2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Camille Saint-Saens is one of the greatest French composers of the 19th century, the heyday of classical music in France. He worked in many musical genres, including opera, choral music, symphonies, and concertos. Today Saint-Saens' music is performed and loved all over the world.
Childhood
Camille Saint-Saens was born on October 9, 1835 in the capital of France. The parents of the future composer had nothing to do with music. His father worked in the Ministry of the Interior and died of consumption when the boy was less than two months old, so he was brought up by his mother and aunt. It was the aunt who noticed little Saint-Saens' excellent hearing and began playing the piano with him from the age of 2.5, and at the age of 3 Camille had already composed his first work.
Young talent
From the age of 7, Saint-Saens studied music with Camille Stamati, one of the best private music teachers in Paris at that time, and even gave concerts for children. And already at the age of 10 he made his debut with a complex program, which he played by heart, in a large concert hallParis Pleyel. The young talent performed works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Handel. The concert was a huge success. A talented person is talented in everything - the genius of Saint-Saens was manifested not only in music. From his youth until the end of his life, he was seriously interested in various sciences: the humanities - literature, history, philosophy, the natural - mathematics, geology, astronomy. Wrote several scientific articles.
In 1848, 13-year-old Camille Saint-Saens was enrolled at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied composition and organ. As a student, he successfully participated in many music competitions, writing his first symphony in 1850. In 1852, Saint-Saens failed - he did not become the winner in the prestigious competition for the Rome Music Prize.
Recognition
Having completed his studies at the conservatory, Camille Saint-Saens worked for a long time (more than 20 years) as an organist in the churches of Paris. Such a position did not imply a lot of employment, so he continued his career as a pianist and as a composer. His Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major won the competition, and Saint-Saens' talent was appreciated by such composers as Rossini, Berlioz, Liszt. And when he heard the young musician play the organ, Franz Liszt, who later became a friend and supporter of the French composer, called him “the greatest organist in the world.”
Animal Carnival
Since 1861, Saint-Saens began teaching, having received the position of professor of piano at the school of church music created by Louis Niedermeyer. Hetaught not only the classics, but also modern and little-known at that time works by Liszt, Wagner, Schumann, for which he evoked love and admiration from his students.
In the same year, the most famous composition of Saint-Saens was conceived - "The Carnival of the Animals". The composer planned to play it together with his students, but, for various reasons, finished the work only in 1886. The suite was written as a joke. Almost all the animals in it are depicted in a playfully satirical way, personifying human vices. Fearing to damage his reputation as a serious composer, Camille Saint-Saens forbade, while he was alive, to perform and publish all parts of the suite, except for the swan.
In 1907, the ballet number "The Swan" was released, staged by Mikhail Fokin for the legendary Anna Pavlova. This miniature became so popular that the ballerina performed it about 4,000 times. Saint-Saëns' inspirational piece "The Swan" became known throughout the world as "The Dying Swan" thanks to the great dancer's sensual performance.
The life of a simple man and a composer
In 1848, at the age of 40, Camille Saint-Saens married the 19-year-old sister of one of his students, Marie Emile Truffaut. The marriage was unhappy and short-lived. Their two sons died one after the other with a difference of 1.5 months, one from an illness, and the other fell out of a window on the fourth floor. The couple lived together for a few more years, but the tragic events left their mark, and Saint-Saens broke up with his wife forever after 3 years.
During his long and prolific life, the French composer composed 5 symphonies, about 10 concertos for individual musical instruments, about 20 concertos for orchestras, several operas. The most famous work is "Organ Symphony", written in the same year as "Carnival of the Animals" in 1886.
In the last two decades of his life, Saint-Saens preferred solitude, although he traveled extensively in Europe and America, where he was especially recognized, with concerts, and then as a tourist. And he was also attracted to Egypt and Algeria, where he liked to spend the cold season.
Death caught the great composer at the age of 86 suddenly in the same place, in Algiers, on December 16, 1921. Camille Saint-Saens was buried in Paris at the famous Montparnasse cemetery.
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