Camille Saint-Saëns on Music and Musicians (review)

For its jubilee year in 1893, the Cambridge Music Society, under the direction of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, proposed awarding honorary doctoral degrees to the most distinguished composers of the era and inviting them to Cambridge to conduct their works. Johannes Brahms declined to attend (thereby also declining the honorary degree) as he hated foreign travel, and Giuseppe Verdi excused himself due to his age. Tchaikovsky came, as did Arrigo Boïto from Italy, Max Bruch from Germany, and Camille Saint-Saëns from France. Historically the occasion provides us with an idea of who one august group thought were the greatest composers at the end of the nineteenth century. For the record, Cambridge had also awarded Antonín Dvořák an honorary degree in 1891. Looking back from the twenty-first century, we are probably not surprised to see the Society putting forth Brahms, Verdi, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky; and Boïto and Bruch were probably the consolation prizes for the absences of Verdi and Brahms. The presence of Camille Saint-Saëns representing France may raise the most eyebrows today since his operas are all but forgotten and he is best known, unfortunately and unjustly, for works such as The Carnival of the Animals and The Wedding Cake.

The decline in esteem for some composers once considered among the greatest can be due to changes in taste or changes in lifestyle. Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose operas graced the stage of the Metropolitan Opera well into the 1930s, falls into the former category, while Saint-Saëns probably falls into the later. As with the music of his near contemporary, Gabriel Fauré, that of Saint-Saëns’ must be listened to in order to be fully appreciated. It is beautiful and seductive in ways that much of the music of Brahms and Beethoven is not, and therefore very easy to have in one’s ear while sitting in traffic or walking the dog. The depth is there, particularly in the chamber music, but only if one listens in a manner not many people are capable of doing in the twenty-first century short of being trapped in a center seat in a concert hall. For those who have heard Saint-Saëns’ music beyond the Carnival of the Animals or The Wedding Cake and written it off as shallow, this collection of his writings translated into English by Roger Nichols gives a clue to what one missed when not listening. The editor, Roger Nichols, provides context for these essays in a short introduction, and footnotes identify the less familiar names and situations Saint-Saëns mentions, but for the most part he allows the composer to speak for himself.

“Music for me is like people—only really knowable over time” (p. 5) writes Saint-Saëns in an article about Wagner. Many of the articles in this collection are either about Wagner, refer to him, or reflect his lurking presence. He was the bull on the roof for French composers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and he represented, after all, the music of the future. In retrospect, however, the historical importance and influence of French composers who caught the Wagnerian “disease,” as Saint-Saëns frequently refers to it, pales next to that of the non-Wagnerians. The best works of the complex and underappreciated composer Emmanuel Chabrier, for example, are his most French, and while at least some operas of the non-Wagnerians Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet still hold their place in the repertoire, Chabrier’s Gwendoline, Ernest Chausson’s Le roi Artus, and César Franck’s Hulda (such a title!) rarely make an appearance.

Saint-Saëns appreciated Wagner’s music and recognized his greatness, but he himself was not a Wagnerian:

First of all, Wagner suppressed, one after the other, all the means of giving pleasure that opera had at its disposal in order to give free rein...