Meet a Composer: Camille Saint-Saëns

 Meet a Composer:  Camille Saint-Saëns

Years Lived: 1835 - 1921
Period of Composing: Romantic
Country: France

A small group of musicians from the Columbia Orchestra will give two performances of Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals outdoors at the Chrysalis at Merriweather Park on Saturday, September 26 at 10:30 and 1:00. Let's learn about this very famous piece of music and the man who wrote it.  

Camille Saint-Saëns is most well-known for Carnival of the Animals, but he also composed many symphonies, concertos, sonatas and chamber music. He also wrote 13 operas, but only one of them, Samson and Delilah, is still regularly performed. Saint-Saëns had perfect pitch and could already pick out tunes on the piano before the age of three. At the age of 10, Saint-Saëns could play any of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas from memory and made his public debut playing two piano concertos, one by Mozart and one by Beethoven. He entered the famous Paris Conservatory, France's top music academy, when he was only 13.

Carnival of the Animals, although not originally written for children, has become a favorite piece of music for introducing orchestral instruments to children. Fourteen of its movements each introduce an instrument as a different animal. If you have seen Disney's Fantasia 2000, the flamingos are dancing to The Finale of Carnival of the Animals.

Did you enjoy watching Sheku Kanneh-Mason play the cello at the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel? Watch him and other members of the Kanneh-Mason family perform Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals in this YouTube video. 

Did You Know? 

The Swan became acclaimed worldwide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when it was choreographed for the legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova. She performed it about 4,000 times. In this YouTube video, The Swan is performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Kathryn Stott.

Saint-Saëns composed Carnival of the Animals to poke fun at some of his friends.  Because of this, he only allowed one movement of the work, The Swan, to be played during his lifetime.  The music was not performed in its entirety until after Saint-Saëns died.

In his lifetime, Saint-Saëns was called the “French Beethoven.”  He was often compared to Mozart and was considered the leading French composer of his generation.

Saint-Saëns was the first well-known composer to write music for a movie, Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908).   

Learn More:

WCRI's Classical Kids Hour podcast introduces the movements of Carnival of the Animals and the different instruments used and also includes a performance of the entire piece.

Learn more about Saint-Saëns and his music from Dallas Symphony Orchestra Kids or Classics for Kids. 

This article from Classic FM includes 16 pictures and facts about Saint-Saëns.