French male-voice choral movement. It developed from 1815 through the work of Guillaume Louis Bocquillon Wilhem, a strong advocate of the teaching of singing in schools, who first used the term Orphéon about 1830. The Orphéon choral society was established in Paris in 1833 and rapidly expanded (see Paris, §VI, 4); an annual concert was given at the Trocadéro with 1500 performers. A military Orphéon was established at Lyons in 1843, and by 1859 there were 700 provincial societies; 3000 ‘Orphéonistes’ performed in London in 1860. By the turn of the century the movement reached a peak of popularity with over 2000 societies in France, where it was the equivalent of British competitive festivals.
M. Maréchal and G. Parès: Monographie universelle de l'Orphéon, sociétés chorales, fanfares (Paris, 1910)
J. Fulcher: ‘The Orphéon Societies: “Music for the Workers” in Second-Empire France’, IRASM, x (1979), 47–72