ABSTRACT
Florent Schmitt belongs to the golden age of French music, which culminated in the first performance of Debussy’s “Pelléas.” It was Aldous Huxley who, in one of his “brief candles,” set down this date as marking the maturity of a generation. Within a brief two years the première of Florent Schmitt’s Forty-Seventh Psalm took place in Paris and marked another date-the advent of studied barbarity. The composer was a recipient of a Prix de Rome, which should have been a sufficient guarantee for good behavior. To think that this reward should go to encourage polytonal hymnology. “Is it for this sort of thing that the Prix de Rome is established?” apostrophized a dismayed Academician on the critical pages of a musical weekly a quarter of a century ago.
