Camille Saint-Saëns

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Title:     Camille Saint-Saëns
Author: Romain Rolland [More Titles by Rolland]

M. Saint-Saëns has had the rare honour of becoming a classic during his lifetime. His name, though it was long unrecognised, now commands universal respect, not less by his worth of character than by the perfection of his art. No artist has troubled so little about the public, or been more indifferent to criticism whether popular or expert. As a child he had a sort of physical repulsion for outward success:

"De l'applaudissement
J'entends encor le bruit qui, chose assez étrange,
Pour ma pudeur d'enfant était comme une fange
Dont le flot me venait toucher; je redoutais
Son contact, et parfois, malin, je l'évitais,
Affectant la raideur."[110]

[Footnote 110:

Of applause
I still hear the noise; and, strangely enough,
In my childish shyness it seemed like mire
About to spot me; I feared
Its touch, and secretly shunned it,
Affecting obstinacy.

These verses were read by M. Saint-Saëns at a concert given on 10 June, 1896, in the Salle Pleyel, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his début, which he made in 1846. It was in this same Salle Pleyel that he gave his first concert.]

Later on, he achieved success by a long and painful struggle, in which he had to fight against the kind of stupid criticism that condemned him "to listen to one of Beethoven's symphonies as a penance likely to give him the most excruciating torture."[111] And yet after this, and after his admission to the Academy, after Henry VIII and the Symphonie avec orgue, he still remained aloof from praise or blame, and judged his triumphs with sad severity:

"Tu connaîtras les yeux menteurs, l'hypocrisie
Des serrements de mains,
Le masque d'amitié cachant la jalousie,
Les pâles lendemains

"De ces jours de triomphe où le troupeau vulgaire
Qui pèse au même poids
L'histrion ridicule et le génie austère
Vous mets sur le pavois."[112]

M. Saint-Saëns has now grown old, and his fame has spread abroad, but he has not capitulated. Not many years ago he wrote to a German journalist: "I take very little notice of either praise or censure, not because I have an exalted idea of my own merits (which would be foolish), but because in doing my work, and fulfilling the function of my nature, as an apple-tree grows apples, I have no need to trouble myself with other people's views."[113]

[Footnote 111: C. Saint-Saëns, Harmonie et Mélodie, 1885.]

[Footnote 112: C. Saint-Saëns, Rimes familières, 1890.

You will know the lying eyes, the insincerity
Of pressures of the hand,
The mask of friendship that hides jealousy.
The tame to-morrows

Of these days of triumph, when the vulgar herd
Crowns you with honour;
Judging rare genius to be
Equal in merit to the wit of clowns.

]

[Footnote 113: Letter written to M. Levin, the correspondent of the Boersen-Courier of Berlin, 9 September, 1901.]

Such independence is rare at any time; but it is very rare in our day, when the power of public opinion is tyrannical; and it is rarest of all in France, where artists are perhaps more sociable than in other countries. Of all qualities in an artist it is the most precious; for it forms the foundation of his character, and is the guarantee of his conscience and innate strength. So we must not hide it under a bushel.

* * * * *

The significance of M. Saint-Saëns in art is a double one, for one must judge him from the inside as well as the outside of France. He stands for something exceptional in French music, something which was almost unique until just lately: that is, a great classical spirit and a fine breadth of musical culture--German culture, we must say, since the foundation of all modern art rests on the German classics. French music of the nineteenth century is rich in clever artists, imaginative writers of melody, and skilful dramatists; but it is poor in true musicians, and in good and solid workmanship. Apart from two or three splendid exceptions, our composers have too much the character of gifted amateurs who compose music as a pastime, and regard it, not as a special form of thought, but as a sort of dress for literary ideas. Our musical education is superficial: it may be got for a few years, in a formal way, at a Conservatoire, but it is not within reach of all; the child does not breathe music as, in a way, he breathes the atmosphere of literature and oratory; and although nearly everyone in France has an instinctive feeling for beautiful writing, only a very few people care for beautiful music. From this arise the common faults and failings in our music. It has remained a luxurious art; it has not become, like German music, the poetical expression of the people's thought.

To bring this about we should need a combination of conditions that are very rare in France; though such conditions went to the making of Camille Saint-Saëns. He had not only remarkable natural talent, but came of a family of ardent musicians, who devoted themselves to his education. At five years of age he was nourished on the orchestral score of Don Juan;[114] as a little boy

"De dix ans, délicat, frêle, le teint jaunet,
Mais confiant, naïf, plein d'ardeur et de joie,"[115]

he "measured himself against Beethoven and Mozart" by playing in a public concert; at sixteen years of age he wrote his Première Symphonie. As he grew older he soaked himself in the music of Bach and Händel, and was able to compose at will after the manner of Rossini, Verdi, Schumann, and Wagner.[116] He has written excellent music in all styles--the Grecian style, and that of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. His compositions are of every kind: masses, grand operas, light operas, cantatas, symphonies, symphonic poems; music for the orchestra, the organ, the piano, the voice, and chamber music. He is the learned editor of Gluck and Rameau; and is thus not only an artist, but an artist who can talk about his art. He is an unusual figure in France--one would have thought rather to find his home in Germany.

[Footnote 114: C. Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod et le Don Juan de Mozart, 1894.]

[Footnote 115:

But ten years old, slightly built and pale,
Yet full of simple confidence and joy (Rimes familières).

]

[Footnote 116: Charles Gounod, Mémoires d'un Artiste, 1896.]

In Germany, however, they make no mistake about him. There, the name of Camille Saint-Saëns stands for the French classical spirit, and is thought worthiest to represent us in music from the time of Berlioz until the appearance of the young school of César Franck--though Franck himself is as yet little known in Germany. M. Saint-Saëns possesses, indeed, some of the best qualities of a French artist, and among them the most important quality of all--perfect clearness of conception. It is remarkable how little this learned artist is bothered by his learning, and how free he is from all pedantry. Pedantry is the plague of German art, and the greatest men have not escaped it. I am not speaking of Brahms, who was ravaged with it, but of delightful geniuses like Schumann, or of powerful ones like Bach. "This unnatural art wearies one like the sanctimonious salon of some little provincial town; it stifles one, it is enough to kill one."[117] "Saint-Saëns is not a pedant," wrote Gounod; "he has remained too much of a child and become too clever for that." Besides, he has always been too much of a Frenchman.

[Footnote 117: Quoted from Saint-Saëns by Edmond Hippeau in Henry VIII et L'Opéra français, 1883. M. Saint-Saëns speaks elsewhere of "these works, well written, but heavy and unattractive, and reflecting in a tiresome way the narrow and pedantic spirit of certain little towns in Germany" (Harmonie et Mélodie).]

Sometimes Saint-Saëns reminds me of one of our eighteenth-century writers. Not a writer of the Encyclopédie, nor one of Rousseau's camp, but rather of Voltaire's school. He has a clearness of thought, an elegance and precision of expression, and a quality of mind that make his music "not only noble, but very noble, as coming of a fine race and distinguished family."[118]

He has also excellent discernment, of an unemotional kind; and he is "calm in spirit, restrained in imagination, and keeps his self-control even in the midst of the most disturbing emotions."[119] This discernment is the enemy of anything approaching obscurity of thought or mysticism; and its outcome was that curious book, Problèmes et Mystères--a misleading title, for the spirit of reason reigns there and makes an appeal to young people to protect "the light of a menaced world" against "the mists of the North, Scandinavian gods, Indian divinities, Catholic miracles, Lourdes, spiritualism, occultism, and obscurantism."[120]

His love and need of liberty is also of the eighteenth century. One may say that liberty is his only passion. "I am passionately fond of liberty," he wrote.[121]

[Footnote 118: Charles Gounod, "Ascanio" de Saint-Saëns, 1890.]

[Footnote 119: Id., ibid.]

[Footnote 120: C. Saint-Saëns, Problèmes et Mystères, 1894.]

[Footnote 121: Harmonie et Mélodie.]

And he has proved it by the absolute fearlessness of his judgments on art; for not only has he reasoned soundly against Wagner, but dared to criticise the weaknesses of Gluck and Mozart, the errors of Weber and Berlioz, and the accepted opinions about Gounod; and this classicist, who was nourished on Bach, goes so far as to say: "The performance of works by Bach and Händel to-day is an idle amusement," and that those who wish to revive their art are like "people who would live in an old mansion that has been uninhabited for centuries."[122] He went even further; he criticised his own work and contradicted his own opinions. His love of liberty made him form, at different periods, different opinions of the same work. He thought that people had a right to change their opinions, as sometimes they deceived themselves. It seemed to him better boldly to admit an error than to be the slave of consistency. And this same feeling showed itself in other matters besides art: in ethics, as is shown by some verses which he addressed to a young friend, urging him not to be bound by a too rigid austerity:

"Je sens qu'une triste chimère
A toujours assombri ton âme: la Vertu...."[123]

and in metaphysics also, where he judges religions, faith, and the Gospels with a quiet freedom of thought, seeking in Nature alone the basis of morals and society.

[Footnote 122: C. Saint-Saëns, Portraits et Souvenirs, 1900.]

[Footnote 123:

I know that a vain dream of virtue
Has always cast a shadow on your soul (Rimes familières).
]

Here are some of his opinions, taken at random from Problèmes et Mystères:

"As science advances, God recedes."

"The soul is only a medium for the expression of thought."

"The discouragement of work, the weakening of character, the
sharing of one's goods under pain of death--this is the Gospel
teaching on the foundation of society."

"The Christian virtues are not social virtues."

"Nature is without aim: she is an endless circle, and leads us
nowhere."

His thoughts are unfettered and full of love for humanity and a sense of the responsibility of the individual. He called Beethoven "the greatest, the only really great artist," because he upheld the idea of universal brotherhood. His mind is so comprehensive that he has written books on philosophy, on the theatre, on classical painting,[124] as well as scientific essays,[125] volumes of verse, and even plays.[126]

[Footnote 124: C. Saint-Saëns, Note sur les décors de théâtre dans l'antiquité romaine, 1880, where he discusses the mural paintings of Pompeii.]

[Footnote 125: Lecture on the Phenomena of Mirages, given to the Astronomical Society of France in 1905.]

[Footnote 126: C. Saint-Saëns, La Crampe des Écrivains, a comedy in one act, 1892.]

He has been able to take up all sorts of things, I will not say with equal skill, but with discernment and undeniable ability. He shows a type of mind rare among artists and, above all, among musicians. The two principles that he enunciates and himself follows out are: "Keep free from all exaggeration" and "Preserve the soundness of your mind's health."[127] They are certainly not the principles of a Beethoven or a Wagner, and it would be rather difficult to find a noted musician of the last century who had applied them. They tell us, without need of comment, what is distinctive about M. Saint-Saëns, and what is defective in him. He is not troubled by any sort of passion. Nothing disturbs the clearness of his reason. "He has no prejudices; he takes no side"[128]--one might add, not even his own, since he is not afraid to change his views--"he does not pose as a reformer of anything"; he is altogether independent, perhaps almost too much so. He seems sometimes as if he did not know what to do with his liberty. Goethe would have said, I think, that he needed a little more of the devil in him.

[Footnote 127: Harmonie et Mélodie.]

[Footnote 128: Charles Gounod, Mémoires d'un Artiste.]

His most characteristic mental trait seems to be a languid melancholy, which has its source in a rather bitter feeling of the futility of life;[129] and this is accompanied by fits of weariness which are not altogether healthy, followed by capricious moods and nervous gaiety, and a freakish liking for burlesque and mimicry. It is his eager, restless spirit that makes him rush about the world writing Breton and Auvergnian rhapsodies, Persian songs, Algerian suites, Portuguese barcarolles, Danish, Russian, or Arabian caprices, souvenirs of Italy, African fantasias, and Egyptian concertos; and, in the same way, he roams through the ages, writing Greek tragedies, dance music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and preludes and fugues of the eighteenth. But in all these exotic and archaic reflections of times and countries through which his fancy wanders, one recognises the gay, intelligent countenance of a Frenchman on his travels, who idly follows his inclinations, and does not trouble to enter very deeply into the spirit of the people he meets, but gleans all he can, and then reproduces it with a French complexion--after the manner of Montaigne in Italy, who compared Verona to Poitiers, and Padua to Bordeaux, and who, when he was in Florence, paid much less attention to Michelangelo than to "a very strangely shaped sheep, and an animal the size of a large mastiff, shaped like a cat and striped with black and white, which they called a tiger."

[Footnote 129: Les Heures; Mors; Modestie (Rimes familières).]

From a purely musical point of view there is some resemblance between M. Saint-Saëns and Mendelssohn. In both of them we find the same intellectual restraint, the same balance preserved among the heterogeneous elements of their work. These elements are not common to both of them, because the time, the country, and the surroundings in which they lived are not the same; and there is also a great difference in their characters. Mendelssohn is more ingenuous and religious; M. Saint-Saëns is more of a dilettante and more sensuous. They are not so much kindred spirits by their science as good company by a common purity of taste, a sense of rhythm, and a genius for method, which gave all they wrote a neo-classic character.

As for the things that directly influenced M. Saint-Saëns, they are so numerous that it would be difficult and rather bold of me to pretend to be able to pick them out. His remarkable capacity for assimilation has often moved him to write in the style of Wagner or Berlioz, of Händel or Rameau, of Lulli or Charpentier, or even of some English harpsichord or clavichord player of the sixteenth century, like William Byrd--whose airs are introduced quite naturally in the music of Henry VIII; but we must remember that these are deliberate imitations, the amusements of a virtuoso, about which M. Saint-Saëns never deceives himself. His memory serves him as he pleases, but he is never troubled by it.

As far as one can judge, M. Saint-Saëns' musical ideas are infused with the spirit of the great classics belonging to the end of the eighteenth century--far more, whatever people may say, with the spirit of Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart, than with the spirit of Bach. Schumann's seductiveness also left its mark upon him, and he has felt the influence of Gounod, Bizet, and Wagner. But a stronger influence was that of Berlioz, his friend and master,[130] and, above all, that of Liszt. We must stop at this last name.

[Footnote 130: "Thanks to Berlioz, all my generation has been shaped, and well shaped" (Portraits et Souvenirs).]

M. Saint-Saëns has good reason for liking Liszt, for Liszt was also a lover of freedom, and had shaken off traditions and pedantry, and scorned German routine; and he liked him, too, because his music was a reaction from the stiff school of Brahms.[131] He was enthusiastic about Liszt's work, and was one of the earliest and most ardent champions of that new music of which Liszt was the leading spirit--of that "programme" music which Wagner's triumph seemed to have nipped in the bud, but which has suddenly and gloriously burst into life again in the works of Richard Strauss. "Liszt is one of the great composers of our time," wrote M. Saint-Saëns; "he has dared more than either Weber, or Mendelssohn, or Schubert, or Schumann. He has created the symphonic poem. He is the deliverer of instrumental music.... He has proclaimed the reign of free music."[132] This was not said impulsively in a moment of enthusiasm; M. Saint-Saëns has always held this opinion. All his life he has remained faithful to his admiration of Liszt--since 1858, when he dedicated a Veni Creator to "the Abbé Liszt," until 1886, when, a few months after Liszt's death, he dedicated his masterpiece, the Symphonic avec orgue, "To the memory of Franz Liszt."[133]

[Footnote 131: "I like Liszt's music so much, because he does not bother about other people's opinions; he says what he wants to say; and the only thing that he troubles about is to say it as well as he possibly can" (Quoted by Hippeau).]

[Footnote 132: The quotations are taken from Harmonie et Mélodie and Portraits et Souvenirs.]

[Footnote 133: In Harmonie et Mélodie M. Saint-Saëns tells us that he organised and directed a concert in the Théâtre-Italien where only Liszt's compositions were played. But all his efforts to make the French musical public appreciate Liszt were a failure.]

"People have not hesitated to scoff at what they call my weakness for Liszt's works. But even if the feelings of affection and gratitude that he inspired in me did come like a prism and interpose themselves between my eyes and his face, I do not see anything greatly to be regretted in it.[134] I had not yet felt the charm of his personal fascination, I had neither heard nor seen him, and I did not owe him anything at all, when my interest was gripped in reading his first symphonic poems; and when later they pointed the way which was to lead to La Danse macabre, Le Rouet d'Omphale, and other works of the same nature, I am sure that my judgment was not biassed by any prejudice in his favour, and that I alone was responsible for what I did."[135]

[Footnote 134: The admiration was mutual. M. Saint-Saëns even said that without Liszt he could not have written Samson et Dalila. "Not only did Liszt have Samson et Dalila performed at Weimar, but without him that work would never have come into being. My suggestions on the subject had met with such hostility that I had given up the idea of writing it; and all that existed were some illegible notes.... Then at Weimar one day I spoke to Liszt about it, and he said to me, quite trustingly and without having heard a note, 'Finish your work; I will have it performed here.' The events of 1870 delayed its performance for several years." (Revue Musicale, 8 November, 1901).]

[Footnote 135: Portraits et Souvenirs.]

This influence seems to me to explain some of M. Saint-Saëns' work. Not only is this influence evident in his symphonic poems--some of his best work--but it is to be found in his suites for orchestra, his fantasias, and his rhapsodies, where the descriptive and narrative element is strong. "Music should charm unaided," said M. Saint-Saëns; "but its effect is much finer when we use our imagination and let it flow in some particular channel, thus imaging the music. It is then that all the faculties of the soul are brought into play for the same end. What art gains from this is not greater beauty, but a wider field for its scope--that is, a greater variety of form and a larger liberty."[136]

* * * * *

And so we find that M. Saint-Saëns has taken part in the vigorous attempt of modern German symphony writers to bring into music some of the power of the other arts: poetry, painting, philosophy, romance, drama--the whole of life. But what a gulf divides them and him! A gulf made up, not only of diversities of style, but of the difference between two races and two worlds. Beside the frenzied outpourings of Richard Strauss, who flounders uncertainly between mud and debris and genius, the Latin art of Saint-Saëns rises up calm and ironical. His delicacy of touch, his careful moderation, his happy grace, "which enters the soul by a thousand little paths,"[137] bring with them the pleasures of beautiful speech and honest thought; and we cannot but feel their charm. Compared with the restless and troubled art of to-day, his music strikes us by its calm, its tranquil harmonies, its velvety modulations, its crystal clearness, its smooth and flowing style, and an elegance that cannot be put into words. Even his classic coldness does us good by its reaction against the exaggerations, sincere as they are, of the new school. At times one feels oneself carried back to Mendelssohn, even to Spontini and the school of Gluck. One seems to be travelling in a country that one knows and loves; and yet in M. Saint-Saëns' works one does not find any direct resemblance to the works of other composers; for with no one are reminiscences rarer than with this master who carries all the old masters in his mind--it is his spirit that is akin to theirs. And that is the secret of his personality and his value to us; he brings to our artistic unrest a little of the light and sweetness of other times. His compositions are like fragments of another world.

[Footnote 136: Harmonie et Mélodie.]

[Footnote 137: C. Saint-Saëns, Portraits et Souvenirs.]

"From time to time," he said, in speaking of Don Giovanni, "in the sacred earth of Hellene we find a fragment, an arm, the debris of a torso, scratched and damaged by the ravages of time; it is only the shadow of the god that the sculptor's chisel once created; but the charm is somehow still there, the sublime style is radiant in spite of everything."[138]

And so with this music. It is sometimes a little pale, a little too restrained; but in a phrase, in a few harmonies, there will shine out a clear vision of the past.

[Footnote 138: Portraits et Souvenirs.]

[The end]
Romain Rolland's essay: Camille Saint-Saëns

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