Book Review
Saint-Saëns:
A Critical Biography
Nineteenth Century
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Saint-Saëns: A Critical Biography. By Stephen Studd. London: Cygnus Arts, 1999. [x, 356 p. ISBN 1-900541-65-3. $49.50.]
Camille Saint-Saëns was arguably the most famous and influential composer in France at the turn of the last century, a fact that might surprise many who know little of his music and even less about his life and work. Like his near contemporaries Gabriel Fauré and Vincent d'Indy, Saint-Saëns suffered profound neglect for most of the twentieth century, his achievements and stature diminished as a result of the fierce polemical debates that dominated French musical life during the decades immediately before and after the First World War. The dust cast up by these rhetorical battles has seriously distorted our image of late-nineteenth-century French music history, and it is only in recent years that scholars have begun to take a fresh look at the personalities, institutions, and events that shaped this important era.
Stephen Studd has contributed to this reassessment with his new biography of Saint-Saëns, the first to appear in English since the 1920s (if one discounts James Harding's Saint-Saëns and His Circle [London: Chapman & Hall, 1965], which, as the title implies, is not exclusively devoted to the composer). For his material, Studd draws heavily on previous biographical accounts (most written by friends and acquaintances in the years immediately after the composer's death), other secondary sources, and Saint-Saëns's own published reminiscences and essays. Although the important primary materials housed at the Saint-Saëns Museum in Dieppe have been inaccessible for some time, Studd was able to examine the large collection of Saint-Saëns's letters to Auguste Durand housed in the Bibliothèque Gustav Mahler in Paris, as well as the somewhat smaller collection found at the Bibliothèque nationale. (Included with the text are a short selection of Saint-Saëns's essays and poems, a worklist, and a selected discography that includes both current and historical recordings.)
The result is a skillfully written, engaging synthesis that provides an interesting, if somewhat flawed, introduction for the general reader and an occasional nugget for the specialist interested in new primary material. The author, a journalist and amateur pianist, deftly integrates discussion of Saint-Saëns's music into his recounting of biographical events, and while his commentary is short of technical detail (there are no music examples), it is both perceptive and elegant, whetting one's appetite for further study of many of the works under consideration.
There are problems, however, of both style and substance. While citations are numerous, there is an occasional quotation, reference, or direct observation for which no source is provided. For example, Studd informs us that "the critic Emile Destranges thought [Proserpine] his best stage work since Samson and wrote a detailed analysis of its merits" (p. 163), yet no citation is given, and we are left to wonder just where this detailed analysis can be found. We are told that when Déjanire was premiered in Béziers in 1898, the sound was "reinforced by the preponderance of wind instruments over strings, but any heaviness in the scoring was, by chance or calculation, counterbalanced [End Page 140] by the open air setting" (p. 213). Did the author find this observation in a review of the concert? In an earlier biography? Again, we are left to wonder.
In too many cases, the reader is referred not to the primary source of a quotation but to one of the earlier biographies. This is perhaps understandable when the primary source is one of the composer's countless letters, many of which are currently unavailable for study, but less forgivable (at least from the standpoint of an interested scholar) when the reference is to an article or review in the French musical press. Admittedly, attempts to trace some of these print sources would have proven fruitless, but many, especially reviews of specific concerts, should have been fairly easy to locate, and their identification would have provided a useful service for scholars.
On a more mundane level, I wish that the author had not habitually translated the names of many of the important French musical institutions mentioned so frequently. Is it really necessary to refer to the Société nationale de musique as the "National Music Society," or the Société des concerts du Conservatoire as the "Conservatoire Concerts Society"? (The latter is exceedingly awkward.) The reader will encounter the French names in almost any other book on the period, and in any case, Studd is not consistent, as the original French is retained in references to Jules Pasdeloup's Concerts populaires, Edouard Colonne's Concerts nationals, and Charles Lamoureux's Nouveaux concerts.
There are mistakes of fact and perception, some of which reveal gaps in the author's knowledge of late-nineteenth- century French musical life. For example, the "avowed aim" of the Concerts populaires was not "to introduce new works" (p. 54), and the prestigious chamber-music organization La Trompette (another name, incidentally, that is not translated) was not "devoted to the cultivation and practice of the trumpet" (p. 138). Like so many other commentators, Studd has overestimated the impact of the Société nationale on Parisian concert life, stating that the presence of Saint-Saëns's Cello Concerto in A Minor on an 1873 program of the Société des concerts "shows the influence which the National Music Society was beginning to exert" (p. 92). More troubling, he characterizes the organization and its founders as being anti-German, arguing that Saint-Saëns viewed the Société nationale as "a stick with which to beat what he saw as the continuing German influence on French musical life" (p. 93). Studd places too much weight on the personal disappointment Saint-Saëns felt over Richard Wagner's publication of Ein Kapitulation, and he supposes that the composer's later anti-German sentiments can be traced to the period immediately after the Franco-Prussian War.
A close reading of Saint-Saëns's writings from the 1870s (relatively few of which are contained in the collections of essays examined by Studd) reveals a far different picture. Throughout the decade, he used his prominence and eloquence to champion forcefully the cause of "serious" music--including German music--defending both Wagner and his French admirers from the scathing attacks of conservative critics. He was certainly troubled by the dogmatic fervor of many Wagnerians and refused to count himself among their number, but he believed that the bigger danger was posed by those who would deny the force of Wagner's ideas, especially if their disapproval had more to do with nationalist sentiment than musical taste.
Against this background, Saint-Saëns's later conflicts with the Wagnerians can be viewed in a different, and more interesting, light. His primary concern throughout the Wagner wars of the 1870s and 1880s was for the free expression of artistic ideas, and he consistently resisted any force he saw as threatening this principle, whether it be conservatives in the 1870s or Wagnerians in the 1880s. The hardening of his anti-German stance in later years seems even more poignant when one understands this, as it represents a repudiation not so much of previously held stylistic preferences, but of his deeply felt artistic ideals.
Studd's failure to grasp (or at least to emphasize) this aspect of Saint-Saëns's story does not diminish his achievement in other areas. His drawing together of anecdotes and observations from so many diverse sources certainly paints a more complete picture of the composer's life and personality. (He argues forcefully against the notion that Saint-Saëns was homosexual, [End Page 141] for example, and introduces enough evidence to give pause to those who would dismiss his conclusions out of hand.) Although the discussion of musical issues might have benefited from a different organizational approach, Studd's perceptive comments on the development of the composer's style provide a foundation for those who wish to explore the works in more depth. In sum, this is not the comprehensive biography that is needed for a proper reassessment of Saint-Saëns's life and achievements--it relies too much on previous work to warrant such accolades--but it provides a good starting point for further investigation.
Michael Strasser
Baldwin-Wallace College |
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