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99-572: The NSO regularly participates in events of national and international importance, including performances for ceremonial state affairs, presidential inaugurations and official holiday celebrations, including the annual National Memorial Day Concert in May and A Capitol Fourth concerts on July 4. The NSO presents a 52-week season of approximately 175 concerts each year. These include classical subscription series, pops concerts, and educational programs. After an initial ad-hoc concert on January 31, 1930,

198-545: A backward step, being less deftly orchestrated, and "thick and heavy" in its effect. Ratner and Fallon praise the Second Symphony (1859) as a fine example of orchestral economy and structural cohesion, with passages that show the composer's mastery of fugal writing. The best known of the symphonies is the Third (1886) which, unusually, has prominent parts for piano and organ. It opens in C minor and ends in C major with

297-770: A brief exile in England. With the help of George Grove and others he supported himself in London, giving recitals. Returning to Paris in May, he found that anti-German sentiments had considerably enhanced support for the idea of a pro-French musical society. The Société Nationale de Musique , with its motto, "Ars Gallica" , had been established in February 1871, with Bussine as president, Saint-Saëns as vice-president and Henri Duparc , Fauré, Franck and Jules Massenet among its founder-members. As an admirer of Liszt's innovative symphonic poems , Saint-Saëns enthusiastically adopted

396-475: A career as a church organist was seen to offer more opportunities than that of a solo pianist. His organ professor was François Benoist , whom Saint-Saëns considered a mediocre organist but a first-rate teacher; his pupils included Adolphe Adam , César Franck , Charles Alkan , Louis Lefébure-Wély and Georges Bizet . In 1849 Saint-Saëns won the Conservatoire's second prize for organists, and in 1851

495-620: A church organist, first at Saint-Merri , Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine , the official church of the French Empire . After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas. As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, particularly that of Schumann , Liszt and Wagner , although his own compositions were generally within

594-482: A comfortable income. The organ, the work of François-Henri Clicquot , had been badly damaged in the aftermath of the French Revolution and imperfectly restored. The instrument was adequate for church services but not for the ambitious recitals that many high-profile Parisian churches offered. With enough spare time to pursue his career as a pianist and composer, Saint-Saëns composed what became his opus 2,

693-413: A conventional classical tradition. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. This brought him into conflict in his later years with composers of the impressionist and expressionist schools of music; although there were neoclassical elements in his music, foreshadowing works by Stravinsky and Les Six , he was often regarded as

792-514: A full-length opera staged. His four-act "drame lyricque", Le timbre d'argent ("The Silver Bell"), to Jules Barbier 's and Michel Carré 's libretto, reminiscent of the Faust legend, had been in rehearsal in 1870, but the outbreak of war halted the production. The work was eventually presented by the Théâtre Lyrique company of Paris; it ran for eighteen performances. The dedicatee of

891-670: A genius. Saint-Saëns was born in Paris, the only child of Jacques-Joseph-Victor Saint-Saëns (1798–1835), an official in the French Ministry of the Interior, and Françoise-Clémence, née Collin. Victor Saint-Saëns was of Norman ancestry, and his wife was from an Haute-Marne family; their son, born in the Rue du Jardinet in the 6th arrondissement of Paris , and baptised at the nearby church of Saint-Sulpice , always considered himself

990-574: A hack coming down from Montmartre" rather than the galloping fiery horses of Greek legend that inspired the piece. The last of the four symphonic poems, La jeunesse d'Hercule ("Hercules's Youth", 1877) was the most ambitious of the four, which, Harding suggests, is why it is the least successful. In the judgment of the critic Roger Nichols these orchestral works, which combine striking melodies, strength of construction and memorable orchestration "set new standards for French music and were an inspiration to such young composers as Ravel". Saint-Saëns wrote

1089-404: A one-act ballet, Javot (1896), the score for the film L'assassinat du duc de Guise (1908), and incidental music to a dozen plays between 1850 and 1916. Three of these scores were for revivals of classics by Molière and Racine, for which Saint-Saëns's deep knowledge of French baroque scores was reflected in his scores, in which he incorporated music by Lully and Charpentier . Saint-Saëns

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1188-781: A performance of the Armed Forces Medley by the National Symphony Orchestra, accompanied by The U.S. Army Chorus, The U.S. Navy Band Sea Chanters, The U.S. Air Force Singing Sergeants, and The Soldiers' Chorus of the United States Army Field Band, followed by closing remarks by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The 2020 and 2021 concerts were not live because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and instead featured

1287-457: A pianist and conductor. In New York on his second visit he premiered his "Praise ye the Lord" for double choir, orchestra and organ, which he composed for the occasion. Despite his growing reputation as a musical reactionary, Saint-Saëns was, according to Gallois, probably the only French musician who travelled to Munich to hear the premiere of Mahler 's Eighth Symphony in 1910. Nonetheless, by

1386-561: A pretty hash of British history", this piece was "not altogether contemptible as an opera story". The open-mindedness of the Société Nationale had hardened by the mid-1880s into a dogmatic adherence to Wagnerian methods favoured by Franck's pupils, led by Vincent d'Indy . They had begun to dominate the organisation and sought to abandon its "Ars Gallica" ethos of commitment to French works. Bussine and Saint-Saëns found this unacceptable, and resigned in 1886. Having long pressed

1485-434: A reactionary in the decades around the time of his death. Saint-Saëns held only one teaching post, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and remained there for less than five years. It was nevertheless important in the development of French music: his students included Gabriel Fauré , among whose own later pupils was Maurice Ravel . Both of them were strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns, whom they revered as

1584-419: A reputation for outspoken musical conservatism, in the 1850s Saint-Saëns supported and promoted the most modern music of the day, including that of Liszt, Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner . Unlike many French composers of his own and the next generation, Saint-Saëns, for all his enthusiasm for and knowledge of Wagner's operas, was not influenced by him in his own compositions. He commented, "I admire deeply

1683-497: A second time for the Prix de Rome. Many in musical circles were puzzled by his decision to enter the competition again, now that he was establishing a reputation as a soloist and composer. He was once more unsuccessful. Berlioz, one of the judges, wrote: We gave the Prix de Rome the other day to a young man who wasn't expecting to win it and who went almost mad with joy. We were all expecting the prize to go to Camille Saint-Saëns, who had

1782-550: A series of pre-recorded performances and readings along with a tribute to first-responders helping out during the pandemic. Since its premiere the multi-award-winning television event honors the military service of all the uniformed service personnel of the Armed Forces and by extension the National Guard Bureau and their families and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the republic and people since

1881-676: A stately chorale tune. The four movements are clearly divided into two pairs, a practice Saint-Saëns used elsewhere, notably in the Fourth Piano Concerto (1875) and the First Violin Sonata (1885). The work is dedicated to the memory of Liszt, and uses a recurring motif treated in a Lisztian style of thematic transformation . Saint-Saëns's four symphonic poems follow the model of those by Liszt, though, in Sackville-West's and Shawe-Taylor's view, without

1980-529: A talented amateur in later life. In 1848, at the age of thirteen, Saint-Saëns was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire , France's foremost music academy. The director, Daniel Auber , had succeeded Luigi Cherubini in 1842, and brought a more relaxed regime than that of his martinet predecessor, though the curriculum remained conservative. Students, even outstanding pianists like Saint-Saëns, were encouraged to specialise in organ studies, because

2079-453: A true Parisian. Less than two months after the christening, Victor Saint-Saëns died of consumption (tuberculosis) on the first anniversary of his marriage. The young Camille was taken to the country for the sake of his health, and for two years lived with a nurse at Corbeil , 29 kilometres (18 mi) to the south of Paris. When Saint-Saëns was brought back to Paris he lived with his mother and her widowed aunt, Charlotte Masson. Before he

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2178-499: Is called, and they believe it, the development of taste . Holding such conservative views, Saint-Saëns was out of sympathy – and out of fashion – with the Parisian musical scene of the early 20th century, fascinated as it was with novelty. It is often said that he walked out, scandalised, from the premiere of Vaslav Nijinsky and Igor Stravinsky 's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913. In fact, according to Stravinsky, Saint-Saëns

2277-577: Is in two movements, each comprising two identifiable sub-sections, and maintains a thematic unity not found in the composer's other piano concertos. According to some sources it was this piece that so impressed Gounod that he dubbed Saint-Saëns "the Beethoven of France" (other sources base that distinction on the Third Symphony). The Fifth and last piano concerto, in F major, was written in 1896, more than twenty years after its predecessor. The work

2376-639: Is viewed and heard by millions across the country and the world, as well as, in every year but 2020 and 2021, attended by more than half a million people at the United States Capitol . The concert usually begins with the American national anthem by the National Symphony Orchestra and the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, accompanied by a recording artist, followed by music and dramatic readings. The concert's finale begins with

2475-688: The Second Piano Concerto (1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as

2574-410: The "vulgar blatancy" to which the earlier composer was prone. The most popular of the four is Danse macabre (1874) depicting skeletons dancing at midnight. Saint-Saëns generally achieved his orchestral effects by deft harmonisation rather than exotic instrumentation, but in this piece he featured the xylophone prominently, representing the rattling bones of the dancers. Le Rouet d'Omphale (1871)

2673-505: The 1775 American Revolution. Camille Saint-Sa%C3%ABns Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns ( UK : / ˈ s æ̃ s ɒ̃ ( s )/ , US : / s æ̃ ˈ s ɒ̃ ( s )/ , French: [ʃaʁl kamij sɛ̃sɑ̃(s)] ; 9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era . His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863),

2772-527: The 1860s and early 1870s, Saint-Saëns had continued to live a bachelor existence, sharing a large fourth-floor flat in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with his mother. In 1875, he surprised many by marrying. The groom was approaching forty and his bride was nineteen; she was Marie-Laure Truffot, the sister of one of the composer's pupils. The marriage was not a success. In the words of the biographer Sabina Teller Ratner, "Saint-Saëns's mother disapproved, and her son

2871-488: The 2001 edition of Grove's Dictionary , Ratner and Daniel Fallon, analysing Saint-Saëns's orchestral music rate the unnumbered Symphony in A ( c.  1850 ) as the most ambitious of the composer's juvenilia. Of the works of his maturity, the First Symphony (1853) is a serious and large-scale work, in which the influence of Schumann is detectable. The "Urbs Roma" Symphony (1856, unnumbered) in some ways represents

2970-540: The 2024–2025 season. The COVID-19 pandemic caused cancellation of full-scale live in-person concerts, and led to a local community outreach programme in 2020 called "NSO in Your Neighborhood (IYN)". Through this program, NSO held performances mostly outdoors in front of frontline health workers. In June 2022, the NSO announced a further extension of Noseda's contract through the 2026–2027 season. In January 2023,

3069-537: The 20th century Saint-Saëns had lost much of his enthusiasm for modernism in music. Though he strove to conceal it from Fauré, he did not understand or like the latter's opera Pénélope (1913), of which he was the dedicatee. In 1917 Francis Poulenc , at the beginning of his career as a composer, was dismissive when Ravel praised Saint-Saëns as a genius. By this time, various strands of new music were emerging with which Saint-Saëns had little in common. His classical instincts for form put him at odds with what seemed to him

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3168-435: The 50th anniversary of U.S. President John F. Kennedy's Inauguration. In September 2011, the orchestra extended Eschenbach's contract through the 2014–2015 season. In March 2014, his contract was extended through the 2016–2017 season. Eschenbach concluded his tenure as NSO music director at the end of the 2016–2017 season, and subsequently became the NSO's conductor laureate. In 2011, Gianandrea Noseda first guest-conducted

3267-457: The Center opened in 1971. Rostropovich concluded his NSO tenure in 1994. Leonard Slatkin was music director of the NSO from 1996 to 2008. One report spoke of tensions between the conductor and the orchestra, and mentioned criticisms of Slatkin's programming and rehearsal styles. With the 2006–2007 season, Iván Fischer became the principal guest conductor of the orchestra. On April 13, 2007,

3366-706: The Conservatoire, discussed the founding of a society to promote new French music. Before they could take the proposal further the Franco-Prussian War broke out. Saint-Saëns served in the National Guard during the war. During the brief but bloody Paris Commune that followed in March to May 1871 his superior at the Madeleine, the Abbé Deguerry, was murdered by rebels; Saint-Saëns escaped to

3465-576: The English are excellent choristers". His mutual regard for British choirs continued for the rest of his life, and one of his last large-scale works, the oratorio The Promised Land , was composed for the Three Choirs Festival of 1913. In 1900, after ten years without a permanent home in Paris, Saint-Saëns took a flat in the rue de Courcelles, not far from his old residence in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. This remained his home for

3564-543: The Institut was successful, and caused bitter resentment from the younger composer's supporters. Saint-Saëns's response to the neoclassicism of Les Six was equally uncompromising: of Darius Milhaud 's polytonal symphonic suite Protée (1919) he commented, "fortunately, there are still lunatic asylums in France". Saint-Saëns gave what he intended to be his farewell concert as a pianist in Paris in 1913, but his retirement

3663-424: The NSO announced the appointment of Jean Davidson as its next executive director, effective 1 April 2023. On the morning of 27 September 2024 at 11:00 local time, the musicians of the NSO took industrial action and initiated a work stoppage, the first such action since 1978, after a breakdown in labour negotiations. The management and the musicians reached a settlement by 14:30 local time that same day. Kindler and

3762-586: The NSO announced the formation of its own record label, to feature commercial releases of selected live performances. The NSO's additional programmes include the National Symphony Orchestra Summer Music Institute. Through the John and June Hechinger Commissioning Fund for New Orchestral Works, the NSO has commissioned more than 50 works, including cycles of fanfares and encores. During his tenure, Slatkin founded

3861-412: The NSO made several 78-rpm recordings for RCA Victor , including the two Roumanian Rhapsodies by George Enescu . (Much later, in 1960, the NSO would perform the first of these works under the baton of the visiting Romanian conductor George Georgescu , a close associate and favored exponent of the composer.) One of the more unusual RCA recordings with the orchestra was of the complete ballet music from

3960-492: The NSO was harpist Sylvia Meyer , who joined in 1933. Antal Doráti became music director in 1970. He stood down as music director after 7 years. A deteriorating relationship with the NSO board of directors marked his tenure. Mstislav Rostropovich succeeded Doráti as music director in 1977. In 1986, the NSO became the artistic affiliate of the Kennedy Center , where it had presented a concert season annually since

4059-504: The NSO was officially organized by the Dutch-born American cellist Hans Kindler in 1931, and remained under his direction until 1949. In the early years, Kindler often relied on unemployed local talent or borrowed musicians from other mid-Atlantic cities. During Kindler's tenure, the musicians received a salary of $ 40.00 per week, covering three rehearsals and one concert, for five months of the year. The first female member of

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4158-460: The NSO, and returned in November 2015 for an additional guest engagement. In January 2016, the NSO announced the appointment Noseda as its next music director, effective with the 2017–2018 season. He served as music director-designate in the 2016–2017 season, and his initial contract as music director was for 4 seasons. In September 2018, the NSO announced the extension of Noseda's contract through

4257-628: The National Conducting Institute in 2000. As well, the NSO has presented The National Symphony Orchestra American Residencies for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This venture encompasses sharing all elements of classical symphonic music with a specific region of the United States, exploring the diversity of musical influences, and giving the region a musical voice in the nation's center for

4356-508: The Polonaise for two pianos). From his time at the Conservatoire he was a master of counterpoint; contrapuntal passages crop up, seemingly naturally, in many of his works. The authors of the 1955 The Record Guide , Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor write that Saint-Saëns's brilliant musicianship was "instrumental in drawing the attention of French musicians to the fact that there are other forms of music besides opera." In

4455-532: The Symphony in E ♭ (1853). This work, with military fanfares and augmented brass and percussion sections, caught the mood of the times in the wake of the popular rise to power of Napoleon III and the restoration of the French Empire . The work brought the composer another first prize from the Société Sainte-Cécile. Among the musicians who were quick to spot Saint-Saëns's talent were

4554-486: The academic regime by writing, and composing incidental music for, a one-act farce performed by the students (including André Messager ). He conceived what would eventually become his best-known piece, The Carnival of the Animals , with his students in mind, but did not finish composing it until 1886, more than twenty years after he left the Niedermeyer school. In 1864 Saint-Saëns caused some surprise by competing

4653-459: The age of five, but it was not until he was ten that he made his official public debut, at the Salle Pleyel , in a programme that included Mozart 's Piano Concerto in B ♭ ( K 450), and Beethoven 's Third Piano Concerto . Through Stamaty's influence, Saint-Saëns was introduced to the composition professor Pierre Maleden and the organ teacher Alexandre Pierre François Boëly . From

4752-508: The age of ninety-five. Saint-Saëns did not divorce his wife and remarry, nor did he form any later intimate relationship with a woman. Rees comments that although there is no firm evidence, some biographers believe that Saint-Saëns was more attracted to his own sex than to women. After the death of his children and collapse of his marriage, Saint-Saëns increasingly found a surrogate family in Fauré and his wife, Marie, and their two sons, to whom he

4851-420: The churches of France. Niedermeyer himself was professor of piano; when he died in March 1861, Saint-Saëns was appointed to take charge of piano studies. He scandalised some of his more austere colleagues by introducing his students to contemporary music, including that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner. His best-known pupil, Gabriel Fauré , recalled in old age: After allowing the lessons to run over, he would go to

4950-443: The clerical authorities' interference and musical insensitivity; and he wanted to be free to accept more engagements as a piano soloist in other cities. After this he never played the organ professionally in a church service, and rarely played the instrument at all. He composed a Messe de Requiem in memory of his friend, which was performed at Saint-Sulpice to mark the first anniversary of Libon's death; Charles-Marie Widor played

5049-468: The colourful orchestral music more widely identified with him. Grove observes that he makes his effects more by characterful harmony and rhythms than by extravagant scoring. In both of those areas of his craft he was normally content with the familiar. Rhythmically, he inclined to standard double, triple or compound metres (although Grove points to a 5/4 passage in the Piano Trio and another in 7/4 in

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5148-466: The comedy Phryné (1893), and together with Paul Dukas helped to complete Frédégonde (1895) an opera left unfinished by Ernest Guiraud , who died in 1892. Phryné was well received, and prompted calls for more comic operas at the Opéra-Comique, which had latterly been favouring grand opera . His few choral and orchestral works from the 1890s are mostly short; the major concert pieces from

5247-550: The composer acknowledged as a mature work and gave an opus number was Trois Morceaux for harmonium (1852). On leaving the Conservatoire in 1853, Saint-Saëns accepted the post of organist at the ancient Parisian church of Saint-Merri near the Hôtel de Ville . The parish was substantial, with 26,000 parishioners; in a typical year there were more than two hundred weddings, the organist's fees from which, together with fees for funerals and his modest basic stipend, gave Saint-Saëns

5346-464: The composers Gioachino Rossini , Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt , and the influential singer Pauline Viardot , who all encouraged him in his career. In early 1858 Saint-Saëns moved from Saint-Merri to the high-profile post of organist of La Madeleine , the official church of the Empire; Liszt heard him playing there and declared him the greatest organist in the world. Although in later life he had

5445-595: The concert was broadcast on PBS and streamed, but was not live, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic . It is held on the last Sunday of May and on the same day that the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 was held. It is broadcast on PBS , and can also be seen overseas by U.S. military personnel in more than 175 countries and aboard more than 200 U.S. Navy ships at sea on American Forces Network . The concert

5544-461: The continuous stream of music popularised by Wagner, Saint-Saëns often favoured self-contained melodies. Though they are frequently, in Ratner's phrase, "supple and pliable", more often than not they are constructed in three- or four-bar sections, and the "phrase pattern AABB is characteristic". An occasional tendency to neoclassicism, influenced by his study of French baroque music, is in contrast with

5643-649: The decade was one at Cambridge in June 1893, when he, Bruch and Tchaikovsky performed at an event presented by Charles Villiers Stanford for the Cambridge University Musical Society , marking the award of honorary degrees to all three visitors. Saint-Saëns greatly enjoyed the visit, and even spoke approvingly of the college chapel services: "The demands of English religion are not excessive. The services are very short, and consist chiefly of listening to good music extremely well sung, for

5742-485: The decade were the single movement fantasia Africa (1891) and his Fifth ("Egyptian") Piano Concerto , which he premiered at a concert in 1896 marking the fiftieth anniversary of his début at the Salle Pleyel in 1846. Before playing the concerto he read out a short poem he had written for the event, praising his mother's tutelage and his public's long support. Among the concerts that Saint-Saëns undertook during

5841-543: The decade, the first being Henry VIII (1883) commissioned by the Paris Opéra. Although the libretto was not of his choosing, Saint-Saëns, normally a fluent, even facile composer, worked at the score with unusual diligence to capture a convincing air of 16th-century England. The work was a success, and was frequently revived during the composer's lifetime. When it was produced at Covent Garden in 1898, The Era commented that though French librettists generally "make

5940-431: The double blow of their loss effectively destroyed the marriage. For a French composer of the 19th century, opera was seen as the most important type of music. Saint-Saëns's younger contemporary and rival, Massenet, was beginning to gain a reputation as an operatic composer, but Saint-Saëns, with only the short and unsuccessful La princesse jaune staged, had made no mark in that sphere. In February 1877, he finally had

6039-498: The first of his orchestral works to gain a permanent place in the repertoire, his Second Piano Concerto . Playing this and other works he became a noted figure in the musical life of Paris and other cities in France and abroad during the 1860s. In 1870, concerned at the dominance of German music and the lack of opportunity for young French composers to have their works played, Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine , professor of singing at

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6138-633: The form; his first "poème symphonique" was Le Rouet d'Omphale (1871), premiered at a concert of the Sociéte Nationale in January 1872. In the same year, after more than a decade of intermittent work on operatic scores, Saint-Saëns finally had one of his operas staged. La princesse jaune ("The Yellow Princess"), a one-act, light romantic piece, was given at the Opéra-Comique , Paris in June. It ran for five performances. Throughout

6237-452: The hands and fingers rather than the arms, which, Saint-Saëns later wrote, was good training. Clémence Saint-Saëns, well aware of her son's precocious talent, did not wish him to become famous too young. The music critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote of Saint-Saëns in 1969, "It is not generally realized that he was the most remarkable child prodigy in history, and that includes Mozart." The boy gave occasional performances for small audiences from

6336-412: The latter he acquired a lifelong love of the music of Bach , which was then little known in France. As a schoolboy Saint-Saëns was outstanding in many subjects. In addition to his musical prowess, he distinguished himself in the study of French literature, Latin and Greek, divinity, and mathematics. His interests included philosophy, archaeology and astronomy, of which, particularly the last, he remained

6435-481: The merits of Wagner on a sometimes sceptical French public, Saint-Saëns was now becoming worried that the German's music was having an excessive impact on young French composers. His increasing caution towards Wagner developed in later years into stronger hostility, directed as much at Wagner's political nationalism as at his music. By the 1880s Saint-Saëns was an established favourite with audiences in England, where he

6534-457: The midst of tentative effort and error, and considered that Saint-Saëns had reached his summit of proficiency". The suggestion that Saint-Saëns was more proficient than inspired dogged his career and posthumous reputation. He himself wrote, "Art is intended to create beauty and character. Feeling only comes afterwards and art can very well do without it. In fact, it is very much better off when it does." The biographer Jessica Duchen writes that he

6633-420: The musical scholar Jean Gallois , it was apropos of this episode that Berlioz made his well-known bon mot about Saint-Saëns, "He knows everything, but lacks inexperience" ("Il sait tout, mais il manque d'inexpérience"). The winner, Victor Sieg , had a career no more notable than that of the 1852 winner, but Saint-Saëns's biographer Brian Rees speculates that the judges may "have been seeking signs of genius in

6732-454: The opening that the pianist Zygmunt Stojowski commented that the work "begins like Bach and ends like Offenbach". The Third Piano Concerto , in E ♭ (1869) has another high-spirited finale, but the earlier movements are more classical, the texture clear, with graceful melodic lines. The Fourth, in C minor (1875) is probably the composer's best-known piano concerto after the Second. It

6831-495: The opera King Henry VIII by Camille Saint-Saëns , one of the very few recordings conducted by Walter Damrosch . Years later, Howard Mitchell made a series of stereophonic recordings with the orchestra for RCA. Antal Doráti recorded with the orchestra for Decca Records . Mstislav Rostropovich made recordings with the orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon . The orchestra returned to RCA Victor under Leonard Slatkin , until RCA abandoned new classical recordings. In July 2022,

6930-433: The opera, Albert Libon, died three months after the premiere, leaving Saint-Saëns a large legacy "To free him from the slavery of the organ of the Madeleine and to enable him to devote himself entirely to composition". Saint-Saëns, unaware of the imminent bequest, had resigned his position shortly before his friend died. He was not a conventional Christian, and found religious dogma increasingly irksome; he had become tired of

7029-458: The orchestra announced the appointment of Fischer as the orchestra's principal conductor as of the 2008–2009 season, for two seasons. In September 2008, the NSO announced the appointment of Christoph Eschenbach as the orchestra's sixth music director, effective with the 2010–2011 season, for an initial contract of four years. During his tenure, NSO released an album in 2011, including selections of their live performance from their program honoring

7128-401: The organ and Saint-Saëns conducted. In December 1877, Saint-Saëns had a more solid operatic success with Samson et Dalila , his one opera to gain and keep a place in the international repertoire. Because of its biblical subject, the composer had met many obstacles to its presentation in France, and through Liszt's influence the premiere was given at Weimar in a German translation. Although

7227-563: The performing arts through exchanges, training programs, and commissions. Established in 1992, the project has taken the NSO to fifteen states. National Memorial Day Concert The National Memorial Day Concert is a free annual concert performed on the west lawn of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. , in commemoration of Memorial Day from 1989-2019 and in 2022. In 2020 and 2021,

7326-428: The piano and reveal to us those works of the masters from which the rigorous classical nature of our programme of study kept us at a distance and who, moreover, in those far-off years, were scarcely known. ... At the time I was 15 or 16, and from this time dates the almost filial attachment ... the immense admiration, the unceasing gratitude I [have] had for him, throughout my life. Saint-Saëns further enlivened

7425-520: The rest of his life. He continued to travel abroad frequently, but increasingly often to give concerts rather than as a tourist. He revisited London, where he was always a welcome visitor, went to Berlin, where until the First World War, he was greeted with honour, and travelled in Italy, Spain, Monaco and provincial France. In 1906 and 1909 he made highly successful tours of the United States, as

7524-550: The shapelessness and structure of the musical impressionists, led by Debussy. Nor did Arnold Schönberg 's atonality commend itself to Saint-Saëns: There is no longer any question of adding to the old rules new principles which are the natural expression of time and experience, but simply of casting aside all rules and every restraint. "Everyone ought to make his own rules. Music is free and unlimited in its liberty of expression. There are no perfect chords, dissonant chords or false chords. All aggregations of notes are legitimate." That

7623-487: The strange notion of competing. I confess I was sorry to vote against a man who is truly a great artist and one who is already well known, practically a celebrity. But the other man, who is still a student, has that inner fire, inspiration, he feels, he can do things that can't be learnt and the rest he'll learn more or less. So I voted for him, sighing at the thought of the unhappiness that this failure must cause Saint-Saëns. But, whatever else, one must be honest. According to

7722-466: The symphony in London was considerable, but was surpassed by the ecstatic welcome the work received at its Paris premiere early the following year. Later in 1887 Saint-Saëns's "drame lyrique" Proserpine opened at the Opéra-Comique. It was well received and seemed to be heading for a substantial run when the theatre burnt down within weeks of the premiere and the production was lost. In December 1888 Saint-Saëns's mother died. He felt her loss deeply, and

7821-437: The technical skill of the workman. His incomparable talent for orchestration enables him to give relief to ideas which would otherwise be crude and mediocre in themselves ... his works are on the one hand not frivolous enough to become popular in the widest sense, nor on the other do they take hold of the public by that sincerity and warmth of feeling which is so convincing. Although a keen modernist in his youth, Saint-Saëns

7920-474: The top prize; in the same year he began formal composition studies. His professor was a protégé of Cherubini, Fromental Halévy , whose pupils included Charles Gounod and Bizet. Saint-Saëns's student compositions included a symphony in A major (1850) and a choral piece, Les Djinns (1850), after an eponymous poem by Victor Hugo . He competed for France's premier musical award, the Prix de Rome , in 1852 but

8019-538: The work eventually became an international success it was not staged at the Paris Opéra until 1892. Saint-Saëns was a keen traveller. From the 1870s until the end of his life he made 179 trips to 27 countries. His professional engagements took him most often to Germany and England; for holidays, and to avoid Parisian winters which affected his weak chest, he favoured Algiers and various places in Egypt. Saint-Saëns

8118-483: The works of Richard Wagner in spite of their bizarre character. They are superior and powerful, and that is sufficient for me. But I am not, I have never been, and I shall never be of the Wagnerian religion." In 1861 Saint-Saëns accepted his only post as a teacher, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse, Paris, which Louis Niedermeyer had established in 1853 to train first-rate organists and choirmasters for

8217-465: Was "a troubled man who preferred not to betray the darker side of his soul". The critic and composer Jeremy Nicholas observes that this reticence has led many to underrate the music; he quotes such slighting remarks as "Saint-Saëns is the only great composer who wasn't a genius", and "Bad music well written". While teaching at the Niedermeyer school Saint-Saëns put less of his energy into composing and performing, although an overture entitled Spartacus

8316-443: Was a much-loved honorary uncle. Marie told him, "For us you are one of the family, and we mention your name ceaselessly here." In the 1880s Saint-Saëns continued to seek success in the opera house, an undertaking made the more difficult by an entrenched belief among influential members of the musical establishment that it was unthinkable that a pianist, organist and symphonist could write a good opera. He had two operas staged during

8415-450: Was admirable for a man of eighty-six. He left Paris a month later for Algiers, with the intention of wintering there, as he had long been accustomed to do. While there he died of a heart attack on 16 December 1921. His body was taken back to Paris, and after a state funeral at the Madeleine he was buried at the cimetière du Montparnasse . Heavily veiled, in an inconspicuous place among the mourners from France's political and artistic élite,

8514-473: Was always deeply aware of the great masters of the past. In a profile of him written to mark his eightieth birthday, the critic D   C   Parker wrote, "That Saint-Saëns knows Rameau   ... Bach and Handel , Haydn and Mozart, must be manifest to all who are familiar with his writings. His love for the classical giants and his sympathy with them form, so to speak, the foundation of his art." Less attracted than some of his French contemporaries to

8613-473: Was composed soon after the horrors of the Commune, but its lightness and delicate orchestration give no hint of recent tragedies. Rees rates Phaëton (1873) as the finest of the symphonic poems, belying the composer's professed indifference to melody, and inspired in its depiction of the mythical hero and his fate. A critic at the time of the premiere took a different view, hearing in the piece "the noise of

8712-596: Was crowned at a competition instituted in 1863 by the Société Sainte Cécile of Bordeaux . But after he left the school in 1865 he pursued both aspects of his career with vigour. In 1867 his cantata Les noces de Prométhée beat more than a hundred other entries to win the composition prize of the Grande Fête Internationale in Paris, for which the jury included Auber, Berlioz, Gounod, Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi . In 1868 he premiered

8811-614: Was difficult to live with". Saint-Saëns and his wife moved to the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince , in the Latin Quarter ; his mother moved with them. The couple had two sons, both of whom died in infancy. In 1878, the elder, André, aged two, fell from a window of the flat and was killed; the younger, Jean-François, died of pneumonia six weeks later, aged six months. Saint-Saëns and Marie-Laure continued to live together for three years, but he blamed her for André's accident;

8910-603: Was elected to the Institut de France in 1881, at his second attempt, having to his chagrin been beaten by Massenet in 1878. In July of that year he and his wife went to the Auvergnat spa town of La Bourboule for a holiday. On 28 July he disappeared from their hotel, and a few days later his wife received a letter from him to say that he would not be returning. They never saw each other again. Marie Saint-Saëns returned to her family, and lived until 1950, dying near Bordeaux at

9009-461: Was his widow, Marie-Laure, whom he had last seen in 1881. In the early years of the 20th century, the anonymous author of the article on Saint-Saëns in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians wrote: Saint-Saëns is a consummate master of composition, and no one possesses a more profound knowledge than he does of the secrets and resources of the art; but the creative faculty does not keep pace with

9108-421: Was in danger of looking foolish with his excess of patriotism, and his growing tendency to denounce in public the works of rising young composers, as in his condemnation of Debussy's En blanc et noir (1915): "We must at all costs bar the door of the Institut against a man capable of such atrocities; they should be put next to the cubist pictures." His determination to block Debussy's candidacy for election to

9207-469: Was not present on that occasion, but at the first concert performance of the piece the following year he expressed the firm view that Stravinsky was insane. When a group of French musicians led by Saint-Saëns tried to organise a boycott of German music during the First World War, Fauré and Messager dissociated themselves from the idea, though the disagreement did not affect their friendship with their old teacher. They were privately concerned that their friend

9306-520: Was plunged into depression and insomnia, even contemplating suicide. He left Paris and stayed in Algiers, where he recuperated until May 1889, walking and reading but unable to compose. During the 1890s Saint-Saëns spent much time on holiday, travelling overseas, composing less and performing more infrequently than before. A planned visit to perform in Chicago fell through in 1893. He wrote one opera,

9405-479: Was soon in abeyance as a result of the war, during which he gave many performances in France and elsewhere, raising money for war charities. These activities took him across the Atlantic, despite the danger from German submarines. In November 1921, Saint-Saëns gave a recital at the Institut for a large invited audience; it was remarked that his playing was as vivid and precise as ever, and that his personal bearing

9504-460: Was the first major French composer to write piano concertos. His First , in D (1858), in conventional three-movement form, is not well known, but the Second, in G minor (1868) is one of his most popular works. The composer experimented with form in this piece, replacing the customary sonata form first movement with a more discursive structure, opening with a solemn cadenza . The scherzo second movement and presto finale are in such contrast with

9603-407: Was three years old he displayed perfect pitch and enjoyed picking out tunes on the piano. His great-aunt taught him the basics of pianism, and when he was seven he became a pupil of Camille-Marie Stamaty , a former pupil of Friedrich Kalkbrenner . Stamaty required his students to play while resting their forearms on a bar situated in front of the keyboard, so that all the pianist's power came from

9702-425: Was unsuccessful. Auber believed that the prize should have gone to Saint-Saëns, considering him to have more promise than the winner, Léonce Cohen , who made little mark during the rest of his career. In the same year Saint-Saëns had greater success in a competition organised by the Société Sainte-Cécile, Paris, with his Ode à Sainte-Cécile , for which the judges unanimously voted him the first prize. The first piece

9801-484: Was widely regarded as the greatest living French composer. In 1886 the Philharmonic Society of London commissioned what became one of his most popular and respected works, the Third ("Organ") Symphony . It was premiered in London at a concert in which Saint-Saëns appeared as conductor of the symphony and as soloist in Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto , conducted by Sir Arthur Sullivan . The success of

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