Saint-Saens, Camille - "Valse Nonchalante" for String Quartet Opus 110 Quatuor à cordes |
Compositeur : | Saint-Saens, Camille (1835 - 1921) | ||||
Instrumentation : | Quatuor à cordes | ||||
Genre : | Romantique | ||||
Arrangeur : Editeur : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||||
Date : | 1898 | ||||
Droit d'auteur : | Public Domain | ||||
Ajoutée par magataganm, 20 Mai 2019 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). Partition centrale : | Valse nonchalante en ré bémol majeur (3 partitions) | |