thumb|280px|Monteux during his conductorship of Les Ballets Russes, c. 1912
Pierre Benjamin Monteux (; 4 April 18751 July 1964) was a French (later American) conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as an orchestral player and occasional conductor, he began to receive regular conducting engagements in 1907. He 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 Chloé, and Debussy's Jeux. Thereafter he directed orchestras around the world for more than half a century.
From 1917 to 1919 Monteux was the principal conductor of the French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1919–24), Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra (1924–34), Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (1929–38) and San Francisco Symphony (1936–52). In 1961, aged eighty-six, he accepted the chief conductorship of the London Symphony Orchestra, a post which he held until his death three years later. Although he was known for his performances of the French repertoire, his chief love was the music of German composers, above all Brahms. He disliked recording, finding it incompatible with spontaneity, but he nevertheless made a substantial number of records.
Monteux was well known as a teacher. In 1932 he began a conducting class in Paris, which he developed into a summer school that was later moved to his summer home in Les Baux in the south of France. After moving permanently to the US in 1942 and taking American citizenship, he founded a school for conductors and orchestral musicians in Hancock, Maine. Among his students in France and America who went on to international fame were Lorin Maazel, Igor Markevitch, Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn and David Zinman. The school in Hancock has continued since Monteux's death.
Life and career
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;
thumb|right|Monteux as viola player in quartets (2nd from right), with Johannes Wolff, Joseph Hollmann and André Dulaurons, and with Gustave Lyon (Administrateur Délégué of Pleyel) at the rear and Edvard Grieg in front, Salle Pleyel, April 1903.
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
thumb|upright=1.5|[[Camille Saint-Saëns|Saint-Saëns 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. As an orchestral conductor he modelled his technique on that of Arthur Nikisch, under whose baton he had played, and who was his ideal conductor.
Ballets Russes
For some time, Monteux's marriage had been under strain, exacerbated by his wife's frequent absences on concert tours. The couple were divorced in 1909; Monteux married one of her former pupils, Germaine Benedictus, the following year.
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.
thumb|left|upright|[[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky (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: