Roll over, Beethoven! Camille Saint-Saëns died one hundred years ago today, and he’s telling Tchaikovsky the news!

One of classical music’s most astonishing enfants prodiges, Saint-Saëns composed his first piece before he was three-and-a-half years old. He made his public debut as an accompanist at the age of five. At ten, he performed his first solo recital – at the conclusion of which, he offered to play as an encore any of the Beethoven piano sonatas, from memory. He won top prizes, wrote his first symphony at 16, and was introduced to Franz Liszt, who would become a close friend.

Hector Berlioz quipped of the teen-aged composer, “He knows everything, but lacks inexperience.”

Saint-Saëns began as a musical radical, assimilating the influences of Liszt and Wagner and introducing their works to a France steeped in Bach and Mozart. However, he lived a very long life (86 years). By his final decades, he wound up an arch-conservative, railing against the musical crimes of Debussy and Richard Strauss.

When he began his career, in the 1840s, Chopin and Mendelssohn were in their prime. By the time of his death, Paris had entered the Roaring ‘20s – the Jazz Age. He died in 1921, eight years after the debut of “The Rite of Spring,” when composers like Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud were just beginning to make their mark.

He was said by Liszt to have been unequalled as a performer on the organ. He is also credited with having written the first original film score (for “The Assassination of the Duke of Guise,” in 1908).

Though stunningly prolific, Saint-Saëns is basically remembered for one masterpiece in just about every genre: the Symphony No. 3, the Piano Concerto No.2, the Violin Concerto No. 3, the Cello Concerto No. 1, the opera “Samson and Delilah.” Yet above all, perhaps, is he known for “The Carnival of the Animals,” a work brimful of charm and wit, yet one the composer deliberately tried to suppress, perhaps fearing what history has eventually borne out: his being perceived as a lightweight, less-than-wholly-serious composer.

Poor Saint-Saëns. Seemingly destined always to be France’s Mendelssohn.

But for today, we salute you!

Saint-Saëns composed his “Christmas Oratorio” in less than two weeks. It was completed ten days before the work’s premiere on Christmas Day, 1858. The composer was 23 years-old.

For Ludwig Van’s birthday, “Variations on a Theme of Beethoven” (1874)

“The Carnival of the Animals” (1886), performed by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra, with fun images of all the critters. “The Swan” has the most famous music, but “Aquarium” can’t be far behind. Also, listen for a reeeeeeally slowed-down version of Offenbach’s “Can-Can,” the most incongruously frenetic music Saint-Saëns could think of, to characterize “Tortoises,” ponderous “fairy” music for “Elephants,” and a sly “meta” moment, a quotation from the composer’s own “Danse Macabre,” in “Fossils.” Each section is linked below the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L993HNAa8M

A piano roll of Saint-Saëns playing Beethoven in 1905

PHOTO: Saint-Saëns spends the day in his pajamas