Art Collage JANG: COMPOSER OF THE WEEK: 37. Camille Saint-Saëns

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

COMPOSER OF THE WEEK: 37. Camille Saint-Saëns

Born: October 9, 1835; Paris, France

Died: December 16, 1921; Algiers, Algeria

Nationality: French

Occupation: composer, organist, conductor, pianist

Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era, born on October 9, 1835 and died on December 16, 1921.

The rue du Jardinet, site of Saint-Saëns's birthplace

His most famous works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, the Second Piano Concerto, the First Cello Concerto, Danse macabre, the opera Samson and Delilah, the Third Violin Concerto, the Third Symphony and The Carnival of the Animals.

Samson and Dalila at the Paris Opéra
(1892)

Saint-Saëns, a musical prodigy, made his concert debut at the age of ten.

Saint-Saëns as a boy

After studying at the Paris Conservatoire, he began his career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris, and then from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire.

The old Paris Conservatoire building, where Saint-Saëns
studied

As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, especially that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, although his works generally belonged to a conventional classical music.

Robert Schumann

Saint-Saëns, a scholar of musical history, devoted himself to the structures worked out by earlier French composers, resulting in conflict with composers of the impressionist and dodecaphonic schools of music in his later years.

Arnold Schoenberg, inventor of
dodecaphony

Although there were neoclassical elements in his music, foreshadowing works by Stravinsky and Les Six (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre), he was often regarded as a reactionary musician in the decades around the time of his death.

Le Groupe des six, Jacques-Émile Blanche
(1922)

Although Saint-Saëns served as a professor only at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and stayed there for less than five years, his activities played an important role in the development of French music.

Saint-Saëns at the piano for his farewell concert (1913)

Among his pupils was Gabriel Fauré, who was the teacher of Maurice Ravel, and both of them were strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns, whom they revered as a genius.