Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was the most complete musician of the 19th century — pianist, organist, teacher, conductor, writer, scholar, and composer, fluent in archaeology, astronomy, geology, and mathematics. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at 13 and won every available prize. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Madeleine at 23, where he became famous as an organ virtuoso. He wrote music until he died at 86, and the total output runs to over 300 works across every form then known to music.

The most famous piece is also the one that has caused him the most damage: The Carnival of the Animals (1886), written for a private carnival performance and never performed publicly during his lifetime (he forbade it — it was too frivolous for his reputation). The Swan, the finale, the Aquarium, the pre-recorded applause — it's now the most recognized piece he wrote, and he thought of it as a trifle. His other major works — the organ Symphony No. 3, the Introduction et Rondo capriccioso for violin, the Piano Concerto No. 2, and the opera Samson et Dalila — are on a completely different scale.

His influence extended broadly: he taught Fauré and Ravel (who didn't get along with him), was an early advocate for Wagner, Berlioz, and Liszt in France, and wrote one of the first serious books on orchestration. He was also deeply conservative, and in 1913 he published a pamphlet attacking Stravinsky's Rite of Spring — which he called 'musical noise' — while defending dissonance as a legitimate tool. He was right about some things, wrong about others, and entirely certain about all of them.

StyleFrench classical clarity and craft. Polished orchestration, formal elegance, a resistance to Romantic excess that looks forward to neoclassicism. The craftsman who knows exactly what he's doing and why.

Listen: Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony), second movement. Then the Piano Concerto No. 2, then Danse macabre. And then — grudgingly — The Carnival of the Animals.