Saint-Saëns’s Works for Violin and Piano

Abstract

Saint-Saëns’s Works for Violin and Piano Michael Strasser Camille Saint-Saëns. Andante d’une sonate pour violon et piano en ut majeur (R deest); Sonate pour violon et piano en si bémol majeur (R 103); Sonate pour violon et piano (inachevée) en fa majeur (R 106); Sonate pour violon et piano no 1 en ré mineur, op. 75 (R 123); Sonate pour violon et piano no 2 en mi bémol majeur, op. 102 (R 130). Edited by Fabien Guilloux and François De Médicis. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2020. (œuvres instrumentales complètes, Sér. III, Vol. 4) [Front matter in Fr., Eng., and Ger.: foreword, p. vii–xii; preface, p. xiii–lxv; documents, p. lxviii–lxxvi; score, p. 3–120; crit. rep. in Fr., p. 123–51. Cloth. ISMN 979-0-006-54154-6. €266 ($332.50).] Camille Saint-Saëns was, during most of his lifetime, indisputably the most famous musician in France, a figure renowned both at home and abroad for his talents both as a composer and a pianist. Among the most prolific composers of his time, he contributed significant works across multiple genres and over a span of many decades. Yet for much of the twentieth century, Saint-Saëns and his music attracted relatively little scholarly attention. That situation has thankfully changed over the past few decades, as growing interest in the rich and varied musical life of fin-desiècle France has resulted in increased focus on Saint-Saëns, with several new biographies in both English and French, a three-volume meticulously-researched catalog of his works (Sabina Teller Ratner, Camille Saint-Saëns, 1835– 1921: A Thematic Catalogue of his Complete Works, 3 vols. [Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2002–]), a comprehensive collection of his numerous reviews, essays, and other writings on music and musicians (Marie-Gabrielle Soret, ed., Camille Saint-Saëns: Écrits sur la musique et les musiciens, 1870–1921 [Paris: Vrin, 2012]) and, most recently, a critical edition of his approximately 360 instrumental works to be published in a total of thirty-nine volumes organized into four series: orchestral works, concertos, chamber works, and works for keyboard. [End Page 116] The present volume, containing the composer’s three early works for violin and piano (published for the first time) and his two published violin sonatas, is the fourth to be released, following a volume devoted to the string quartets and two in the orchestral music series: Symphony no. 3 and the Symphonic Poems. These latter two volumes were reviewed by James Brooks Kuykendall in Notes 77, no. 2 (December 2020), pp. 319–23. A Foreword by the series editor, Michael Stegemann, opens the volume and is followed by an extensive Introduction with information on each of the individual works by its editors: François de Médicis and Fabien Guilloux. (Both the Foreword and the Introduction appear in French, English, and German.) A Documents section opens with a transcription of three short, undated pages containing questions from the publisher Auguste Du-rand (1830–1909) regarding Saint-Saëns’s Sonata for Violin and Piano no. 1 in D Minor, op. 75 along with the composer’s responses. This is followed by a series of plates reproducing manuscript pages from each of the works included in the volume and a page from the proofs of the violin part to the Sonata no. 2 in E-flat Major, op. 102 with corrections in the hand of Pablo Sara-sate, who premiered the work with the composer at the piano. Following the newly edited scores of the five works, the volume concludes with the Apparat critique (i.e., critical notes, in French only) and a list of abbreviations. Saint-Saëns’s interest in the violin and its music began early, with the first work included in this volume, an An-dante movement for violin and piano in C major, dating from summer 1841, when the composer was not quite five years old. It is, in fact, the first work the precocious child composed for an instrument other than the piano. A page from the manuscript (p. lxix), with its crudely executed notation, provides...