Camille Saint-Saëns was born on 9 October 1835 as the only child of Jacques-Joseph-Victor Saint-Saëns and his wife, Françoise-Clémence in Paris. His father was an official in the French Ministry of the Interior.
Unfortunately Victor Saint-Saens died of an illness shortly after the birth of Camille. Thus he spent his childhood with his mother and her widowed aunt, Charlotte Masson, who taught the young boy the basics of piano playing.
He became a pupil of Camille-Marie Stamaty when he was seven and received excellent training from him. He started displaying his genius from an early age and his mother soon recognized his potential.
Camille proved to be an outstanding student at school and excelled in many subjects like French literature, Latin and Greek, and mathematics. He also developed lifelong interests in philosophy, archaeology and astronomy.
He enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire, France's most important music academy, in 1848. There his student compositions included a symphony in A major (1850) and a choral piece, ‘Les Djinns’ (1850), to a poem by Victor Hugo.
In 1846 his debut as pianist met with a sensational success, but he withdrew from public performance to take up the formal study of composition and the organ at the Paris Conservatory. In 1853 he established himself as a composer with his First Symphony, and in 1858 began his tenure of 20 years as organist of the Church of the Madeleine. Although he had twice failed to win a Prix de Rome, Saint-Saëns won a government competition for a composition for the 1867 Exposition, and earned great praise from his most noted contemporaries. In 1868 he composed and performed his First Piano Concerto within three weeks. Between 1871 and 1876 he wrote four symphonic poems--including the famous Danse macabre (Dance of Death) and Rouet d' Omphale (Omphale's Spinning Wheel) his Fourth Piano Concerto and the oratorio Le Déluge. The opera Samson et Dalila had its first performance in 1877 at Weimar under the sponsorship of Franz Liszt; it was widely performed elsewhere in Germany, and, after 1890, in France. The amusingly satirical "zoological fantasy" entitled Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) was composed for a private performance in 1886, but was not allowed to be publicly performed or published (save for one movement, The Swan) until 1922, after the composer's death. From these middle years of his life until his death at the age of 86, Saint-Saëns combined great musical productivity with much travel. While writing operas and symphonies and chamber music he visited Egypt and Algeria, South America, and the United States. His great age and large output made Saint-Saëns so respected a public figure in France that his death in Algiers on December 16, 1921, occasioned a national day of mourning. Leonard Burkat Samson et Dalila , an opera in three acts by Camille Saint-Saëns with a libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire derived from the Book of Judges. It was first performed on December 2, 1877, at Weimar, under the sponsorship of Franz Liszt. The scene is set at Gaza in Palestine, more than a thousand years before the Common Era. Samson (tenor) has left Dalila (mezzo-soprano) to lead the Israelites' uprising against the tyrannical Philistines. In his absence Dalila is persuaded to assist the Philistine High Priest (baritone) to trap her former lover. Her ruses succeed; the mighty Samson, whose strength lay in his hair, is shorn and then easily overcome and put in chains, and the Israelites are again enslaved. Samson's prayer for the power to avenge his people is heard, however, and when he is forced into the Philistine temple he pulls down its pillars upon the pagan worshipers, the High Priest, Dalila, and himself. The work, which is part oratorio and part opera and relies heavily on its many choruses, is the only one of a dozen stage works by Saint-Saëns to have survived in the repertory. It is an example of the music of the French national school, which, after the defeat of France by Germany, determinedly avoided all contamination by the startling operatic developments initiated across the Rhine by Richard Wagner.
He is best known for his ‘Samson et Dalila’, a grand opera in three acts based on the Biblical tale of Samson and Delilah found in Chapter 16 of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament. First performed in Weimar at the Grossherzogliches (Grand Ducal) Theater on 2 December 1877, it is his only opera which is regularly performed.
He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1867. Later on, he was promoted to Officier in 1884 and Grand Croix in 1913.
He also received several foreign honors including the British Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1902. In addition he is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the universities of Cambridge (1892) and Oxford (1907).
(Featuring the superb piano stylings of renowned French Pi...)
(Camille Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso i...)
(Audio Cd)
Quotations:
"The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music. "
"There is nothing more difficult than talking about music. "
"One must practice slowly, then more slowly, and finally slowly. "
"I produce music as an apple tree produces apples. "
"What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. "
He lived the life of a bachelor until well into his thirties, sharing a home with his mother. Then he fell in love with Marie-Laure Truffot, the young sister of one of his students, and married her in 1875. The couple had two sons, both of who unfortunately died in infancy. The terrible loss deeply affected the couple and their marriage collapsed. He eventually separated from him wife. After the breakdown of his marriage he never became involved with any other woman. In his later years he sought solace in the company of his friend and former pupil, Gabriel Fauré, and his family.
