, often works by American, English and French composers.

Pierre Monteux was proud of the number of novelties presented in his years at Boston, and expressed pleasure that his successors continued the practice.

Pierre Monteux was dismayed when it was announced that his contract would not be renewed after 1924.

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In 1924, Pierre Monteux began a ten-year association with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, serving as "first conductor" alongside Willem Mengelberg, its long-serving chief conductor.

Toscanini had been invited to conduct the last of these, but he told the promoters that Pierre Monteux was his dearest colleague and the best conductor for Falstaff.

The following year Cortot invited Pierre Monteux to become the orchestra's artistic director and principal conductor.

Pierre Monteux considered the OSP one of the finest with which he worked.

Pierre Monteux conducted it until 1938, premiering many pieces, including Prokofiev's Third Symphony in 1929.

In Berlin the audience could not contain its applause until the end of the Symphonie fantastique, and in Pierre Monteux's words "went wild" after the slow movement, the "Scene aux champs".

Pierre Monteux approved of spontaneous applause, unlike Artur Schnabel, Sir Henry Wood and Leopold Stokowski, who did all they could to stamp out the practice of clapping between movements.

Pierre Monteux first conducted the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in 1931, and in 1935 at the age of 60 he was offered the chief conductorship.

Pierre Monteux was doubtful about accepting, both on personal and on professional grounds.

Pierre Monteux did not want to leave the OSP, his wife did not want to live on the west coast of America, and the orchestra was so low in funds that it had been forced to cancel an entire season in 1934.

Pierre Monteux generally avoided, as he did throughout his career, atonal or serial works, but his choice of modern works nevertheless drew occasional complaints from conservative-minded members of the San Francisco audience.

Pierre Monteux appeared as guest conductor with many orchestras; he commented in 1955, "I regret they don't have symphony orchestras all over the world so I could see Burma and Samarkand".

The engagement was greeted with enthusiasm by the critics and the public, and Munch invited Pierre Monteux to join him the following year in heading the orchestra's first European tour.

Pierre Monteux returned annually to Boston every year until his death.

Pierre Monteux had two main reasons: he believed that a conductor should not remain in one post for too long, and he wished to be free to accept more invitations to appear with other orchestras.

Pierre Monteux resigned from the SFSO at the end of the 1952 season.

Pierre Monteux briefly reappeared on the podium at the War Memorial Opera House within a year, as co-conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's coast-to-coast American tour, at Munch's invitation.

Between 1953 and 1956 Pierre Monteux returned to the Met for Pelleas et Melisande, Carmen, Manon, Orfeo ed Euridice, The Tales of Hoffmann and Samson et Dalila.

Pierre Monteux had conducted for the fledgling BBC in an orchestral concert at Covent Garden in 1924, where he conducted the first public performance of the BBC Wireless Orchestra, and for the Royal Philharmonic Society at the Queen's Hall in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Halle players were immensely impressed with Pierre Monteux, and said that his orchestral technique and knowledge easily beat those of most other conductors.

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Pierre Monteux would have made more but for Britain's strict quarantine laws, which prevented the Monteuxs from bringing their pet French poodle with them; Doris Monteux would not travel without the poodle, and Monteux would not travel without his wife.

Pierre Monteux gave them extended horizons and some of his achievements with the orchestra, both at home and abroad, gave them quite a different constitution.

In June 1964 Pierre Monteux suffered three strokes and a cerebral thrombosis at his home in Maine, where he died on 1 July at the age of 89.

Pierre Monteux ignored taboos on employing black artists; reportedly, during the days of segregation in the US, when told he could not be served in a restaurant "for colored folk" he insisted that he was coloured – pink.

Importance of rehearsal to Pierre Monteux was shown when, in 1923, Diaghilev asked him to conduct Stravinsky's new Les noces with no rehearsal, as the composer would already have conducted the first performance, Pierre Monteux following on from there.

Haggin, while admitting that Pierre Monteux was generally regarded as one of the giants of conducting, wrote of his "repeatedly demonstrated musical mediocrity".

Pierre Monteux's rhythm, for example, was a little too pointed for, say, Brahms or Schumann.

Pierre Monteux expressing his dislike of studio recording sessions, The Times, March 1959.

Pierre Monteux made a large number of recordings throughout his career.

Pierre Monteux's first recording was as a violist in "Plus blanche que la blanche hermine" from Les Huguenots by Meyerbeer in 1903 for Pathe with the tenor Albert Vaguet.

Pierre Monteux's recording debut as a conductor was the first of his five recordings of The Rite of Spring, issued in 1929, with the OSP, judged by Canarina to be indifferently played; recordings by Monteux of music by Ravel and Berlioz made in 1930 and 1931, Canarina believes, were more impressive.

Stravinsky, who recorded The Rite in 1929, was furious that Pierre Monteux had made a rival recording; he made vitriolic comments privately, and for some time his relations with Pierre Monteux remained cool.

Some live performances of Pierre Monteux conducting the Metropolitan Opera, and among others the San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony, BBC Symphony and London Symphony orchestras survive alongside his studio recordings, and some have been issued on compact disc.

Many of Pierre Monteux's recordings have remained in the catalogues for decades, notably his RCA Victor recordings with the Boston Symphony and Chicago Symphony orchestras; Decca recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic; and Decca and Philips recordings with the LSO.

Pierre Monteux can be heard rehearsing in the original LP issues of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Beethoven's 9th with the London Symphony.

Pierre Monteux is seen conducting Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture and Beethoven's 8th symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Dukas' L'Apprenti sorcier with the London Symphony Orchestra in an "unshowy, deeply satisfying humane way".