Camille Saint-Saëns – Sheet Music & Scores

“I like good company, but I like hard work still better.” Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

Saint-Saëns was an inexhaustible French pianist, organist and composer, responsible for the infamous The Carnival of Animals. Browse our sheet music and scores, and have a carnival with Camille today!

His Life

Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October the 9th, 1835, and since his father died a few months later, he was raised by his mother and his great-aunt, who was a pianist. Camille’s musical talents were clear from an early age, he took his first piano lessons with his great aunt, and he fell in love with the organ at the very first note. With composition, he also started young, and was only 15 years old when he completed his first symphony (Symphony in A major), which is now very rarely performed.

After completing his studies in piano, organ and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, he first worked as an organist, but he gave up his position in 1877, to pursue his love of composition.

As he became increasingly famous, he took more trips within Europe, and to America, as well as to Africa, and it was on this final trip that he died on December 16, 1921 in Algiers, at the age of 86.

His Work

Only a few pieces from Camille Saint-Saëns’ great work have made it into the modern concert and stage repertoire. About half of his work is made up of virtually forgotten vocal pieces, such as cantatas, songs with piano, and choral works. However, The Christmas Oratorio and his opera Samson and Dalilah are extremely popular today.

Among his instrumental works, the Piano Concertos by Saint-Saëns and the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto are regularly featured in the modern concert repertoire. The Saint-Saëns Piano Works and the Organ Works by Saint-Saëns, which cover all difficulty levels, are often used by musicians as part of their professional training and development. A work of note is the Symphony No.3 by Saint-Saëns. In this ’organ symphony’, the composer uses the ’queen of instruments’ to create a special timbre within the orchestra.

One of the most famous works by Camille Saint-Saëns is the The Carnival of Animals, with which he enjoyed great success, just a few years before his death.

Reception

At first, Saint-Saëns’ musical ideas were regarded as ’revolutionary’, and were initially very successful abroad, before gaining popularity at home. It was not, however, until the late 1880s, that he was considered an established force within the classic music world. At the turn of the century, a new musical avant-garde arrived, with Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky, and Saint-Saëns was increasingly over-looked, and his fame dwindled, as his music was now widely considered ’old-fashioned’.

Throughout his life, Saint-Saëns was an advocate for French traditional and national music, and along with César Franck, he was co-founder of the ’Société Nationale de Musique’, which offered young French composers a pathway into the music world. He also spend his life fighting against the German influence on French music, especially that of Richard Wagner and Arnold Schönberg.

Some more Saint-Saëns suggestions

• Piano Works by Saint-Saëns
• Organ Works by Saint-Saëns
• Choral Music by Saint-Saëns
• Sonatas by Saint-Saëns
• Symphonies by Saint-Saëns
• Samson and Dalilah by Saint-Saëns
• Requiem by Saint-Saëns
• The Christmas Oratorio by Saint-Saëns
• Concertos by Saint-Saëns
• The Carnival of Animals by Saint-Saëns