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Musicians nowadays are no longer entirely absorbed in their notes, but let their minds go out to other interests. And it is not one of the least interesting phenomena of French music to-day that gives us these learned and thoughtful composers, who are conscious of what they create, and bring to their art a keen critical faculty, like that of M. Saint-Saëns, M. Dukas, or M. d'Indy.
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." "Saint-Saëns is not a pedant," wrote Gounod; "he has remained too much of a child and become too clever for that."
Although she had been in Paris and London and in New York, knew how to play Beethoven and Grieg and Saint-Saëns, had had gowns made by Paquin, and her portrait in the salon, she was at home in this glade as a Tahitian girl a hundred years ago.
It is part of a broad and versatile mastery that it is difficult to analyze. Thus it is not easy to find salient traits in the art of M. Saint-Saëns. We are apt to think mainly of the distinguished beauty of his harmonies, until we remember his subtle counterpoint, or in turn the brilliancy of his orchestration.
Saint-Saëns, Massenet, and Bizet, with Bemberg, Vidal and Duparc the song-writers, together with a little group of the younger school, d'Indy, Charpentier and their set, were gathered together to prepare a festival for Prince Gregoriev, showering on him attentions of every kind; and laboring tirelessly to convince him of their admiration and their "sympathetic appreciation."
The names of Camille Saint-Saëns, César Franck, Charles Bordes, and Vincent d'Indy, will remain associated before all others with this work of national regeneration, where so much talent and so much devotion, from the leaders of orchestras and celebrated composers down to that obscure body of artists and music-lovers, have joined forces in the fight against indifference and routine.
The two founders of the Society were Romaine Bussine, professor of Singing at the Conservatoire, and M. Camille Saint-Saëns.
It was these statutes, signed by Saint-Saëns, Castillon, and Garcin, that gave the Society its title of Société Nationale de Musique, and its device, "Ars gallica."
In those times one had really to be devoid of all common sense to write music." A new generation was growing up, however, a generation that was serious and thoughtful, that was more attracted by pure music than by the theatre, that was filled with a burning desire to found a national art. To this generation M. Saint-Saëns and M. Vincent d'Indy belong.
Everything that she liked best, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, and Wagner Siegfried's Death. Gyp, eyeing her chaperon's happy anticipation, indulged in a whispered regret. "Doesn't she look pretty to-night? If that horrible creature only hadn't been " The setting would have been so perfect for the dénouement. She sprawled back, resignedly, in her chair, smothering a yawn.
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