Transcript File - Angela Bayes

Camille Saint-Saens
GroundBreaking
or
Stick-in-theMud
Background of SaintSaens

Parisian by birth

Child Prodigy


Displayed perfect
pitch at age 2-1/2.
Could read and write
at age 3.


Remember all he
read.
Analyzed Mozart's
Don Giovanni from full
Education of Saint-Saens



Formal training began
at age 7.
Studied at the
Conservatoire.
Performance debut at
age 10.


“He knows everything,
but lacks
inexperience.” -Berlioz
“Finest organist in the
Job Titles and Roles

Composer

Music Critic

Poet, Playwright




Philosopher
Astronomer,
Scientist
Music Professor at
Neidermeyer School

Early on, allied
himself with
progressives

Liszt

Schumann

Wagner
National Society of
Music founder.
Style of Performance and
Composition

Of purity, refinement.

Tasteful, technical.

Lyrical, versatile.


Romantic, while NeoConservative.
Detractors claimed

Elegant but
shallow.
Ground-breaking

First Frenchman to
write symphonic
poems



Omphale's
Spinning Wheel
Danse Macabre
First Composer to
score a movie

The Assassination
Stick-in-the-Mud


Openly despised the
works of

Debussy

Franck

Massenet
Wrote of Debussy:
“[He] has cultivated
an absence of style,
of logic, and of
common sense.”
“The need to be new at any price is an
illness of our era. In earlier times, in all
the arts, even in the industrial arts, all
artists used the same formulas, yet
none of this prevented those artists of
the first order from affirming their
personalities.”
- Camille Saint-Saens
Politics Bullies Art:
Samson and Delilah Opera


Rejected:
“too Wagnerian”, i.e.
“German”.

Chromaticism

Leitmotives
Point of fact:
French Lyrique

Lyric, not epic

Melodic, not thematic
Samson and Delilah was composed 1867 – 69
Premiered in Weimar, translated to German, 1877.
Saint-Saens' music was marginalized due to
political prejudices and the evolution of the
Romantic style to Realism,
Impressionism (Debussy!), and Atonality.
BUT,
His compositions diversified in genre, and his style
still developed until he passed on.
Ground-breaking Voicing


December 1879:
Began a
composition
requested by the
founder of La
Troumpette
Chamber Music
Society.
Septet in E-flat
Legacy of Camille SaintSaens


Danse Macabre's
distinct melody is
one of the most
famous of classical
music.
The Organ
Symphony, his
third, was
dedicated to the
Further Legacy



Carnival of the
Animals, a gateway
suite to classical
music for children.
Grandaddy of film
score composers.
IMDB credits CS-S
music 168 times in
films and television.
Saens:

Ground-breaking or Stick-in-theWhile styles of
Mud
music dissolve
away from we have
pioneered


While we may be
lost in our own
rivalries with our
fellows
Genius and
resilience can