Camille SAINT-SAËNS

1835 - 1921

Composer, Organist, Pianist, Journalist

Date of birth:

09/10/1835

Date of death:

16/12/1921

Having lost his father early like Charles Gounod, Saint-Saëns was raised by his mother and by his great-aunt, who gave him his first piano lessons before sending him to Stamaty, then Maleden. Extraordinarily precocious, he gave his first concert performance as early as 1846. Two years later, he was at the Paris Conservatoire, taking classes with Benoist (organ) then Halévy (composition). Although he twice failed to win the Prix de Rome, he received numerous awards throughout his career, as well as various institutional appointments, such as his election to the Académie in 1878. Contemporaries admired him as a virtuoso instrumentalist, who held the post of organist at the church of La Madeleine (1857-77). As a prolific, cultured composer, he worked hard to revive the music of some of the great masters of the past, helping to prepare editions of Gluck and Rameau. His eclectic tastes led him to champion both Wagner and Schumann while, as a teacher, his pupils included Gigout, Fauré and Messager. As a critic, he wrote many articles indicative of a liberal, perceptive mind, despite a fondness for the principles of academicism. It was this independence and strong-mindedness that led him to found the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871, and then resign from it in 1886. Admired for his orchestral works, which combined a wholly classical rigour with a style not lacking in innovation (five piano concertos, five symphonies including the last, the ‘Organ’ Symphony, and four symphonic poems, among them the famous Danse macabre), he was a composer of international repute, thanks notably to his operasSamson et Dalila (1877) andHenry VIII (1883).