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Vidéo :
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| Composer : | Saint-Saens, Camille (1835 - 1921) | ||||
| Instrumentation : | Septet | ||||
| Style : | Romantic | ||||
| Arranger : Publisher : | MAGATAGAN, MICHAEL (1960 - ) | ||||
| Date : | 1879-80 | ||||
| Copyright : | Public Domain | ||||
| Added by magataganm, 05 Oct 2019 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). As a young man, Saint-Saëns was enthusiastic for the most modern music of the day, particularly that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner, although his own compositions were generally within a conventional classical tradition. He was a scholar of musical history, and remained committed to the structures worked out by earlier French composers. This brought him into conflict in his later years with composers of the impressionist and dodecaphonic schools of music; although there were neoclassical elements in his music, foreshadowing works by Stravinsky and Les Six, he was often regarded as a reactionary in the decades around the time of his death. The Septet in E flat major Op 65, composed for the unusual combination of trumpet, two violins, viola, cello, double bass and piano, was written at the request of Émile Lemoine for his chamber music society which he whimsically entitled ‘La Trompette’. This society was founded in 1867 and Saint-Saëns regularly performed there along with other well known musicians of the time including Louis Diémer, Martin-Pierre Marsick, and Isidor Philipp. In this neoclassical work employing seventeenth-century dance forms, the two violins, viola and cello parts were often doubled in performance with an additional string quartet. To Lemoine, Saint-Saëns confessed in October 1907: ‘When I think how much you pestered me to make me produce, against my better judgment, this piece that I did not want to write and which has become one of my great successes, I never understood why.’ Lemoine had implored Saint-Saëns for many years to compose a work combining the trumpet with the instruments ordinarily available to the society. Jokingly he would respond that he could create a work for guitar and thirteen trombones. In 1879 he presented to Lemoine a piece entitled Préambule as a Christmas present and played it at their first concert in January 1880. Pleased with the result, he promised that he would complete the work with the Préambule as the first movement. True to his word he performed the complete composition for the first time on 28 December 1880 with himself at the piano, Sylvain Teste with the trumpet, the quartet – Martin-Pierre Marsick, Guillaume Rémy, Louis van Waefelghem and Jules Delsart, doubled with excellent effect by a second quartet of Émile Mendels, Austruy, Johannès Wolff and Louis Heggyesi – and the double bass played by Lucien Dereul. The four movements, labelled Préambule, Menuet, Intermède and Gavotte et Final, reveal the classical proclivity of the composer. However, the ingenious integration of the trumpet, namesake of this chamber music organization, with the string quintet and piano, is rare in musical literature. Note from Lemoine on the title page of the Saint-Saens manuscript: Here is the history of this song. For many years I had been bothering my friend St Saens, asking him to compose for me, for our Trumpet evenings, a serious work in which there was a trumpet mixed with the stringed instruments and the piano that we usually had; he joked me first about that weird combination of instruments that he would do before a piece for guitar and thirteen trombones etc. In 1879 he gave me (on December 29th), probably for my Christmas presents, a piece for trumpet, piano, quartet and double bass entitled Preamble and I had it played on January 6th, 1880, on our first evening. The test probably pleased Saint Saëns because he said to me while leaving: "You will have your complete piece, the Preamble will be the first movement." He kept his word and the complete septet (of which I give the autograph manuscript to the Conservatoire Library) was played for the first time on December 28, 1880 (the beginning of our evenings of the season). The artists were: M. Teste (trumpet) the author (piano); the quartet MM. Marsick, Rémy, van Waefelghem and Delsart doubled by a second quartet: MM. Mendels, Austruy, Wolff and Hegyesi, Double Bass M. Dereul. This septet can naturally be played with a single instrument for each part of the strings but it is (in the opinion of the author) best effect if the quartet is doubled! He is very handsome with the orchestra, so I heard him at the Colonne Concerts. E. Lemoine, Paris, April 2, 1894 Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Saint-Sa%C3%ABns ). Although originally scored for Trumpet, Strings & Piano, I created this Arrangement of the The Piano Septet in Eb Major (Opus 65) for French Horn, Strings (Violins, Violas, Cellos & Basses) & Piano. Sheet central : | Septet en mi bémol majeur (2 sheet music) | | |||
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