Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a French
composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the
Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction
and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto
(1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre
(1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third
Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony
(1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).
Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, making his concert
debut at ...(+)
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a French
composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the
Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction
and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto
(1868), the First Cello Concerto (1872), Danse macabre
(1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third
Violin Concerto (1880), the Third ("Organ") Symphony
(1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).
Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, making his concert
debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris
Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a
church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from
1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French
Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he
was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in
demand in France, mainland Europe, Britain, and the
Americas.
In 1904, the Aeolian Organ Company added bells to his
beloved church Organ. It was a relatively new addition
to the stoplist (it did not receive a Harp Stop untin
1909). The chimes must have delighted Saëns. They were
tubular bells, exactly like orchestral bells, struck by
electric-actuated hammers. The opportunity to include
chimes in an organ work would have been particularly
irresistable to Saëns who had a positive mania for
bells. He wrote two bell-inspired songs at age 17: "La
Cloche" in 1855 and "Les Cloches de la Mer" in
1900.
The lyrics read (English):
Alone in your dark tower, with its crenulated
pinnacles
from which your breath descends upon the shaken
roofs,
o bell, hung amid the clouds,
so often disturbed by your vast rolling,
just now you are asleep in the shadow, and nothing
shines
beneath your deep vault in which the sound sleeps.
Oh! whilst a spirit which leaps up to you
gazes on your silence, likewise silent,
do you by that instinct, vague and full of kindness
which reveals one sister to another, feel
that, at this hour when the dying evening falls
asleep,
a soul is close to you, no less vibrant than you,
who very often also utters a solemn sound
and laments in love like yourself in the sky!
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Saint-Sa%C3%ABns
).
Although originally composed for Organ, I created this
modern interpretation for Oboe, Strings (2 Violins,
Viola & Cell) & optional Tubular Bells.
SHEET MUSIC