These are bios of artists, composers, authors, etc. written for schoolteachers to use in arts education for children.
They are short, a page or so, and are intended to guide a classroom discussion in tandem with the study of the person's work. Educators have complimented my skill at constructing a narrative for an artist, and also my ability to find something humorous in every life.
Some lives are funnier than others, but I find the idea of Saint-Saëns and Debussy going at each other to be extremely amusing.
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Camille Saint-Saëns
(9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921)
Camille Saint-Saëns, like Mozart before him, was a child prodigy, a brilliant musician at an age when most children are just beginning their schooling. His father having died when he was three months old, his great-aunt, a piano teacher, moved in with he and his mother to help raise him.
Saint-Saëns wrote his first composition at age four, and gave his first concert (of Beethoven’s work) at age five. He spoke Latin by seven, was a mathematical genius, and a student of astronomy and lepidoptery as well. His first symphony premiered when he was sixteen years old, and astonished critics at the time, some of whom were already declaring him one of the most skilled and talented musicians of the age. Saint-Saëns went on to study with, and to teach, some of the most influential French musicians and composers, and famously feuded with many of his contemporaries, most notably Debussy, who disliked him intensely, and called his music a “horror of sentimentality.”
A product of his times, Saint-Saëns was criticized at the beginning of his career for being too radical and progressive (which led to him being virtually drummed out of the opera business) and at the end of his career as being too attached to old forms, and unable to keep up with the musical times. As a teacher of music at Ecole Niedermeyer in the early 1860s, Saint-Saëns created a scandal by using modern music along with the classics, but his teaching produced some of France’s great composers, including Andre Messager and Gabriel Faure. His friendship with Franz Liszt lasted a lifetime, and is said to have influenced the music of both composers. During his heyday, as both a famous performance organist and a composer, he helped create a new age in French music, including the popularization of the epic form of symphonic poetry. His legendary weekly organ performances at famous cathedrals (including twenty years at the L'église de la Madeleine) included unique improvisations, which are the core of the Jazz-age music that was just being invented in his later years.
In 1886, not long after both of his sons died within six weeks of each other, Saint-Saëns wrote Le carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals), his most famous piece, and one which is still used today to teach music to students all over the world. In a strange twist, he never allowed the piece to be performed in his lifetime, except one small fragment (Le cygne), but allowed it to be published only after his death. Friends of the great composer reported that, stung by early criticism of his daring compositions, he feared the piece was too frivolous, and would damage his reputation as a serious composer. It was also during this period that he composed Danse Macabre, perhaps his most influential piece for musicians that came after him.
Camille Saint-Saëns died in 1921, having traveled the world to perform his music, and written numerous popular books about his travels. He has a street in Paris named after him, and is remembered as one of the most gifted and passionate musicians in French history.
(Click to enlarge)
(This image is the cover for this bio and its attendant lesson plan. The organization's name has been cropped out, as this was a ghostwriting job, and while I have permission to reprint the bio and the image, I do not have permission to publicize which organization hired me to do the work.)