24 min listen
Music History Monday: The Parrot
ratings:
Length:
18 minutes
Released:
Oct 9, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
We mark the birth on October 9, 1835 – 188 years ago today – of Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, in Paris. He died in that magnificent city on Beethoven’s 151st birthday – on December 16, 1921 – at the age of 86. The Nose Physically, the adult Camille Saint-Saëns was – literally – an odd bird. The music critic Pierre Lalo has left us with this description: “He was short and strangely resembled a parrot: the same sharply curved profile; a beak-like, hooked nose; [with] lively, restless, piercing eyes. He strutted like a bird and talked rapidly, precipitously, with a curiously affected lisp.” In fact, Saint-Saens was as famous for his nose as Beethoven was for his hair. When he concertized in the United States during the 1906-1907 season, Philip Hale wrote in the Boston Symphony program book: “His eyes are almost level with his nose. His eagle-beak would have excited the admiration of Sir Charles Napier, who once exclaimed, ‘Give me a man with plenty of nose!’” Please: heaven forbid I should be accused of nasal-shaming here; we should just know about Saint-Saëns second most distinguishing feature before we move on. His principal distinguishing feature was his prodigious genius, a genius […]
The post Music History Monday: The Parrot first appeared on Robert Greenberg.
The post Music History Monday: The Parrot first appeared on Robert Greenberg.
Released:
Oct 9, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Music History Monday: Ludwig van Beethoven and the Legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach: We mark the birth on March 21, 1685, of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Thuringian town of Eisenach, in what today is central Germany. He died 65 years later, on July 28, 1750, in the Saxon city of Leipzig. by Music History Monday