Camille Saint-Saens and his World

Abstract

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) is an unjustly maligned composer who, during his long career, had a significant impact on the development of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music and performance. Yet even in his own day critics vacillated between labelling him as either ‘conservative’ or ‘reactionary’. This new volume of essays devoted to Saint-Saëns's life and work aims to explore this dichotomy and to resituate him within the cultural history of French music. The contributions, which vary in approach and critical angle, are divided into five sections examining his life, his music in France, his music abroad, his aesthetics, and his music today. It is, however, the inclusion of an extremely rich array of supplementary materials that makes this volume stand out: the sheer amount of primary materials collated here — in many instances, sources that are not easily accessible (and which, helpfully, have been translated into English), including private correspondence, official papers from various musical associations, and contemporary newspaper articles — demonstrates the scope of the research on offer. One of the key issues surrounding the composer's reception is his ‘Frenchness’, and in particular his role as a promoter of French music. Three interconnected essays, by Michael Strasser, Laure Schnapper, and D. Kern Holoman, examine the composer's role in the foundation of the (largely anti-Germanic) Société nationale de musique in 1871, his subsequent resignation from that society and his new position in the rival Société des compositeurs (1887–91), and his later involvement with the Société des concerts du conservatoire de Paris (1903–04). While Saint-Saëns was undoubtedly a self-promoter, frequently programming (and indeed performing) both his own works and those of his young French pupils, the underlying thrust of the volume is how this staunch supporter of French music nonetheless travelled the globe (including to Germany, Algeria, New York, and Latin America) and engaged closely with the work of foreign composers. Saint-Saëns's artistic legacy is revealing: apart from a few prominent works such as the Second Piano Concerto, his music has largely been neglected. So, for a composer whose career spanned several decades and who, throughout his lifetime, embraced changing musical genres and styles — at one point Leon Botstein likens him to Victor Hugo (p. 375) — it is fitting that his music is now being rediscovered. Not all of the chapters are of equal standard: reservations, for example, could be voiced with regard to Mitchell Morris's opening essay, which speculates on Saint-Saëns's private life and whether the composer's proclivity for cross-dressing might betray his sexual orientation. But the range of contributions, which touch on the composer's interests in astronomy, his friendships with the operetta composer Charles Lecocq and with female composers and pianists such as Marie Jaëll and Augusta Holmès, his engagement with Rameau's music, or indeed the take-up of his music in twentieth-century silent film, creates a broad tapestry that successfully contextualizes Saint-Saëns's musical output for the modern reader. Jann Pasler's edited collection thus offers a significant contribution to Saint-Saëns studies, and to the field of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music as a whole.