Musical Memories

Musical Memories

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Musical Memories, by Camille
Saint-Saëns This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
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Title: Musical Memories
Author: Camille Saint-Saëns
Translator: Edwin Gile Rich
Release Date: August 7, 2005 [EBook #16459]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUSICAL
MEMORIES ***

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[Illustration: The Master, Camille Saint-Saëns]

MUSICAL MEMORIES
BY CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS

TRANSLATED BY EDWIN GILE RICH Translator of Lafond's "Ma
Mitrailleuse," etc.
[Illustration: (A publisher's seal, inscribed "SCIRE QVOD
SCIENDVM".)]
BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

1919, BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD
II THE OLD CONSERVATOIRE
III VICTOR HUGO
IV THE HISTORY OF AN OPÉRA-COMIQUE
V LOUIS GALLET
VI HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY IN OPERA
VII ART FOR ART'S SAKE
VIII POPULAR SCIENCE AND ART
IX ANARCHY IN MUSIC
X THE ORGAN

XI JOSEPH HAYDN AND THE "SEVEN WORDS"
XII THE LISZT CENTENARY AT HEIDELBERG (1912)
XIII BERLIOZ'S REQUIEM
XIV PAULINE VIARDOT
XV ORPHEE
XVI DELSARTE
XVII SEGHERS
XVIII ROSSINI
XIX JULES MASSENET
XX MEYERBEER
XXI JACQUES OFFENBACH
XXII THEIR MAJESTIES
XXIII MUSICAL PAINTERS

ILLUSTRATIONS
The Master, Camille Saint-Saëns
The Paris Opéra
The First Performance of _Déjanire_
M. Saint-Saëns in his Later Years
The Madeleine where M. Saint-Saëns played the organ for twenty years

Hector Berlioz
Mme. Pauline Viardot
Mme. Patti
M. Jules Massenet
Meyerbeer, Composer of Les Huguenots Jacques Offenbach
Ingres, the painter famous for his violin

MUSICAL MEMORIES

MUSICAL MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD
In bygone days I was often told that I had two mothers, and, as a matter
of fact, I did have two--the mother who gave me life and my maternal
great-aunt, Charlotte Masson. The latter came from an old family of
lawyers named Gayard and this relationship makes me a descendant of
General Delcambre, one of the heroes of the retreat from Russia. His
granddaughter married Count Durrieu of the _Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_. My great-aunt was born in the provinces
in 1781, but she was adopted by a childless aunt and uncle who made
their home in Paris. He was a wealthy lawyer and they lived
magnificently.
My great-aunt was a precocious child--she walked at nine months--and
she became a woman of keen intellect and brilliant attainments. She
remembered perfectly the customs of the _Ancien Régime_, and she
enjoyed telling about them, as well as about the Revolution, the Reign

of Terror, and the times that followed. Her family was ruined by the
Revolution and the slight, frail, young girl undertook to earn her living
by giving lessons in French, on the pianoforte--the instrument was a
novelty then--in singing, painting, embroidery, in fact in everything she
knew and in much that she did not. If she did not know, she learned
then and there so that she could teach. Afterwards, she married one of
her cousins. As she had no children of her own, she brought one of her
nieces from Champagne and adopted her. This niece was my mother,
Clemence Collin. The Massons were about to retire from business with
a comfortable fortune, when they lost practically everything within two
weeks, in a panic, saving just enough to live decently. Shortly after this
my mother married my father, a minor official in the Department of the
Interior. My great-uncle died of a broken heart some months before my
birth on October 9, 1835. My father died of consumption on the
thirty-first of the following December, just a year to a day after his
marriage.
Thus the two women were both left widows, poorly provided for,
weighed down by sad memories, and with the care of a delicate child.
In fact I was so delicate that the doctors held out little hope of my
living, and on their advice I was left in the country with my nurse until
I was two years old.
While my aunt had had a remarkable education, my mother had not
been so widely taught. But she made up for any lack by the display of
an imagination and an eager power of assimilation which bordered on
the miraculous. She often told me about an uncle who was very fond of
her--he had been ruined in the cause of Philippe Egalité. This uncle was
an artist, but he was, nevertheless, passionately fond of music. He had
even built with his own hands a concert organ on which he used to play.
My mother used to sit between his knees and, while he amused