Speaking of composers, and listening to classical music...

Further to my post on Saturday which included a link to a recording of Camille Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony No 3 finale:  I didn't know a thing about this composer, and didn't realise he was responsible for the famous Danse macabre, or The Carnival of Animals, which I am sure I have seen performed as well.  (I therefore presumably have seen his name on programs, but just never been curious to find out anything about him.)

Wikipedia has a long entry on his life, and I see that he was not just a musical child prodigy (as famous composers often seem to be), but he was interested in everything:

As a schoolboy Saint-Saëns was outstanding in many subjects. In addition to his musical prowess, he distinguished himself in the study of French literature, Latin and Greek, divinity, and mathematics. His interests included philosophy, archaeology and astronomy, of which, particularly the last, he remained a talented amateur in later life.

But as so often is the case when reading about famous people in the 19th century, illness and misfortune in their personal life was never far away:

Less than two months after [Camille's] christening, [his father] Victor Saint-Saëns died of consumption on the first anniversary of his marriage.^[11] The young Camille was taken to the country for the sake of his health, and for two years lived with a nurse at Corbeil, 29 kilometres (18 mi) to the south of Paris....

Throughout the 1860s and early 1870s, Saint-Saëns had continued to live a bachelor existence, sharing a large fourth-floor flat in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with his mother. In 1875, he surprised many by marrying.^{[6][n 10]} The groom was approaching forty and his bride was nineteen; she was Marie-Laure Truffot, the sister of one of the composer's pupils.^[58] The marriage was not a success. In the words of the biographer Sabina Teller Ratner, "Saint-Saëns's mother disapproved, and her son was difficult to live with".^[5] Saint-Saëns and his wife moved to the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, in the Latin Quarter; his mother moved with them.^[59] The couple had two sons, both of whom died in infancy. In 1878, the elder, André, aged two, fell from a window of the flat and was killed;^[60] the younger, Jean-François, died of pneumonia six weeks later, aged six months. Saint-Saëns and Marie-Laure continued to live together for three years, but he blamed her for André's accident; the double blow of their loss effectively destroyed the marriage.^[6]...

Saint-Saëns was elected to the Institut de France in 1881, at his second attempt, having to his chagrin been beaten by Massenet in 1878.^[73] In July of that year he and his wife went to the Auvergnat spa town of La Bourboule for a holiday. On 28 July he disappeared from their hotel, and a few days later his wife received a letter from him to say that he would not be returning. They never saw each other again. Marie Saint-Saëns returned to her family, and lived until 1950, dying near Bordeaux at the age of ninety-five.^[74] Saint-Saëns did not divorce his wife and remarry, nor did he form any later intimate relationship with a woman. Rees comments that although there is no firm evidence, some biographers believe that Saint-Saëns was more attracted to his own sex than to women.^{[75][n 10]}

Elsewhere it notes:

 Saint-Saëns was a keen traveller. From the 1870s until the end of his life he made 179 trips to 27 countries. His professional engagements took him most often to Germany and England; for holidays, and to avoid Parisian winters which affected his weak chest, he favoured Algiers and various places in Egypt.^[72]

Hmm...Algiers was at the time popular for the homosexual male tourist - Oscar Wilde and his boyfriend used to visit there - so I would assume that this might be a reason for suspicions about Camille too.


Anyhow, I wanted to note something about listening to orchestral music that I have realised after seeing that piece live on Saturday, and then listening to it at home using earphones on a mobile phone.   The earphone experience has a lot going for it.   I mean, with pop music I sometimes find it initially distracting that a vocal track is happening (so to speak) in the centre of my skull.   But if you like an orchestral piece, the immersive sense of being in the middle of it that earphones/headphones give can be pretty impressive.   Or maybe I am just liking hiking up the volume? 

Go on, put on your earphones and listen to that blast of organ at the start, and at a least a few  minutes more, and tell me I'm not right..:)