Camille Saint-Saëns Information Page

Name	Camille Saint-Saëns
Occupation	Composer, organist, pianist
Birthdate	October 9, 1835
Birthplace	Jardinet, France
Obtained from	Brian Ress, Camille Saint_Saëns: A life, Chatto & Windus, 1999
Posted by	1- John L. Lunde
Comments	"He started composing at three and it was learned he had perfect pitch at two. His sight reading and memory are unequaled in the history of music. When he was ten as an encore he would let the audience choose any of the Beethoven sonatas and he would play it FROM MEMORY! Music is not the only thing he excelled in. Just about everything... Math, Poetry, History, English. He wrote books and was a music critic. Was a famed organist and probably the greatest pianist that ever lived despite people's lack of truth. He stunned Wagner and Hans von Bülow with his sight reading of orchestral scores of Lohengrin, Tristan and Siegfried. Von Bülow commented: 'I too can play from score, but neither I nor any living man could have performed that feat [sight-reading the incomplete Siegfried manuscript] after Saint-Saëns. He is the greatest musical mind of our time.' Debussy commented: 'He knows more about music than anybody in the world.' Berlioz said: 'He knows everything but lacks inexperience.'" [1]