Septet by Saint-Saëns

Synopsis

Émile Lemoine was a French mathematician and passionate amateur musician who, in 1861, founded a members-only chamber music society he called “La Trompette,” or “The Trumpet,” a society that soon included some of the most famous musicians in Paris, including composer Camille Saint-Saëns. For years Lemoine begged Saint-Saëns to compose a chamber work for his society, asking only, not surprisingly, that it feature the trumpet.

Saint-Saëns eventually fulfilled Lemoine’s wish, composing a Septet for the unusual combination of trumpet, two violins, viola, cello, double bass, and piano, a work influenced somewhat by his love of 17th century French music and dances.

The Septet was successfully premiered at a La Trompette series concert on today’s date in 1880 and published the next year. Some consider it a minor masterpiece for its skillful writing, musical humor, and effective balancing of the unusual instrumental forces.

Of all his works, it was the septet that Saint-Saëns reportedly liked the most, even though he once confessed to Lemoine, “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 am at loss to explain it.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Préambule from Septet; Trio a Cordes Francais; EMI 47543

On This Day

Births

• 1812 - German composer, cellist and conductor Julius Rietz, in Berlin

• 1837 - American composer, conductor, pianist and organist B. J. Lang, in Salem, Massachusetts

• 1896 - American composer Roger Sessions, in Brooklyn

Deaths

• 1937 - French composer Maurice Ravel, 62, in Paris

• 1963 - German composer Paul Hindemith, 68, in Frankfurt

Premieres

• 1720 - Handel: opera Radamisto (second version), in London at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket, with the great Italian alto-castrato Senesino making his debut in one of Handel’s works (Gregorian date: Jan. 8, 1721)

• 1737 - Handel: anthem The Ways of Zion do Mourn (Julian date: Dec. 17)

• 1894 - Henry Holden Huss: Piano Concerto, by the Boston Symphony, Emil Paur conducting, and the composer as soloist

• 1925 - Gershwin: musical Tip-Toes, at the Liberty Theater in New York City. This show included the classic Gershwin songs “Sweet and Low Down,” “That Certain Feeling,” and “These Charming People.”

• 1930 - Cowell: Piano Concerto, in Havana, Cuba, by the Havana Philharmonic, with the composer at the piano

• 1944 - Bernstein: musical On the Town, in New York City at the Adelphi Theater. A trial run of this show had opened in Boston at the Colonial Theater on December 13, 1944. The 1944 Broadway production would run for 462 performances.

• 1944 - Miklós Rósza: Concerto for String Orchestra, in Los Angeles

• 1948 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 26, in Moscow

• 1952 - Shostakovich: 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano (part two of a two-part recital), in Leningrad, by pianist Tatyana Nikolayeva; See also Dec. 23

Others

• 1945 - Igor Stravinsky becomes an American citizen