Saint-Saëns, the prodigy Berlioz said knew everything but lacked inexperience
Before turning three, Camille Saint-Saëns had perfect pitch and was picking out tunes on the piano. One critic later ranked him an even more remarkable child prodigy than Mozart. Yet the composer of Danse macabre and The Carnival of the Animals spent his life dogged by the charge of being more skilled than inspired.
He was born in Paris on 9 October 1835, and his father, a government official, died of tuberculosis weeks after the christening. Raised by his mother and a great-aunt who taught him the basics, he began lessons at seven with Camille-Marie Stamaty, who made pupils rest their forearms on a bar so that all power came from hands and fingers. His mother held back public exposure, so the official debut, at the Salle Pleyel, came at ten. Another teacher gave him a lifelong love of Bach, then little played in France. At school he also shone at Latin, Greek and mathematics, and remained a keen amateur astronomer.
Entering the Paris Conservatoire at 13, he took the top organ prize in 1851. After graduating he became organist of Saint-Merri, whose parish of 26,000 generated enough wedding and funeral fees to keep him comfortable. In 1858 he moved to La Madeleine, official church of the Empire, where Liszt heard him and called him the greatest organist in the world. Rossini, Berlioz and the singer Pauline Viardot also backed him early.
His only teaching job, at the École Niedermeyer from 1861, lasted under five years but shaped French music. He shocked colleagues by playing Schumann, Liszt and Wagner to students, among them Gabriel Fauré, who later taught Ravel. For those pupils he first sketched The Carnival of the Animals, finishing it only in 1886. He admired Wagner yet insisted he would never join the Wagnerian religion.
Twice he failed to win the Prix de Rome. In 1864 Berlioz, a judge, voted for a student with inner fire instead, quipping that Saint-Saëns knew everything but lacked inexperience. The composer himself argued that art aims at beauty and character, with feeling coming second. Later generations sometimes called him a reactionary. He died on 16 December 1921.
Source: Camille Saint-Saëns
