French-born conductor Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) premiered many masterworks of the last century, including Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, Claude Debussy's Jeux, and Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Petrushka. Monteux enjoyed a long life, spanning a remarkable period in history. Originally trained as a violist, he performed for both Edvard Grieg and Johannes Brahms as a member of the Quatuor Geloso. Over the course of his conducting career, he held directorships of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the Metropolitan Opera, the Boston Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (which he formed), the London Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony, among others.

Monteux became an American citizen in 1942 and made his permanent residence in Hancock, Maine, the childhood home of his wife Doris Hodgkins Monteux (1894-1984). In 1943, Pierre and Doris Monteux founded a summer school for conductors and orchestra musicians in Hancock, inspired in part by Monteux's earlier conducting classes in France. Musicians came from all over the world to Hancock to study with their beloved "Maitre." Monteux once said: Conducting is not enough. I must create something. I am not a composer, so I will create fine young musicians.

A few years after Pierre Monteux's death, Doris Monteux named Charles Bruck (1911-1995) the second music director of the school. Monteux's pupil in Paris, Bruck had enjoyed a close friendship with Monteux through the years and was uniquely qualified to carry on the traditions of the school. He served as the school's music director and master teacher for over a quarter century, becoming one of the great conducting teachers of his generation.