Henceforth he would juggle his two careers as composer and performer at the highest level. Little matter though, he carried on composing, winning other competitions, reaping his first successes and earning the praise of Berlioz. In 1864 Saint-Saëns once again missed out on the Prix de Rome, this time he was declared too old and “lacking inexperience”. He caught the attention of Charles Gounod and Pauline Viardot, who invited him to perform in her music salon, a magnet for Parisian intellectual and artistic high society. Despite initially missing out on the Prix de Rome in 1852 (on account of his young age), Camille Saint-Saëns excelled in several instrumental genres. After a few childhood essays – his first works were written at just three-and-a-half years old –, he took organ and composition classes at the Conservatoire (Music Academy). Concerned about his fragile health, his mother put the brakes on this precocious career – especially since, in adolescence, he also showed an extraordinary flair for composition, which was also worth encouraging. As young as six, he was already playing in the highest-reputed music salons and, in May 1846, at the age of ten, he gave his first public concert with an orchestra, performing concertos by Mozart and Beethoven from memory. He was sent to study under a renowned piano teacher, Camille Stamaty, and began a dazzling career as a prodigy. He was raised by two widows, his mother Clémence and great-aunt Charlotte Masson, a good musician, who would quickly reveal his exceptional talents. In 1881 he was elected to the Institut de France and he would take his duties as a member of the Académie des Beaux-arts very seriously.īorn in Paris on 8 October 1835, Charles-Camille was the only son of Victor Saint-Saëns who died three months after his birth. His energy, oratory skills and penchant for controversy made him the spokesperson of a generation of composers who were struggling to rise above the radar and whom he brought together by founding the Société nationale de musique, in 1871, to promote contemporary French music. Saint-Saëns was also very active on the musical scene of his time. But Saint-Saëns had been composing large-scale works – that had already attracted attention – since the age of 15, and would continue to enrich all musical genres with masterpieces that remain popular nowadays. However, cementing such virtuoso status so young can make the way forward as a composer more of a challenge and one’s place must be hard-won. He was appointed organist at La Madeleine Church in Paris in 1857, only stepping down 20 years later to pursue his career as a concert pianist. ENGLISH MUSIC PRODIGY FULLWhen playing the organ, he garnered acclaim for both his ingenious improvisations and his effortless use of the full range of possibilities offered up by these grand instruments, newly built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. History has duly remembered Camille Saint-Saëns’ prolific and prolix compositional oeuvre, but paid rather more scant regard to the fact that, before that, he was a child prodigy – as gifted with a pen as he was at the piano and organ.Īs a pianist, he would dominate his instrument over a continuous career spanning nearly 80 years, earning the public’s admiration with his masterful and precise interpretations and prodigious memory.
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