Camille Saint-Saëns was something of an anomaly among
French composers of the nineteenth century in that he
wrote in virtually all genres, including opera,
symphonies, concertos, songs, sacred and secular choral
music, solo piano, and chamber music. He was generally
not a pioneer, though he did help to revive some
earlier and largely forgotten dance forms, like the
bourée and gavotte. He was a conservative who wrote
many popular scores scattered throughout the various
genres: the Piano Concert...(+)
Camille Saint-Saëns was something of an anomaly among
French composers of the nineteenth century in that he
wrote in virtually all genres, including opera,
symphonies, concertos, songs, sacred and secular choral
music, solo piano, and chamber music. He was generally
not a pioneer, though he did help to revive some
earlier and largely forgotten dance forms, like the
bourée and gavotte. He was a conservative who wrote
many popular scores scattered throughout the various
genres: the Piano Concerto No. 2, Symphony No. 3
("Organ"), the symphonic poem Danse macabre, the opera
Samson et Dalila, and probably his most widely
performed work, The Carnival of The Animals. While he
remained a composer closely tied to tradition and
traditional forms in his later years, he did develop a
more arid style, less colorful and, in the end, less
appealing. He was also a poet and playwright of some
distinction.
Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835. He
was one of the most precocious musicians ever,
beginning piano lessons with his aunt at two-and-a-half
and composing his first work at three. At age seven he
studied composition with Pierre Maledin. When he was
ten, he gave a concert that included Beethoven's Third
Piano Concerto, Mozart's B flat Concerto, K. 460, along
with works by Bach, Handel, and Hummel. In his academic
studies, he displayed the same genius, learning
languages and advanced mathematics with ease and
celerity. He would also develop keen, lifelong
interests in geology and astronomy.
Curiously, after 1890, Saint-Saëns' music was regarded
with some condescension in his homeland, while in
England and the United States he was hailed as France's
greatest living composer well into the twentieth
century. Saint-Saëns experienced an especially
triumphant concert tour when he visited the U.S. in
1915. In the last two decades of his life, he remained
attached to his dogs and was largely a loner. He died
in Algeria on December 16, 1921.
Saint-Saëns was writing waltzes even before his hands
were big enough to play them. Among his published
works, however, there are only seven piano waltzes,
beginning with the Menuet et Valse in 1872 and ending
with four examples so attractively varied—Valse
mignonne, Valse nonchalante, Valse langoureuse and
Valse gaie—that, although they were written and
published separately over a period of sixteen years,
they could have been intended as an informal kind of
series.
The composer’s own favourite seems to have been Valse
nonchalante, which he orchestrated in 1913 for a
ballerina called Napierkowska. ‘She’s not a Russian
dancer’, he explained, ‘she’s a Parisienne with a
Polish grandfather. She has great talent and amazing
suppleness.’ Dancing the Valse nonchalante—with its
relaxed tempo and seductive melodic style reminiscent
of the Parisian café-concert waltz, its fluid D flat
major harmonies and its echoes of Chopin in the more
agitated sections.
Source: Allmusic
(http://www.allmusic.com/artist/camille-saint-sa%C3%ABn
s-mn0000688311/biography).
Although originally composed for piano, I created this
interpretation of the "Valse Nonchalante" in Db Major
(Op. 110) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola &
Cello).