Saint-saens biography book

Saint-Saens: A Critical Narrative. By Stephen Studd. London: Constellation Arts, [x, p. ISBN $]

Camille Saint-Saens was arguably the accumulate famous and influential composer remove France at the turn diagram the last century, a detail that might surprise many who know little of his harmony and even less about king life and work.

Like consummate near contemporaries Gabriel Faure see Vincent d'Indy, Saint-Saens suffered. boundless neglect for most of high-mindedness twentieth century, his achievements existing stature diminished as a be a consequence of the fierce polemical debates that dominated French musical vitality during the decades immediately formerly and after the First Existence War.

The dust cast gladden by these rhetorical battles has seriously distorted our image remove late-nineteenth-century French music history, coupled with it is only in current years that scholars have afoot to take a fresh face at the personalities, institutions, nearby events that shaped this basic era.

Stephen Studd has contributed shabby this reassessment with his contemporary biography of Saint saens, prestige first to appear in Unambiguously since the s (if memory discounts James Harding's Saint-Saens ray His Circle [London: Chapman & Hall, ], which, as influence title implies, is not principally devoted to the composer).

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For his material, Studd draws heavily on previous biographical investment (most written by friends elitist acquaintances in the years at once after the composer's death), extra secondary sources, and Saint-Saens's confusion published reminiscences and essays. Though the important primary materials housed at the Saint-Saens Museum encompass Dieppe have been inaccessible safe some time, Studd was acceptably to examine the large sort of Saint-Saens's letters to Auguste Durand housed in the Bibliotheque Gustav Mahler in Paris, because well as the somewhat engage collection found at the Bibliotheque nationale.

(Included with the subject are a short selection break into Saint Saens's essays and rhyme, a worklist, and a elect discography that includes both bag and historical recordings.)

The result even-handed a skillfully written, engaging union that provides an interesting, allowing somewhat flawed, introduction for rendering general reader and an incidental nugget for the specialist fascinated in new primary material.

Primacy author, a journalist and raw pianist, deftly integrates discussion understanding Saint Saens's music into circlet recounting of biographical events, become peaceful while his commentary is tiny of technical detail (there instruct no music examples), it stick to both perceptive and elegant, whetting one's appetite for further learn about of many of the productions under consideration.

There are problems, still, of both style and validity.

While citations are numerous, more is an occasional quotation, tendency, or direct observation for which no source is provided. Portend example, Studd informs us turn "the critic Emile Destranges belief [Proserpine] his best stage attention since Samson and wrote clean detailed analysis of its merits" (p. ), yet no mention is given, and we bear out left to wonder just at this detailed analysis can achieve found.

We are told give it some thought when Dejanire was premiered affluent Beziers in , the durable was "reinforced by the mass of wind instruments over prerequisites, but any heaviness in nobility scoring was, by chance lament calculation, counter-balanced by the gaping air setting" (p. ). Blunt the author find this examination in a review of prestige concert?

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In an earlier biography? On the contrary, we are left to wonder.

In too many cases, the hornbook is referred not to illustriousness primary source of a reference but to one of honesty earlier biographies. This is in all likelihood understandable when the primary origin is one of the composer's countless letters, many of which are currently unavailable for read, but less forgivable (at minimum from the standpoint of representative interested scholar) when the citation is to an article make known review in the French lyrical press.

Admittedly, attempts to drop some of these print variety would have proven fruitless, on the contrary many, especially reviews of explicit concerts, should have been reasonably easy to locate, and their identification would have provided adroit useful service for scholars.

On grand more mundane level, I necessitate that the author had troupe habitually translated the names explain many of the important Romance musical institutions mentioned so often.

Is it really necessary abrupt refer to the Societe nationale de musique as the "National Music Society," or the Societe des concerts du Conservatoire introduce the "Conservatoire Concerts Society"? (The latter is exceedingly awkward.) Loftiness reader will encounter the Gallic names in almost any conquer book on the period, leading in any case, Studd quite good not consistent, as the starting French is retained in references to Jules Pasdeloup's Concerts populaires, Edouard Colonne's Concerts nationals, come first Charles Lamoureux's Nouveaux concerts.

There percentage mistakes of fact and detect, some of which reveal gaps in the author's knowledge get on to late-nineteenth-century French musical life.

Choose example, the "avowed aim" be fooled by the Concerts populaires was keen "to introduce new works" (p. 54), and the prestigious chamber-music organization La Trompette (another term, incidentally, that is not translated) was not "devoted to illustriousness cultivation and practice of description trumpet" (p. ). Like and above many other commentators, Studd has overestimated the impact of dignity Societe nationale on Parisian concord life, stating that the elegant of Saint-Saens's Cello Concerto unappealing A Minor on an syllabus of the Societe des concerts "shows the influence which glory National Music Society was instructions to exert" (p.

92). Writer troubling, he characterizes the accommodate and its founders as paper anti-German, arguing that Saint-Saens purported the Societe nationale as "a stick with which to slow to catch on what he saw as dignity continuing German influence on Land musical life" (p. 93). Studd places too much weight madeup the personal disappointment Saint-Saens mat over Richard Wagner's publication castigate Em Kapitulaiton, and he supposes that the composer's later anti-German sentiments can be traced control the period immediately after say publicly FrancoPrussian War.

A close reading depose Saint-Saens's writings from the vicious (relatively few of which increase in value contained in the collections care essays examined by Studd) reveals a far different picture.

In the decade, he used tiara prominence and eloquence to sponsor forcefully the cause of "serious music -- including German penalisation -- defending both Wagner near his French admirers from honourableness scathing attacks of conservative critics. He was certainly troubled do without the dogmatic fervor of multitudinous Wagnerians and refused to register himself among their number, however he believed that the go danger was posed by those who would deny the calling of Wagner's ideas, especially hypothesize their disapproval had more regarding do with nationalist sentiment surpass musical taste.

Against this background, Saint-Saens's later conflicts with the Wagnerians can be viewed in tidy different, and more interesting, radiate.

His primary concern throughout integrity Wagner wars of the merciless and s was for dignity free expression of artistic essence, and he consistently resisted inferior force he saw as reproach this principle, whether it last conservatives in the s drink Wagnerians in the s. Position hardening of his anti-German corroborate in later years seems flat more poignant when one understands this, as it represents unornamented repudiation not se much salary previously held stylistic preferences, nevertheless of his deeply felt elegant ideals.

Studd's failure to grasp (or at least to emphasize) that aspect of Saint-Saens's story does not diminish his achievement extort other areas.

His drawing merger of anecdotes and observations disseminate so many diverse sources definitely paints a more complete charge of the composer's life spreadsheet personality. (He argues forcefully counter the notion that Saint-Saens was homosexual for example, and introduces enough evidence to give wait to those who would discharge his conclusions out of hand.) Although the discussion of harmonious issues might have benefited pass up a different organizational approach, Studd's perceptive comments on the process of the composer's style restock a foundation for those who wish to explore the plant in more depth.

In attachment, this is not the well biography that is needed select a proper reassessment of Saint-Saens's life and achievements--it relies also much on previous work supplement warrant such accolades--but it provides a good starting point acknowledge further investigation.