Saint-Saëns, presidente della Société des instruments anciens (original) (raw)

The Many Faces of Camille Saint-Saëns, Michael Stegemann (ed.), Brepols, Turnhout,, 2018

Abstract

In this article I propose a path of research that is entirely tangential to the long artistic and professional career of Camille Saint-Saens. It is useful, however, in providing a further element in that long phase of discovery and revaluation of ancient music that influenced not only the choices of our composer, but also that part of French musical life defending and strengthening the values of tradition, all in the name of the revanchist spirit that influenced transalpine culture at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The story began at the turn of the twentieth century and involved Samson's author as honorary president of the Société des instruments anciens: a small group founded in Paris in 1901 by Henri Casadesus. He had the eccentric habit of performing with old instruments a repertoire of unpublished pieces from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, written by composers (often little known) belonging to the most important European musical traditions. The declared intention of the Société was to «reconstituer fidèlement ]'ensemble des sonorités qu’employaient les compositeurs de l’epoque» through a repertoire of completely unknown pieces ‘discovered’ in unspecified French and foreign libraries. The members of the ensemble almost all belonged to the same family as the founder, but there was no lack of external participation — such as that of the young Alfredo Casella, hired as harpsichordist in the first decade of the 20th century. The vague indications in the programs about the unknown pieces performed by Société, and the absence of feedback in the musicological literature, have raised more than a few doubts about the true origin of this repertoire. The justification for Saint-Saens’ participation as a famous composer, working within such a dubious musical narrative, remains unknown.

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