 | Saint-Saens, Camille - "Valse Gaie" for String Quartet Opus 139 String Quartet |
Vidéo :
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| Composer : | Saint-Saens, Camille (1835 - 1921) | ||||
| Instrumentation : | String Quartet | ||||
| Style : | Romantic | ||||
| Arranger : Publisher : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||||
| Date : | 1912 | ||||
| Copyright : | Public Domain | ||||
| Added by magataganm, 10 Jun 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. Like all composers born in the nineteenth century, Saint-Saëns yielded to the exhilaration of the waltz for piano: five unpublished waltzes from the 1840s, Menuet et Valse (1872), Étude en forme de valse op.52 no.6 (1877), the Valse from the Albumop.72 (1884), Valse canariote (1890), Valse mignonne (1896), Valse nonchalante (1898), Valse langoureuse (1903) and Valse gaie (1912). Saint-Saëns dedicated the Valse gaie to Émile Hoskier, consul general of Denmark in France and banker to the composer (who had taught Hoskier’s daughter’s the piano). On 11 November 1912 he announced to the publisher Durand: ‘I have started writing a little waltz to be dedicated to M. Hoskier, who has been asking me to do so for years.’ A week later, the piece was apparently finished: ‘Hoskier is rejoicing in the number of people who will envy him. Perhaps that isn’t very charitable of him, but it is very natural.’ On 16 January 1913 the dedicatee expressed his warm thanks to Saint-Saëns, adding: ‘It would seem that Durand has already sold piles of the piece, and all my friends talk to me about it. I don’t think I’ll ever manage to play it; I’m too old, my fingers aren’t much use any more, and then the composition is very difficult. Luckily, my daughter, your pupil, is staying with me; she plays it admirably, to perfection, with a lightness and finesse you cannot imagine.’ Mlle Hoskier must have been a pianist of the front rank to be able to perform this swirling waltz, bristling with difficulties (parallel thirds in a single hand, arpeggios, octaves, repeated notes), which Georges Servières admired for its elegance and the diversity of its ideas. 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 Gaie" in Bb Major (Op. 139) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello). Sheet central : | Valse gaie (2 sheet music) | | |||
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