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The Pilgrims landed and formed colonies. BUT….England still controlled those colonies. This made the pilgrims angry. Why? Because England’s monarchy (king) was taxing them for everything! That means, he was taking all their money and saying it was payment for ruling them. Wouldn’t you want to get away from someone like that? So, those folks in the colonies decided it was time to go to war.
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Camille Saint-Saens [kah-MEAL san-SAHNS] was a French composer during the Romantic Era of music. The Romantic Era was a time when composers used music as an expression of intense feelings…...usually of romance or love.
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835. His parents, Victory and Francois (Fran-Schwah) never had any other children. Less than two months after Camille’s christening, Victor Saint-Saëns died of consumption 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 near Paris. |
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He became organist at the famed Church of the Madeleine in Paris in 1857, an association that lasted for 20 years. Liszt, whom he met about this time and with whom he formed an enduring friendship, described him as the finest organist in the world.
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Church of the Madeleine in Paris
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Church of the Madeleine in Paris
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Church of the Madeleine in Paris
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Camille Saint-Saens playing the Organ
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Like many composers of the 1800's, Saint-Saens began his career playing organ for churches. He played for weekly church services and about 200 weddings a year. That averages almost 4 weddings a week! This provided him a comfortable income to support himself while he composed music for symphonies to play, including organ symphonies.
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Although Saint-Saens was composing music during the Impressionist era in France, he was not 'impressed' with that style of music being written by Claude Debussy, the leading impressionist composer. He thought it was too free-form and unstructured. Saint-Saens preferred a more traditional type of music.
Camille was known for his ideas of how music should be written, he still supported up and coming artists, such as Richard Wagner, who we studied two weeks ago. In fact, Saint Saens said, of Wagner, “I admire deeply 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 other words, he thought Wagner was an outstanding musician, but he would never write music that was anything like Wagner’s. |
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After twenty years as an organist, he devoted his time to composing, conducting orchestras and performing on the concert stage. He became an international celebrity whose playing skills remained strong even when he was in his mid-eighties.
The Carnival of the Animals is a humorous musical suite of fourteen movements by Camille Saint-Saëns. Each movement is named after an animal. The work was written to be a private performance. Originally it was written to be played by an ensemble of two pianos and other instruments, and lasts around 25 minutes. Saint-Saens included Kangaroos, tortoises, chickens, elephants (that are represented by the sounds of a string bass) and aviary (birds of flight) that are represented by the sounds of a flute. |
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