Camille Saint-Saëns

“ Nor is it a heavier one to pray to heaven, before retiring to rest, that it may inspire German composers with the secret of these melodies and a like manner of using them.”
The truth is that in music, as in all other arts, we do what we can rather than what we should most like to do, and he is wisest who is guided by his own genius. The genius of Camille Saint-Saëns is so rich in resources that he can safely trust himself and let the spirit work within him as it wills. ”

“ CHARLES GOUNOD.
M. CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS AND HIS OPERA "HENRI VIII." WHEN, after years of perseverance and struggle, a highly gifted artist gains the exalted place in public opinion to which he is justly entitled, everybody, even his most obstinate opponent, exclaims, "Didn't I always say people would end by coming round?"
Five and twenty years ago, or more (for he came out as an infant prodigy) , M. Saint-Saëns made his first appearance in the musical world. How many times since then have I been told: "Saint-Saëns? Eh? Now really? Oh, as a pianist or an organist, I dare say. But as a composer! ”

“ CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS THERE probably does not exist a living composer who is gifted with a musical organisation so complete as that of Camille Saint-Saëns. A perfect master of his craft, the French composer has contributed his quota to every branch of his art, and may truly be said to have distinguished himself in each. ”

“ This one-sided development of French music was chiefly caused by the people's innate fondness for the drama, and by the national genius for acting, mimicry and dancing.
Prior to the advent of Franck there were two important pioneers in the broadening tendency which finally became noticeable, Saint-Saëns and Lalo. For great assimilative power, for versatility, for clarity of expression and a finish and finesse peculiarly French, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-still living) is certainly one of the most256 remarkable musicians of the nineteenth century. ”

“ These words will serve in a great measure to explain certain apparent inconsistencies that are noticeable in the composer's works. A thorough master of every technical detail of his art, a contrapuntist of unsurpassed excellence, a musician endowed with a prodigious facility of production, Camille Saint-Saëns has not always been able to keep his productivity within due bounds. His sureness of hand enables him to complete a work in so short a time that he has not invariably given proof of that spirit of concentration which shows itself in the compositions of some masters. ”

“ The names of Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, Charles Bordes, and Vincent d'Indy, will remain associated before all others with this work of national regeneration, where so much talent and so much devotion, from the leaders of orchestras and celebrated composers down to that obscure body of artists and music-lovers, have joined forces in the fight against indifference and routine. They have the right to be proud of their work. ”

“ Camille Saint-Saëns is the oldest living French composer. He was born in 1835 in Paris and early showed his great talent for music. At the age of seven he began to study the piano with Stamaty and harmony with Maleden. In 1846, at the age of eleven, he appeared at a concert in the Salle Pleyel; and a year later entered the Conservatory. Here he made a name for himself. His Symphony, composed at the age of sixteen, was successfully performed. In 1858 he became organist at the Madeleine in Paris and astonished everyone by his feats of improvisation. ”

“ Whereas other composers occupy, perhaps, an equal or even superior rank in some particular line, there is not one who has shown himself capable of shining in conspicuous fashion in so many varied styles. Mons. Gauthier Villars, in a clever article upon the composer, has remarked that there exist in Camille Saint-Saëns "three men—three temperaments that influence one another. There is an 'absolute' musician, a dramatic musician, and a critic, whose polemics are always erudite, frequently witty, occasionally bitter and violent." ”

“ A brilliant pianist, he claims our attention chiefly on account of his etudes, introducing novel and extremely difficult problems of technic. Musically his studies cannot be compared with those of Chopin or Liszt, but they merit attention, particularly in the modern editions. [Pg 444]
Although Camille Saint-Saëns is known chiefly as a composer, he was, during his early years, a remarkable pianist. His contributions to piano literature, five concertos, etudes and smaller pieces, are all valuable. ”

“ Art has a place for artists of all kinds, and no one should flatter himself that he is the only one who is capable of covering the entire field of art.
Some, even in treating a familiar subject, have as much dignity as a Roman emperor on his golden throne, but Massenet did not belong to this type. He had charm, attraction and a passionateness that was feverish rather than deep. His melody was wavering and uncertain, oftentimes more a recitative than melody properly so called, and it was entirely his own. It lacks structure and style. ”

“ No musician has enjoyed so much favor with the public save Auber, whom Massenet did not care for any more than he did for his school, but whom he resembled closely. They were alike in their facility, their amazing fertility, genius, gracefulness, and success. Both composed music which was agreeable to their contemporaries. Both were accused of pandering to their audiences. The answer to this is that both their audiences and the artists had the same tastes and so were in perfect accord.
To-day the revolutionists are the only ones held in esteem by the critics. ”

“ They perpetrate music of such a disorganized character that the musicians are utterly bewildered, and hesitate in their entrances on account of their inability to distinguish one measure from another.
The delightful Purgatoire has become a deadly bore, and the enchanting Mephistopheles has been riddled as by a hailstorm. Familiarity with such excesses made me particularly appreciative of the excellent performance that Wolfrum, the musical director, obtained in the vast Christus concert. ”

“ Natures such as hers reveal themselves at once to those who know and do not have to wait to arrive until they are in full bloom. Pauline was very young at the time, and soon afterwards she married M. Viardot, manager of the Théâtre-Italien and one of the finest men of his day. She went abroad to develop her talent, but she returned in 1849 when Meyerbeer named her to create the rôle of Fides in Le Prophète.
Her voice was tremendously powerful, prodigious in its range, and it overcame all the difficulties in the art of singing. ”

“ Benoist was a very ordinary organist, but an admirable teacher. A veritable galaxy of talent came from his class. He had little to say, but as his taste was refined and his judgment sure, nothing he said lacked weight or authority. He collaborated in several ballets for the Opéra and that gave him a good deal of work to do. It sounds incredible, but he used to bring his “work” to class and scribble away on his orchestration while his pupils played the organ. ”

“ In order to preserve intact his musical forms—even in recitatives, which are, as a matter of fact, only declamation set to music—he accented the weak syllables and vice versa; he added words and made unnecessarily false verse, and transformed bad verse into worse prose. He might have avoided all these literary abominations without any harm to the effect by a slight modification of the music. The verses given to musicians were often very bad, for that was the fashion. The versifier thought he had done his duty by his collaborator by giving him verses like this:
Triomphe que j’aime! ”

“ We owe a debt of gratitude to André Messager for breaking away from this manner and setting musical phraseology aright. His return to the old traditions was not the least of the attractions of his delightful Véronique.
But we are wandering far from Gluck and Orphée, although not so far as we might think. In art, as in everything, extremes meet, and there are all kinds of tastes. ”

“ If the Tales of Hoffman shows traces of a practised pen, it is because Guiraud finished the score and went out of his way to remedy some of the author’s mistakes. Leaving aside the bad prosody and the minor defects in taste, we have left a work which shows a wealth of invention, melody, and sparkling fancy comparable to Grétry’s.
Grétry was no more a great musician than Offenbach, for he also wrote badly. The essential difference between the two was the care, not only in his prosody but also in his declamation, which Grétry tried to reproduce musically with all possible exactness. ”

“ I was indignant, and I had all I could do to keep from saying: “They are fooling you. What they are showing you is not Science, at the most only its antechamber. As for you who are deceiving these naïve good people, you are only impostors.” ”

“ So much the better if such divine intellects can be found, but they are rare and always will be. For dramatic and literary art on the one hand and musical art on the other require different powers, which are not ordinarily found in the same person.
I first met Louis Gallet in 1871. Camille du Locle, who was the manager of the Opéra-Comique at the time, could not put on Le Timbre d’Argent, and while he waited for better days, which never came, to do that, he offered me a one-act work. He proposed Louis Gallet as my collaborator, although I had not known him until then. ”

“ Such false notions were, however, professed by the most sincere people who were deeply devoted to art. So this group, which had no influence on their own contemporaries, nevertheless, without knowing it or wishing to do so, played a useful rôle.
As we know, the public was divided into two camps. On one side were the partisans of Melody, opéra-comique, the Italians, and, with some effort, of grand opera. Opposed to them were the partisans of music in the grand style—Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Sebastian Bach, although he was little known and is less well known now. ”

“ This verse was free from assonance and the banalities which it draws into operatic works, but it kept the rhythm and sonorous sound which is far removed from prose. That was the period when there was nothing but praise for Alfred Ernst’s gibberish, though that was an insult alike to the French language and the masterpieces he had the temerity to translate. Gallet used the same blank verse in Déjanire, although its use here was more debatable, but he handled it with surprising skill. Now that this text has been set to music, it shows its full beauty. ”

“ The only examples of Joseph Haydn’s immense work that the present generation knows are two or three symphonies, rarely and perfunctorily performed. This is the same as saying that we do not know him at all. No musician was ever more prolific or showed a greater wealth of imagination. When we examine this mine of jewels, we are astonished to find at every step a gem which we would have attributed to the invention of some modern or other. ”

“ However, he undertook to prove the contrary by writing some particularly individual music, when he thought he was imitating Haydn and Mozart. Some of his works, in their perfection of line, their regard for details, their purity and their moderation remind one of Ingres’s drawings which express so much in such a simple way. And Ingres, as well, although he tried to imitate Raphael, could only be himself. Reber would have been worthy of comparison with the painter, if he had had the power and productiveness which distinguish genius. ”

“ As an indication of this, he dared to write in his advice to young musicians:
“Those who have genius will make opéra-comique like mine; those who have talent will write opera like Gluck’s; while those who have neither genius nor talent, will write symphonies like Haydn’s.”
However, he tried to make an opera like Gluck’s and in spite of his great efforts and his interesting inventions, he could not equal the work of his formidable rival.
Although he was not a great musician, Offenbach had a surprising natural instinct and made here and there curious discoveries in harmony. ”

“ In this time of anarchy in art, when all he had to do to conciliate the hostile critics was to array himself with the fauves, Massenet set an example of impeccable writing. He knew how to combine modernism with respect for tradition, and he did this at a time when all he had to do was to trample tradition under foot and be proclaimed a genius. Master of his trade as few have ever been, alive to all its difficulties, possessing the most subtle secrets of its technique, he despised the contortions and exaggerations which simple minds confound with the science of music. ”

“ The man who gets his work hung in the Sâlon is not the one who puts on his canvas delicate touches in harmonious tones, but he who juxtaposes vermillion and Veronese green. The man with a “developed taste” is not the one who knows how to get new and unexpected results by passing from one key to another, as the great Richard did in Die Meistersinger, but rather the man who abandons all keys and piles up dissonances which he neither introduces nor concludes and who, as a result, grunts his way through music as a pig through a flower garden. ”

“ The latter wrote for the Opéra-Comique La Fille du Régiment, a military and patriotic work, and its dashing and glorious Salut à la France has resounded through the whole world. Foreigners do not take so much pains in our day, and France applauds Die Meistersinger which ends with a hymn to German art. Such is progress!
Something must be said of a little known score, Struensée, which was written for a drama which was so weak that it prevented the music gaining the success it deserved. The composer showed himself in this more artistic than in anything else he did. ”