United States or Tajikistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Schumann, Berlioz, Saint-Saens, in fact all the modern tone colorists who have given celestial pictures, use the harp in them, purely because of the association of ideas which come to us from the Scriptures, and this association of the harp with heaven and the angels, only came about because the instrument was the most developed possessed by man at the time the sacred book was written.
His piano paraphrases and transcriptions are poetic re-settings of tone-creations he had thoroughly assimilated and made his own. In his original works, which Saint-Saëns was perhaps the first to appreciate, students are now beginning to discover the ripe fruits of his genius.
With hardly an exception, all the great French musicians, like Berlioz and Saint-Saens to mention only the most recent have been hopelessly muddled, self-destructive, and forsworn, for want of energy, want of faith, and, above all, for want of an inward guide.
In the case of the piano, men like Godowsky have created a new technic for their instrument; but although Saint-Saëns, Bruch, Lalo and others have in their works endowed the violin with much beautiful music, music itself was their first concern, and not music for the violin.
M. Saint-Saëns, who is considered the best living score-reader, compares Wagner's scores to those master-works of mediæval architecture which are adorned with sculptured reliefs that must have required infinite care and labor in the chiselling.
The first Committee was made up as follows: President, Bussine; Vice-President, Saint-Saëns; Secretary, Alexis de Castillon; Under-Secretary, Jules Garcin; Treasurer, Lenepveu. The members of the Committee were: César Franck, Théodore Dubois, E. Guiraud, Fissot, Bourgault-Ducoudray, Fauré, and Lalo.
In gallant phrases the Frenchmen, Massenet and Saint-Saens, paid their respects to the greatest interpreter of the greatest of composers; Rafael could decipher what was in Italian, scenting the sweet perfume of Latin adulation despite the fact that he scarcely knew the language. A sonnet by Illica moved him actually to tears.
Indeed, in the case of one Saint-Saens we heard, as I have recounted, two massive compositions written expressly for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and John Philip Sousa has bent his most martial mood to the composition of an inspiring march which is called "Panama." But music also enjoys a privilege not accorded equally to any other department of Exposition display.
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," bring with them the pleasures of beautiful speech and honest thought; and we cannot but feel their charm.
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.
Word Of The Day