"GENTS" AT THE PROMENADE CONCERT
Early Promenade Concerts
But when Punch assails Jullien for leaving his "stew-pans and meat-oven To make a fricassee of the great Beet-hoven" and "saucily serve Mozart with sauce-piquant," and bids him "put your hat on, coupez votre bâton, Bah, Va!!!"—Punch was both rude and ungenerous. From the very first at his Concerts d'Eté and then at the Promenade Concerts, Jullien was a popularizer of good music. He gave his public waltzes, "Row Polkas," and explosive Army Quadrilles, but he also sandwiched Beethoven and Mozart between the coarser viands of his musical menu. So while he was credited with the intention of bringing out Stabat Mater waltzes—by no means a difficult feat with Rossini's work—and a Dead March gallopade, we must never forget that he was the first conductor to introduce symphonic music to the masses and the authentic pioneer of the movement which Sir Henry Wood has carried on at the Queen's Hall for the last twenty years and more. Modern music strikes heavily on the naked ear, but Jullien was in the habit of reinforcing instruments of percussion with explosives, and Punch suggests in 1849 that his Concerts Monstres should be held on Salisbury Plain to give elbow room for his "stunning performances." His chevelure, his waistcoats and waistbands were too conspicuous to escape Punch's vigilant eye, and Jullien was no doubt content that it should be so, for he was a master of the art of réclame. He is habitually alluded to as "the Mons," primarily as the diminutive for "Monsieur," but mainly because he was "the Mont Blanc of Music." The excesses of Jazz Bands of to-day are foreshadowed in a description of the "tongs and bones" music at the Promenade Concerts. But the author of the notice of Jullien[32] in the D.N.B. conveys a wrong impression when he speaks of Punch as only ridiculing Jullien. Already Punch had learned to recognize his merits, and, while rebuking him for his extravagant conducting of flashy and trashy pieces, renders homage to his reverence for good music. Thenceforward the references to "the Mons" are in the main friendly. The Almanack for 1852 speaks of the "Julian (Jullien) Era" in music. Jullien's opera Peter the Great is tenderly handled in the autumn of the same year, and, when he set out for his tour in the States, Punch sped the parting minstrel in some verses which are an admirable and faithful summary of his services to musical education in England:—
FAREWELL TO JULLIEN
Composer of Peter the Great,
Ere over Atlantic's broad swell
The steamer shall carry thee, proud of her freight,
Let me bid thee a hearty farewell.
With ophicleides, cymbals, and gongs
At first thou didst wisely begin,