Early years Pierre Monteux was born in Paris, the third son and the fifth of six children of Gustave Élie Monteux, a shoe salesman, and his wife, Clémence Rebecca
née Brisac. The Monteux family was descended from
Sephardic Jews who settled in the south of France. The Monteux ancestors included at least one
rabbi, but Gustave Monteux and his family were not religious. Among Monteux's brothers were
Henri, who became an actor, and Paul (1862-1928), who became a conductor of light music under the name Paul Monteux-Brisac. Gustave Monteux was not musical, but his wife was a graduate of the Conservatoire de Musique de Marseille and gave piano lessons. His fellow violin students included
George Enescu,
Carl Flesch,
Fritz Kreisler and
Jacques Thibaud. From 1889 to 1892, while still a student, he played in the orchestra of the
Folies Bergère; At the age of fifteen, while continuing his violin studies, Monteux took up the viola. He studied privately with
Benjamin Godard, with whom he performed in the premiere of
Saint-Saëns's
Septet, with the composer at the keyboard. On another occasion he was the violist in a private performance of a
Brahms quartet given before the composer in Vienna. Monteux recalled Brahms's remark, "It takes the French to play my music properly. The Germans all play it much too heavily." Monteux remained a member of the Geloso Quartet until 1911. asked by
Erik Smith if he could write out the parts of the seventeen Beethoven quartets, he replied, "You know, I cannot forget them." In 1893, when he was eighteen, Monteux married a fellow student, the pianist Victoria Barrière. With her he played the complete Beethoven violin sonatas in public. Neither family approved of the marriage; although the Monteux family were not religious, both they and the Roman Catholic Barrières were doubtful about an
inter-religious marriage; furthermore, both families thought the couple too young to marry. While still a student, in 1893 Monteux was successful in the competition for the chair of first viola of the
Concerts Colonne, of which he became assistant conductor and choirmaster the following year. He was also employed on a freelance basis at the
Opéra-Comique, where he continued to play from time to time for several years; he led the viola section at the 1902 premiere of
Pelléas et Mélisande under the baton of
André Messager. In 1896 he graduated from the Conservatoire, sharing first prize for violin with Thibaud.
First conducting posts at the keyboard, with Monteux (right) on the rostrum, 1913 Monteux's first high-profile conducting experience came in 1895, when he was barely 20 years old. He was a member of the orchestra engaged for a performance of Saint-Saëns's
oratorio La lyre et la harpe, to be conducted by the composer. At the last minute Saint-Saëns judged the player engaged for the important and difficult organ part to be inadequate and, as a celebrated virtuoso organist, decided to play it himself. He asked the orchestra if any of them could take over as conductor; there was a chorus of "Oui – Monteux!". With great trepidation, Monteux conducted the orchestra and soloists including the composer, sight-reading the score, and was judged a success. Monteux's musical career was interrupted in 1896, when he was called up for military service. As a graduate of the Conservatoire, one of France's
grandes écoles, he was required to serve only ten months rather than the three years generally required. He later described himself as "the most pitifully inadequate soldier that the 132nd Infantry had ever seen". He had inherited from his mother not only her musical talent but her short and portly build and was physically unsuited to soldiering. Returning to Paris after discharge, Monteux resumed his career as a violist.
Hans Richter invited him to lead the violas in the
Bayreuth Festival orchestra, but Monteux could not afford to leave his regular work in Paris. In December 1900 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. In 1902 he secured a junior conducting post at the
Dieppe casino, a seasonal appointment for the summer months which brought him into contact with leading musicians from the Paris orchestras and well-known soloists on vacation. Monteux continued to play in the Concerts Colonne through the first decade of the century. In 1910 Colonne died and was succeeded as principal conductor by
Gabriel Pierné. As well as leading the violas, Monteux was assistant conductor, taking charge of early rehearsals and acting as chorus master for choral works. (l) with
Nijinsky as Petrushka, 1911
Petrushka was part of a triple bill, all conducted by Monteux. The other two pieces were
Le Spectre de la Rose and
Scheherazade, a balletic adaptation of
Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite of the
same name. The three works were choreographed by
Fokine. In later years 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. Following the Paris season Diaghilev appointed Monteux principal conductor for a tour of Europe in late 1911 and early 1912. It began with a five-week season at the
Royal Opera House in London. The press notices concentrated on the dancers, who included
Anna Pavlova as well as the regular stars of the Ballets Russes, but Monteux received some words of praise.
The Times commented on the excellent unanimity he secured from the players, apart from "occasional uncertainty in the changes of
tempo." After its season in London the company performed in Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Berlin. and in Vienna the
Philharmonic was unequal to the difficulties of the score of
Petrushka. The illustrious orchestra revolted at the rehearsal for the first performance, refusing to play for Monteux; only an intervention by Diaghilev restored the rehearsal, by the end of which Monteux was applauded and Stravinsky given an ovation. In the middle of the tour Monteux was briefly summoned back to Paris by the Concerts Colonne, which had the contractual right to recall him, to deputise for Pierné; his own deputy,
Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht, took temporary musical charge of the Ballets Russes. In May 1912 Diaghilev's company returned to Paris. Monteux was the conductor for the two outstanding works of the season,
Vaslav Nijinsky's ballet version of
Debussy's ''
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'', made with the composer's approval, and Fokine's
Daphnis et Chloé to a score commissioned from
Ravel. Monteux later recalled "Debussy was behind me when we played ''L'après midi d'un faune'' because he did not want anything in his score to be changed on account of the dancing. And when we came to a forte, he said 'Monteux, that is a forte, play forte'. He did not want anything shimmering. And he wanted everything exactly in time". In February and March 1913 the Ballets Russes presented another London season. As in 1911, the local orchestra engaged was the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra's founder,
Thomas Beecham, shared the conducting with Monteux. At the end of February Beecham had to take over
Petrushka when Monteux suddenly hastened to Paris for four days to be with his wife on the birth of their daughter, Denise.
The Rite of Spring During the 1913 Ballets Russes season in Paris, Monteux conducted two more premieres. The first was
Jeux, with music by Debussy and choreography by Nijinsky. The choreography was not liked; Monteux thought it "asinine", The second new work was Stravinsky's
The Rite of Spring given under the French title,
Le sacre du printemps. Monteux had been appalled when Stravinsky first played the score at the piano: Despite his initial reaction, Monteux worked with Stravinsky, giving practical advice to help the composer to achieve the orchestral balance and effects he sought. Together they worked on the score from March to May 1913, and to get the orchestra of the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to cope with the unfamiliar and difficult music Monteux held seventeen rehearsals, an unusually large number. Monteux's real attitude to the score is unclear. In his old age he told a biographer, "I did not like
Le Sacre then. I have conducted it fifty times since. I do not like it now." However, he told his wife in 1963 that the
Rite was "now fifty years old, and I do not think it has aged at all. I had pleasure in conducting the fiftieth anniversary of
Le Sacre this spring". 's costumes for
The Rite of Spring: "knock-kneed and long-haired Lolitas jumping up and down" The dress rehearsal, with Debussy, Ravel, other musicians and critics among those present, passed without incident. However, the following evening the premiere provoked something approaching a riot, with loud verbal abuse of the work, counter-shouts from supporters, and fisticuffs breaking out. Monteux pressed on, continuing to conduct the orchestra regardless of the turmoil behind him. The extensive press coverage of the incident made Monteux "at age thirty-eight, truly a famous conductor". The company presented the
Rite during its London season a few weeks later.
The Times reported that although there was "something like a hostile reception" at the first London performance, the final performance in the season "was received with scarcely a sign of opposition". Before the 1913 London performances, Monteux challenged Diaghilev's authority by declaring that he, not the impresario, was the composer's representative in matters related to
The Rite of Spring. 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". With the composer's agreement Monteux presented a concert performance in Paris in April 1914. Saint-Saëns, who was present, declared Stravinsky mad and left in a rage, but he was almost alone in his dislike. At the end Stravinsky was carried shoulder-high from the theatre after what he described as "the most beautiful performance that I have had of the
Sacre du printemps". That performance was part of a series of "Concerts Monteux", presented between February and April 1914, in which Monteux conducted the orchestra of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in a wide range of symphonic and
concertante works, including the concert premiere of the orchestral version of Ravel's
Valses nobles et sentimentales. His last notable engagement before the outbreak of war was as conductor of the premiere of Stravinsky's opera
The Nightingale at the
Palais Garnier. with which he saw action in the trenches at
Verdun, Soissons and the Argonne. He later described much of this period as one of "filth and boredom", although he formed a scratch band to divert his fellow soldiers. After just over two years on active service he was released from military duties after Diaghilev prevailed on the French government to second Monteux to conduct the Ballets Russes on a North American tour. The tour took in fifty-four cities in the US and Canada. In New York in 1916 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 end of the tour Monteux was offered a three-year contract to conduct the French repertoire at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York, and received the permission of the French government to remain in the US. At the Met (as the Metropolitan Opera is generally called), 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. Of his first appearance,
The New York Times said, "Mr. Monteux conducted with skill and authority. He made it evident that he had ample knowledge of the score and control of the orchestra – an unmistakably rhythmic beat, a sense of dramatic values." Monteux conducted the American premieres of Rimsky-Korsakov's
The Golden Cockerel, and
Henri Rabaud's
Mârouf, savetier du Caire. The American premiere of
Petrushka, in a new production by, and starring,
Adolph Bolm, was in an unusual opera-ballet double bill with
La traviata. 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. He said, "I love conducting opera. The only trouble is that I hate the atmosphere of the opera house, where only too often music is the least of many considerations, from staging to the temperaments of the principal singers." In 1919 Monteux was appointed chief conductor of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra was going through difficult times; its conductor,
Karl Muck, had been forced by anti-German agitation to step down in 1917.
Sir Henry Wood turned down the post, and despite press speculation neither
Sergei Rachmaninoff nor
Arturo Toscanini was appointed. At least twenty-four players of German heritage had been forced out with Muck, and orchestral morale was low. Shortly before Monteux took up the conductorship, the autocratic founder and proprietor of the orchestra,
Henry Lee Higginson, died. He had steadfastly resisted
unionisation, and after his death a substantial minority of the players resumed the struggle for union recognition. More than thirty players, including two important principals, resigned over the matter. Monteux regularly introduced new compositions in Boston, often works by American, English and French composers. He was proud of the number of novelties presented in his years at Boston, and expressed pleasure that his successors continued the practice. He was dismayed when it was announced that his contract would not be renewed after 1924. The official explanation was that the orchestra's policy had always been to appoint conductors for no more than five years. They were unable to marry until 1928, when Germaine Monteux finally agreed to a divorce.
Amsterdam and Paris , Monteux's colleague at the
Concertgebouw In 1924, Monteux began a ten-year association with the
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, serving as "first conductor" ("
eerste dirigent") alongside
Willem Mengelberg, its long-serving chief conductor. The two musicians liked and respected one another, despite the difference in their approach to music-making: Monteux was scrupulous in his adherence to a composer's score and straightforward in his performances, while Mengelberg was well known for his virtuoso, sometimes wilful, interpretations and his cavalier attitude to the score ("Ve vill make some changements", as an English player quoted him). Their preferred repertoire overlapped in some of the classics, but Mengelberg had his own favourites from
Bach's
St. Matthew Passion to
Mahler symphonies, and was happy to leave Debussy and Stravinsky to Monteux. Where their choices coincided, as in Beethoven, Brahms and Richard Strauss, Mengelberg was generous in giving Monteux at least his fair share of them. While in Amsterdam Monteux conducted a number of operas, including
Pelléas et Mélisande (its Dutch premiere),
Carmen, ''
Les Contes d'Hoffmann, a Lully and Ravel double bill of Acis et Galatée and L'Heure espagnole'',
Gluck's
Iphigénie en Tauride (also brought to the Paris Opéra) and
Verdi's
Falstaff. Toscanini had been invited to conduct the last of these, but he told the promoters that Monteux was his dearest colleague and the best conductor for
Falstaff. During the first eight years of his association with the Concertgebouw, Monteux conducted between fifty and sixty concerts each season. In his final two years with the orchestra other conductors, notably the rising young Dutchman
Eduard van Beinum, were allocated concerts that would previously have been given to Monteux, who amicably withdrew from his position in Amsterdam in 1934. He returned many times as a guest conductor. whereby any contracted orchestral player was at liberty, if a better engagement became available, to send a deputy to a rehearsal or even to a concert. In most other major cities in Europe and America this practice either had never existed or had been eradicated. Alongside the opera orchestras, four other Paris orchestras were competing for players. In 1928 the arts patron the
Princesse de Polignac combined with the fashion designer
Coco Chanel to propose a new orchestra, well enough paid to keep its players from taking conflicting engagements. The following year Cortot invited Monteux to become the orchestra's artistic director and principal conductor. Ansermet, its initial musical director, was not pleased at being supplanted by a conductor of whom he was reportedly "ragingly jealous", but the composer
Darius Milhaud commented on how much better the orchestra played for Monteux "since Ansermet has been sent back to his Swiss pastures". He conducted it until 1938, premiering many pieces, including
Prokofiev's
Third Symphony in 1929. The orchestra made European tours in 1930 and 1931, receiving enthusiastic receptions in the Netherlands and Germany. In Berlin the audience could not contain its applause until the end of the
Symphonie fantastique, and in Monteux's words "went wild" after the slow movement, the "Scène aux champs". He 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. After 1931 the OSP suffered the effects of the
Great Depression; much of its funding ceased, and the orchestra reformed itself into a co-operative, pooling such meagre profits as it made. To give the players some extra work Monteux started a series of conducting classes in 1932. From 1936 he held the classes at his summer home in
Les Baux in Provence, the forerunner of the school he later set up in the US.
San Francisco and the Monteux School {{Listen|type=music|image=none|help=no|header=Rimsky-Korsakov. Scheherazade, Symphonic Suite, Op. 35|filename=Rimsky-Korsakov. Scheherazade, Symphonic Suite, Op. 35 - 01 The Sea And Sinbads Ship.ogg|title=01 The Sea And Sinbads Ship
The Times said of Monteux's time in San Francisco that it had "incalculable effect on American musical culture", and gave him "the opportunity to expand his already substantial repertory, and by gradual, natural processes to deepen his understanding of his art." but his choice of modern works nevertheless drew occasional complaints from conservative-minded members of the San Francisco audience. Among guest conductors with the SFSO during Monteux's years were
John Barbirolli, Beecham,
Otto Klemperer, Stokowski and Stravinsky. Soloists included the pianists George Gershwin, Rachmaninoff,
Arthur Rubinstein and Schnabel, the violinists
Jascha Heifetz,
Yehudi Menuhin and the young
Isaac Stern, and singers such as
Kirsten Flagstad and
Alexander Kipnis. Almost all his seventeen San Francisco seasons concluded with
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Monteux's SFSO studio recordings were mainly made in the cavernous acoustics of
War Memorial Opera House (without an audience) with the music transmitted over telephone wires to a Los Angeles studio and recorded on film there. Confined to the US for the years of the Second World War, in 1942 Monteux took American citizenship. In addition to his classes in Paris and Les Baux in the 1930s he had given private lessons to
Igor Markevitch; later private students included
André Previn,
Seiji Ozawa,
José Serebrier and
Robert Shaw. Previn called him "the kindest, wisest man I can remember, and there was nothing about conducting he didn't know." Monteux's best-known undertaking as a teacher was the
Pierre Monteux School for conductors and orchestral musicians, held each summer at his home in
Hancock, Maine from 1943 onwards. Internationally known alumni of the school include
Leon Fleisher,
Erich Kunzel,
Lorin Maazel,
Neville Marriner,
Hugh Wolff and
David Zinman. Other Monteux students included John Canarina, whose 2003 biography was the first full-length study of the conductor in English,
Charles Bruck, one of Monteux's first pupils in Paris, who became music director of the school in Hancock after Monteux's death, 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". His successor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky, invited many guest conductors during his twenty-five years in charge; Monteux was never among them, probably, in Canarina's view, because of Koussevitzky's jealousy. In 1949 Koussevitzky was succeeded by
Charles Munch, whose early career had been boosted by an invitation from Monteux to conduct the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris in 1933. Munch invited Monteux to Boston as a guest conductor in the 1951 season. The engagement was greeted with enthusiasm by the critics and the public, and Munch invited Monteux to join him the following year in heading the orchestra's first European tour. The high point of the tour was a performance under Monteux of
The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in the presence of the composer. Monteux returned annually to Boston every year until his death. He 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. Almost all the members of the SFSO were in the audience, and joined in the ovation given to their former chief. After an absence of thirty-four years, Monteux was invited to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1953. The opera chosen was
Faust, which he had conducted at his debut at the house in 1917. The production had what Canarina calls "a stellar cast" headed by
Jussi Björling,
Victoria de los Ángeles,
Nicola Rossi-Lemeni and
Robert Merrill, but the critics, including
Virgil Thomson and
Irving Kolodin, reserved their highest praise for Monteux's conducting. Between 1953 and 1956 Monteux returned to the Met for
Pelléas et Mélisande,
Carmen,
Manon,
Orfeo ed Euridice,
The Tales of Hoffmann and
Samson et Dalila. The Met at that time typecast conductors according to their nationality, and, as a Frenchman, Monteux was not offered any Italian operas. When his request to be engaged for
La traviata in the 1956–57 season was refused he severed his ties with the house.
London Since his first visit to London with the Ballets Russes in 1911, Monteux had had a "love affair with London and with British musicians". 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. In 1932 he was one of four conductors who took charge of the
Hallé Orchestra in Manchester in the absence of its principal conductor; the other three substitutes were
Sir Edward Elgar, Beecham and the young Barbirolli. The Hallé players were immensely impressed with Monteux, and said that his orchestral technique and knowledge easily beat those of most other conductors. and made further appearances with London orchestras during the rest of the 1950s. He 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. In June 1958 Monteux conducted the
London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in three concerts, described by the orchestra's historian
Richard Morrison as "a sensation with players, press and public alike." The first concert included Elgar's
Enigma Variations, in which Cardus judged Monteux to be more faithful to Elgar's conception than English conductors generally were. Cardus added, "After the performance of the 'Enigma' Variations, the large audience cheered and clapped Monteux for several minutes. This applause, moreover, broke out just before the interval. English audiences are not as a rule inclined to waste time applauding at or during an interval: they usually have other things to do." Monteux considered British concertgoers "the most attentive in the world", and British music critics "the most intelligent". Monteux's later London performances were not only with the LSO. In 1960 he conducted Beecham's
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performing "feats of wizardry" in works by Beethoven, Debussy and
Hindemith. The LSO offered him the post of principal conductor in 1961, when he was eighty-six; he accepted, on condition that he had a contract for twenty-five years, with an option of renewal. His large and varied repertoire was displayed in his LSO concerts. In addition to the French repertoire with which, to his occasional irritation, he was generally associated, he programmed Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner, as well as later composers including
Granados,
Schoenberg,
Scriabin,
Shostakovich,
Sibelius, Richard Strauss and
Vaughan Williams. With the LSO, Monteux gave a fiftieth anniversary performance of
The Rite of Spring at the
Royal Albert Hall in the presence of the composer. Although the recording of the occasion reveals some lapses of ensemble and slack rhythms, it was an intense and emotional concert, and Monteux climbed up to Stravinsky's box to embrace him at the end. In 1963 he collapsed again after being presented with the
Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, Britain's highest musical honour. The presentation was made by
Sir Adrian Boult, who recalled that as they left the platform, "Monteux gave two little groans as we walked down the passage, and I suddenly found my arms full of violins and bows. The orchestra had recognized the signs. Their beloved chief was fainting." Monteux suffered another collapse the following year, and David Zinman and Lorin Maazel deputised for him at the Festival Hall. In April 1964 Monteux conducted his last concert, which was in
Milan with the orchestra of
Radiotelevisione italiana. The programme consisted of the overture to
The Flying Dutchman, Brahms's
Double Concerto and Berlioz's
Symphonie fantastique. Unrealised plans included his debut at
The Proms, and his 90th birthday concert, at which he intended to announce his retirement. In June 1964 Monteux suffered three strokes and a cerebral thrombosis at his home in Maine, where he died on 1 July at the age of 89. ==Personal life==