How to exhibit the music of France and abroad at the 1889 Exposition Universelle was a question that occupied the organizers of the fair very early on in its preparation, and it led to a variety of solutions, both in the official program and through private enterprise. From the outset, musicians had lobbied that a share larger than in any of the previous fairs should be reserved for music in 1889. With rising numbers of concerts in Paris, with new private music schools to cater to the greater need for teachers and performers, and with the increased manufacture of musical instruments, music was a growing field in 1880s France, both culturally and economically, echoing urban and industrial development. The government responded, in 1887, with the creation of a music commission for the Exposition, the Commission des Auditions Musicales, led by the director of the Conservatoire, Ambroise Thomas. Beside Ambroise Thomas as president, the Commission consisted of Léo Delibes as vice president and the pianist André Wurmser as secretary. Its sixteen members comprised, among others, Théodore Dubois, César Franck, Benjamin Godard, Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Ernest Reyer, and Camille Saint-Saëns. The Commission was to ensure that music was “represented in the double aspect of composition and performance.” In addition, in the general categories of the fair's exhibits, “Class 13” was dedicated to musical instruments, sandwiched between Classes 12 (photography) and 14 (medicine and surgery), and grouped into the section “Education and Teaching—Materials and Processes of the Liberal Arts.” Within the official structure of the Exposition Universelle, music was thus represented both aurally and visually, as an art and as a craft, and as belonging to the past and to the future.

The Commission des Auditions Musicales comprised four subcommittees: “musical composition” (which dealt with all art music); orphéons and choral societies; brass and other bands; military music. It organized a variety of performances and competitions to showcase French music and its performance, and to engage in friendly rivalry with other nations. In particular, the five official orchestra concerts at the Trocadéro were meant to display “the immense superiority” of France's composers. Indeed, these concerts “were going to correspond to a real exhibition of this art.”