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The Life and Music of Camille Saint-Saens

Alysa M. Hershman

Department of Music Education, Northern State University

MUS 752: Advanced Rehearsal Techniques and Pedagogy

Dr. Timothy Woods

July 2, 2022
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The Life and Music of Camille Saint-Saens

History

Camille Saint-Saens was born on October 9, 1835 in Paris, France and died on December

16, 1921 in Algiers, Algeria. His full name was Charles Camille Saint-Saens, but he went by

Camille. He was raised by his widowed mother and her aunt who introduced him to the piano

and gave him his first lessons. Like Mozart, Saint-Saens was a child prodigy on the piano. He

demonstrated perfect pitch by the age of two, could pick out tunes on the piano when he was two

and a half, composed his first piece at the age of three, and performed in his first piano recital at

the age of five. When he was ten, he made his public debut and offered to play any one of

Beethoven’s 32 sonatas from memory. He wrote his first symphony at the age of 16 and went on

to write more.

Saint-Saens went to the Paris Conservatory in the late 1840s where he studied organ and

composition and won many top prizes. His Symphony No. 1 was performed in 1855 and he

became organist at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris in 1857. He was the organist at the

church for 20 years of his life. He was professor of piano at the Niedermeyer School from 1861

to 1865. His students included Gabriel Faure and Andre Messager. Faure was one of his favorite

students and ended up being a good friend of his. In 1870, Saint-Saens was enlisted into the

National Guard to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. After the Franco-Prussian War ended in

1871, he co-founded the Societe Nationale de Musique (National Society of Music), which gave

performances of significant French orchestral works. That same year, he produced his first

symphonic poem, Le Rouet d’Omphale. He was the first person from France to write that genre

of music. His opera Samson et Dalila was performed at Weimar in 1877 and was staged in Paris

in 1890. This became his most popular opera.

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Saint-Saens married Marie Emile Truffot in 1875 when he was 40 years old. They had

two sons. Sadly, in 1878, Saint-Saens lost both of his sons within six weeks of each other. The

first died from illness and the second fell from a window. He separated from his wife three years

later. In the years following, he took tours throughout The United States, Europe, South

America, the Middle East, and East Asia performing his compositions. From approximately 1880

to the end of his life, he wrote compositions that covered all types of dramatic and instrumental

music. In 1886, he wrote his Symphony No. 3 and Le Carnaval des Animaux (The Carnival of the

Animals), which are two of his most notable pieces. That same year, Vincent d’Indy and his

allies had Saint-Saens removed from the Societe Nationale de Musique. In 1888, his mother died,

which drove him away from France. Over the next several years he travelled the world and

visited exotic locations in Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. He

continued to write on musical, scientific, and historical topics during his travels and spent his last

years in Algiers, Algeria. The best of his final works includes Piano Concerto No. 5 (1895) and

the Cello Concerto No. 2 (1902).

Life and Death

Camille Saint-Saens was a conductor, critic, music scholar, teacher and composer. He

was noteworthy for his pioneering efforts on behalf of French music. Saint-Saens was a gifted

pianist and organist. Although he strongly opposed and criticized Richard Wagner’s music,

Wagner really admired Saint-Saens for his brilliant piano technique. Marcel Proust, a remarkable

French novelist, critic, and essay writer, used Saint-Saens as a subject in his study. Saint-Saens’s

intellect was not limited to music. He had an intense knowledge and interest in geology,

archaeology, math, botany, and butterflies. He enjoyed engaging in conversations with some of

Europe’s best scientists and wrote many academic articles about acoustics in music, supernatural
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sciences, Roman theatre decoration, and ancient instruments. He wrote a philosophical work,

Problemes et Mysteres, which discussed how science and art were replacing religion. He also

was a member of the Astronomical Society of France in which he gave lectures on mirages,

created a telescope, and planned concerts to correspond with various astronomical events. Along

with all of this, he wrote criticisms, poetry, essays and plays.

Saint-Saens was not on good terms with all of his contemporaries. He openly despised

and criticized many of his fellow composers in France such as Franck, d’Indy, and Jules

Massenet. He especially did not get along with Claude Debussy who once stated, “ I have a

horror of sentimentality and cannot forget that its name is Saint-Saens.” Saint-Saens learned

from Richard Wagner in France and amazed Wagner himself when he sight-read entire opera

orchestral scores. Although he admitted having appreciation for Wagner’s music, he defiantly

stated that he was not a fan and openly criticized his works. In 1913, Saint-Saens famously

stormed out of the premier of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)

because he was allegedly furious over the misuse of the bass. One composer he did get along

with and went on to become close friends with was Franz Liszt, a Hungarian composer, pianist,

and teacher of the Romantic era. Liszt described Saint-Saens as the finest organist in the world.

He also became friends with Hector Berlioz, a French Romantic composer and conductor, and

Gabriel Faure, a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He liked good company, but

also liked to be alone. He mentioned in an interview with Klein (1922), “There are times when I

feel that I must have solitude – to be alone and think and dream; above all, to work just when the

humour takes me. I like good company, but I like hard work still better.”

When Saint-Saens was nearing the end of his life, he undertook a tour of America but

found that his style of composition was no longer regarded as being modern by the Parisian
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classes. He died of pneumonia on December 16, 1921 in Algiers and was buried at the Cimetiere

du Montparnasse, the same Paris cemetery as his fellow composers Chabrier, Auric, and Franck.

His passing occurred nine weeks after celebrating his 86th birthday.

Music Style

Camille Saint-Saens composed during the Romantic period. The Romantic period started

around 1830 and ended around 1900. Romantic music came into its own at the beginning of the

19th century. Music from this era sounds almost boundless and free from limitations of form.

Much of this music is programmatic. It is meant to describe something, perhaps a scene in nature

or a particular feeling. He lived through a period of Wagner’s influence, but remained unaffected

by it. He adhered to the classical models and kept a conservative ideal of French music that

emphasized polished craftmanship and a sense of form. In his memoirs, he described the

contemporary musical scene in a shrewd and ironic manner. He considered the music of Bach

and Mozart to be supreme and all-sufficient as they never sacrificed form to expression.

Saint-Saens was regarded by his contemporaries as writing music that was elegant and

technically flawless, but sometimes sounded uninspired and lacked emotion. His performance

style was described as subtle, restrained, and cool. He was one of the first pianists to experiment

with recordings, and was the earliest-born pianist to ever make a recording of his work. His

works have been labeled as clean, polished, and professional. His concertos and chamber music

pieces are technically difficult and his later chamber music pieces are less accessible to a listener

than his earlier ones. They were composed when Saint-Saens was becoming less popular and are

therefore not well-known.

Although Saint-Saens was considered old-fashioned later in his life, he did explore new

forms and reimagined older ones. He was a forerunner of the neoclassicism of Ravel. He was an
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exceptional pianist and his playing exhibited even scales, quick speed, and refinement. Saint-

Saens was not as charismatic as other performers of his time and often sat unmoved at his piano.

His concertos seem to have influenced those of Sergei Rachmaninoff, a Russian composer,

virtuoso pianist, and conductor, and other composers of the late Romantic period. He was often

named “the most German of all the French composers,” likely because of his use of counterpoint.

His Works

During his long career, Camille Saint-Saens composed over 300 works. He wrote music for

many different types of instruments and ensembles including piano solos (original works), piano

solos (arrangements of other composers’ works), piano duets, piano trios, piano quartets, piano

quintets, organ music, chamber music, violin and piano, cello and piano, bassoon and piano,

clarinet and piano, string quartet, orchestra, symphonies, symphonic poems, piano and orchestra,

violin and orchestra, cello and orchestra, choral, sacred, secular, oratorios, and operas, and film

music. He wrote many dramatic works, including four symphonic poems and 13 operas. While

he did write operas, none were very popular. He was the first major composer to write music for

the cinema. In 1908 he wrote the score for an 18-minute-long motion picture, ‘The Assassination

of the Duke of Guise.’ Saint-Saints wrote five symphonies, five piano concertos, three violin

concertos, two cello concertos and about 20 concertante works for soloists and orchestra. He also

wrote six preludes and fugues for organ, the most performed of which is the Prelude and Fugue

in E flat major.

In 1886 when Saint-Saens was 51 years old, he wrote his final symphony and one of his best-

known works, the Symphony No. 3 ‘Organ’. Of his concerti and symphonies, this is the most

frequently performed. He dedicated it to his friend, Franz Liszt, who died that same year. It was

famously used as the main theme in the 1995 film Babe and its sequel, Babe: Pig in the City;
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commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society in the UK. This same year, he completed Le

Carnaval des Animaux (The Carnival of the Animals). Carnival of the Animals was originally

written as a joke and Saint-Saens worried it would damage his reputation as a serious composer.

He banned performances of it and only allowed one movement, Le Cygne (The Swan), a piece

for cello and two pianos, to be published while he was alive. The piece became known

worldwide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when someone choreographed it for legendary

ballerina Anna Pavlov, who performed the piece approximately 4,000 times. Since the

publication of The Carnival of the Animals, the imagination and brilliance of his work has

impressed listeners of all musical backgrounds.

His best-known works are several concertos, an organ symphony and Le Carnaval des

Animaux (The Carnaval of the Animals). Of his symphonic poems, Le Rouet d’Omphale (The

Spinning Wheel of Omphale) and Danse macabre (Dance of Death), are the most notable and

most often performed. Le Rouet d’Omphale illustrates a spinning wheel. Omphale is associated

with Hercules and the piece describes how he was forced by Apollo to work as a slave for

Omphale, the Queen of Lydia, and help her hold the wool at her spinning wheel. His dark and

frightful Danse macabre was originally written for voice and piano, but he reworked it a couple

years later substituting a violin for the voice and adding a full orchestra. When it was first

premiered, people asked for an encore and it has remained a popular piece ever since. It may be

best known today as the theme to TV series, Jonathan Creek.

As was mentioned earlier, Saint-Saens’s operas were not very popular during his time. In

fact, his opera Samson et Dalila was rejected in Paris because of the prejudice against biblical

characters. When it was due to be performed in London, the Lord Chamberlain banned the opera
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until 1909, about 30 years after its premiere. The opera contains the orchestral Bacchanale and a

beautiful aria, Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix (Softly Awakes My Heart).

Conclusion

Camille Saint-Saens was a passionate, intelligent, talented, and sometimes difficult

composer and musician. He was a child prodigy who had perfect pitch and could play just about

anything on the piano. He had a tragic family life with the passing of his two sons and separation

from his wife. Saint-Saens had an intense knowledge and interest in geology, archaeology, math,

botany, and butterflies and enjoyed engaging in conversations with some of Europe’s best

scientists. He did not get along with many of his contemporaries and often criticized their work.

He composed during the Romantic period of music and adhered to the classical models. He kept

a conservative ideal of French music that emphasized polished craftmanship and a sense of form.

Camille Saint-Saens was an original who had a versatile mind and a love for music.

I decided to write this paper on Camille Saint-Saens because as an elementary general

music teacher, it is my job to find ways for my students to relate and connect to music we listen

to in the general music classroom. I teach a full unit on Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals to

my kindergarteners and they remember the music and activities we did because of the ways I use

stories, movement, and musical elements to connect them to the music of each animal. I wanted

to learn more about his background, life, and other musical works to share with my students and

fellow classmates in the program. Learning about different composers and how and where they

got their inspiration is insightful. As music educators and musicians, we can always learn

something from composers. Learning about their lives and what interests them can help us better

understand their music and how they feel during the composing process as well. Saint-Saens was

an intelligent and talented student, human, and musician and his music reflects this.
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List of Notable Works

Opera

 Samson et Dalila

 Bacchanale

 Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix (Softly Awakes My Heart)

Symphonic Poems

 Le Rouet d’Omphale

 Danse macabre

Symphonies

 Symphony No. 1

 Symphony No. 2

 Symphony No. 3 (Organ)

 Symphony No. 4

 Symphony No. 5

Musical Suite

 Le Carnaval des Animaux (The Carnival of the Animals)

Concertos

 Piano Concert No. 5

 Cello Concerto No. 2

Film Score

 L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise (The Assassination of the Duke of Guise)

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References

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia (2021, December 12). Camille Saint-Saëns. Encyclopedia

Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Camille-Saint-Saens.

Camille Saint-Saens. Classics for Kids. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.classicsforkids.com/.

Klein, H. (1922). Saint-Saens as I Knew Him. The Musical Times, 63(948), 90-93.

https://doi.org/10.2307/910966.

Weinberg, R. (2018). Saint-Saens: Facts, pronunciation, works and more about the great

composer. Classic FM. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/saint-saens/guides/saint-

saens-facts/.