The Eclecticism of Camille Saint-Saëns

The eclecticism of Camille Saint-Saëns: defining a band piece Sur les bords du Nil, the two-piano “French sound” in music 1866-1896 work Caprice arabe, and Africa for piano and orchestra). This propensity is probably due to the fact Francis Kayali that Saint-Saëns loved to travel to Algeria. (In fact, Spring 2008 he died there.) Then come the Spanish/Portu- guese/Cuban pieces (Jota Aragonese and Une nuit à Lisbonne for orchestra, two pieces for solo violin Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) started out as a and orchestra: Caprice Andalous and Havanaise, prodigy child pianist. Also an organist and a writer, and a Valse Canariote for solo piano), followed by he is now best remembered as a composer. In Italian/Venitian/Sicilian pieces (choral: Saltarelle, many respects, Saint-Saëns was a classicist who orchestra with piano: Tarantelle, chamber: Barca- composed in traditional “Germanic” forms such as rolle), and French/Breton/Auvergnat pieces (the the sonata and the symphony, rarely going against three Rhapsodies sur des cantiques Bretons and established textbook formulas. By 1910 and his the Rhapsodie d’Auvergne). Saint-Saëns also wrote infamous outcry against Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du a few odd northern European pieces, such as the Printemps Saint-Saëns revealed himself as an irre- chamber piece Caprice sur des airs danois et russ- deemable reactionary. Back in the 1870s, however, es, as well as Mazurkas and Polonaises no doubt he had stood at the forefront of French musical life, influenced by Chopin. The Shakespeare-inspired working out ways in which French composers could operas could be included in this category as well. assert their national identity while at the same time Predictably, Saint-Saëns circumvents anything not reneging on their allegiance to the German overtly inspired by German-speaking countries. masters they admired such as Mozart, Beethoven, This notwithstanding, Saint-Saëns appears to have Schubert, and even, closer to them, Wagner. been aware of, and, to varying degrees, inspired by, all of the types of music with which he might Saint-Saëns was keen to compose music in many have entered in contact. Since Saint-Saëns traveled different styles, traditions and historical period than a lot, he got firsthand exposure to the music of his own. This paper seeks to explore the nature of many foreign traditions. Saint-Saëns’s eclecticism and to try to elucidate connections between this and conceptions of a 2. Why we can’t talk about the obvious suspect: national French “sound.” The Carnival of the Animals I. Examples of musical quotation and imitation The vast array of sources shown by these titles demonstrates the eclecticism of the composer’s 1. A look at Saint-Saens’s catalogue output, but it doesn’t say anything regarding the level of eclecticism within a given piece. The most A glance at the titles in Saint-Saëns’s catalogue famous examples of such “inner eclecticism” are to serves to chart out the breadth of the composer’s be found in Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. musical interests. The subjects of his pieces are Its function there is deliberately comic, which is the medieval (e.g. the operas Frédégonde and Henry reason this work shouldn’t be discussed here. VIII, the scène lyrique Macbeth, and the choral Composers of all stripes have used these conven- piece Ivanhoë), biblical (the opera Samson et Da- tions of musical humor: roughly or oddly juxtapos- lila, plus, evidently, all of Saint-Saëns’s religious ing fragments of highly contrasting music, quoting output), mythical (the opera Proserpine, the scène well-known or popular tunes of the day (like Saint- lyrique Antoine et Cléopâtre, the piece for piano Saëns, who quotes “Partant pour la Syrie” in the with orchestra Phaëton), and sometimes even con- Carnival), or imitating certain styles of music in the temporary (he wrote a couple of pieces in honor of spirit of parody. Because such pieces do not consti- airplane pilots!). Then come pieces with geographic tute “serious” statements, they do not really inform associations. The oriental pieces (Chinese/Japa- us about the composer’s voice. The fact that Saint- nese/Arabic/African) are most numerous (the opera Saëns refused to let this piece be published during La princesse jaune, the choral pieces Les djinns and his lifetime (with the exception of one movement, Nuit persane, the Mélodies persanes song cycle, The Swan), fearing that it would be detrimental to the orchestral piece Suite algérienne, a military 1 his reputation,1 demonstrates that the tone of this Saint-Saëns’s song, even though it doesn’t belong piece must be viewed as distinct from that of the to his tradition, and he did not compose it. rest of his output. What if Saint-Saëns, not being Arabic, but inspired Indeed, we would be hard-pressed to find in an- by Arabic music (as well as by imitations of Arabic other one of the composer’s pieces the sudden, music) composes a melody that his audience finds kaleidoscopic juxtapositions of short quotations perfectly convincing as an Arabic tune? To what that appear, for instance, in Fossils or in the Finale extent would this represent Saint-Saëns? Such of the Carnival. We thus need to limit this study of questions and their answers, while they lend them- the way in which Saint-Saëns quotes “other” music selves to endless legalistic parsing, make it clear to selections the composer did authorize. that all music can, to varying degrees, count as “other.” Fortunately, Saint-Saëns gives us a num- 3. What counts as “other” music? ber of examples where he signals the quotation in his title. Precisely defining the meaning of “other”2 is a challenge and deserves some discussion. When a 4. Examples of direct quotation composer (say, Mozart) writes a horn call in his music, to what extent is this passage a reflection of The most obvious way of integrating “other” music the composer’s individual voice? Is it a Mozart horn into a piece of music is to use a direct quotation call, or is it “other,” extraneous? Presumably the from another piece, usually a pre-existing folk difference lies between a horn call that the listener song. Let’s take a look at the ways Saint-Saëns can recognize as belonging to the established rep- treats these borrowings in his music. ertoire of hunting calls, or as having been composed by a composer other than Mozart. It be- In his Rhapsody on Breton Melodies Op. 7, No. 3 comes a Mozart horn call when it cannot be recog- for organ (1866), Saint-Saëns introduces the sec- nized as anything else, when it is integrated within ond Breton theme by imitating in his choice of reg- the larger context of Mozart’s music, or it is ar- istration the Breton bagpipe (biniou), as well as its ranged in a specifically Mozartean fashion. drones. This sets the audience in a pastoral mood that, hopefully, evokes Brittany. The composer Let’s look at a different example. If, in one of his then gradually brings in a thicker registration, over- pieces, Saint-Saëns quotes a Spanish song he cop- laps themes (exhibiting un-pastoral counterpoint), ied from an anthology, this song has little connec- and introduces increasingly chromatic harmonies. tion to Saint-Saëns, until he modifies something As the texture becomes progressively more com- about it, by, for instance, providing a typically plex, the piece first obtains a grander, more reli- Saint-Saëns-like arrangement. Yet, were Saint- gious affect until, at its climax, its effect is sym- Saëns to quote a popular Parisian tune, he could phonic. The progression from the simple pastoral claim more of a degree of ownership, even though to the massive and complex texture is never jarring. he didn’t compose it, because he is himself a Paris- When the Breton theme returns at the end of the ian. At the same time, if Saint-Saëns travels to piece, after the climax, Saint-Saëns uses more sub- Egypt, hears a song and notates it, to what extent dued timbres that no longer evoke the bagpipe. does it become his song? Having traveled to find it, We get the sense here that the melody has been notated it, and traveled back to share it with his not only adopted, but also pacified; the intention French audience, it has, in some respects become here being to raise the status of this provincial peasant’s music (which, while French, belonged to 1 “While on holiday in Austria [Saint-Saëns] dashed off Le carnaval a part of the country that cultivated a distinct lan- des animaux in a few days (he forbade performances of the ex- guage and culture). The Parisian composer alters it travaganza, apart from ‘Le cygne’, during his lifetime, with an eye to his reputation).” Sabina Teller Ratner et al., “Saint-Saëns,” in by endowing it with the aura of his craft (counter- Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2 May 2008), point, chromaticism), and that of the church (with <http://www.grovemusic.com>. the organ and its space), to glorify what would oth- 2 Ralph Locke uses the words “Other” (with a capital) and “other- erwise be an unassuming found object. izing” (the composer making the music sound “Other”) similarly. Ralf P. Locke, “Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 104-ff. 2 The word “rhapsody” indicates a threading to- songs collected and transcribed by gether of disparate elements. In the late 19th centu- P. Lacome and J.

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