Camille Saint-Saëns
Composer

A Quiet Start With a Loud Talent

I was born in Paris on 9 October 1835, the only child of my parents. My father died of tuberculosis less than two months after my christening, so my mother and her widowed aunt Charlotte Masson raised me. Aunt Charlotte taught me the basics of piano, and I took to it so eagerly that the keyboard soon felt like a second home. In 1848 I entered the Paris Conservatoire, where I studied piano with Camille-Marie Stamaty, organ with François Benoist and composition with Fromental Halévy.

Politely Showing Off

Once my studies were behind me, I earned my living at the organ, first at Saint-Merri from 1853 to 1857. Before long people noticed that my compositions were just as brilliant as my playing. In 1863 I wrote the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, a showpiece that opens with a dark, thoughtful mood and then dances off in a sparkling hurry. My Piano Concerto No. 2 followed in 1868, and after that I no longer needed to introduce myself in Paris.

Paris, Where I Played Upstairs and Taught Downstairs

Paris was my home ground, and I worked there both in churches and in classrooms. From 1858 I was the organist at La Madeleine, and I kept that post until I resigned in 1877. In between, from 1861 to 1865, I taught piano at the École Niedermeyer, where my best-known pupil was Gabriel Fauré. Some sources report that Gounod called me "the Beethoven of France", though I would never insist on it myself.

A Skeleton Walks Into a Concert Hall

Of everything I wrote, the piece you can hear on this site is Danse macabre, a symphonic poem from 1874. Picture a graveyard at midnight, where Death tunes his fiddle and the skeletons climb out to dance. I wanted the music to sound spooky and playful at the same time, so you may catch yourself smiling while the bones rattle. I also wrote operas, and my Samson et Dalila was first staged in German at Weimar in 1877, before it finally reached the Paris Opéra in 1892.

The Years I Would Rather Skip

In 1875 I married Marie-Laure Truffot, and I wish I could tell you that it ended happily. Our two sons both died in infancy in 1878, a grief that no music could mend. In July 1881 I left the marriage, and I never saw my wife again. I went on composing all the same, because work was the one place where I could keep my balance.

Winters in the Sun

In my later life I spent much of every winter in Algiers, far from the Paris cold. It was there that I died of a heart attack on 16 December 1921. Paris still took me back, though, with a state funeral at the Madeleine, the church where I had played for so many years. I was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery, so I died in one city and was laid to rest in another, which is a rather tidy way to arrange things.

The Pieces I Kept in the Drawer

In 1886 I completed The Carnival of the Animals and forbade its performance during my lifetime, which I admit is an odd way to treat a piece. That same year came my Symphony No. 3, the "Organ Symphony", which the Royal Philharmonic Society had commissioned, and in it the organ joins the full orchestra. The story goes that I walked out of the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, but Stravinsky disputed that I was even there. Whatever the truth of that evening, my music is still played today, and that is the legacy I care about.

What I Hand You at the Door

I would like you to hear music that wants to be enjoyed rather than studied. You do not need to know a single rule of composition to feel the pull of a good tune or the chill of a spooky one. So start with Danse macabre, and let the midnight dancers do the introductions. If you come away curious, then I have done my job, and the rest of my music will be waiting for you.