Camille SAINT-SAENS
Partition autographe signée et inédite proche des mélodies persanes
novembre 1870, 33,2x24,5cm, un bifeuillet.
Unpublished and signed autograph score by Camille Saint-Saëns. Two pages of handwritten music for solo voice and piano, on a bifolium with twenty staves. Autograph inscription on the first page signed by Saint-Saëns, with his signature and date
("Nov. 1870") appearing again on the second page.
Trace of vertical fold, with a tiny tear along the fold, a small marginal tear on 1 cm of the first page, without damage to the manuscript.
An exceptional unpublished autograph manuscript of a melody for voice and piano, closely related to his mélodies persanes, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns during the Siege of Paris in November 1870. Signed and inscribed by the composer: ‘A Geneviève Bréton / Hommage de respectueux dévouement' [To Geneviève Bréton / In homage with respectful devotion], signed and dated on the second page ‘Nov 1870 C. Saint Saëns'. The lyrics of the piece were directly inspired by its dedicatee, the fiancée of painter and tenor Henri Regnault, who was the first performer of several other Mélodies persanes and deemed ‘the most musical of all the painters' by the composer himself (Saint-Saëns, École buissonnière).
***
Geneviève Bréton, a cultured and passionate woman, was a fixture in the literary and artistic salons of her time and surrounded herself with composers, painters, and young Parnassian poets. Saint-Saëns likely met her through his friend, the
Prix de Rome-laureate orientalist painter Henri Regnault with whom she fell madly in love in Italy in 1867.
A handsome young man already celebrated for his art, Regnault also fascinated Saint-Saëns with his
‘exquisite tenor voice. It was alluring in its timbre and irresistible in its attractiveness, just as he was himself', as the composer would later recall in 1913. Regnault premiered several of his compositions: ‘In 1868, Regnault was the first to portray the role of Samson in the second act of the celebrated opera Samson et Dalila, created during a private evening performance. Saint-Saëns renewed their collaboration by entrusting the artist with two of the
Mélodies persanes, composed for tenor voice.' (Manon Bertaux). The
Mélodies persanes op. 26, based on verses by the Parnassian poet Armand Renaud, consist in their published version of three works for tenor (
Sabre en main,
Au Cimetière,
Tournoiement) and three for contralto (
La Brise,
La Splendeur vide,
La Solitaire). They form one of Saint-Saëns's most famous cycles and belong to the golden age of French mélodie.
This manuscript for voice and piano, with its ardent and colourful tone, can unquestionably be linked to this ensemble of melodies begun in June 1870 and sold by Saint-Saëns to his publisher Hartmann shortly afterwards. However, a study conducted by Manon Bertaux has shown
‘the composer sold Hartmann an incomplete cycle, having composed his final melodies at the beginning of the Siege of Paris [from September onward]".
Dated November 1870, our melody - as far as we know unknown to biographers and musicologists - is one of those composed in the midst of the Franco-Prussian war: ‘
Serving as a National Guard during the Siege of Paris, [Saint-Saëns] continued his activities as a musician and composer alongside his duties guarding the ramparts'. It appears that both the text and music remained entirely unpublished and were never sent to his publisher.
Henri Regnault also risked his life in an attempt to break the siege, much to the dismay of Geneviève who confided her worries in her now famous diary (Ramsay, 1985). The young lovers had finally become engaged after years of opposition from the young woman's mother.
Saint-Saëns likely offered this exquisite melody to Geneviève as a betrothal gift—a radiant piece of warmth for the anxious young woman. Here is the first of two stanzas:« Ka-douja la chanteu-se
Au manteau noir
Qu'on trouve sous l'y-eu-se
Quand vient le soir,
chante au guerrier mo-ro-se,
Prompt au courroux,
Un chant couleur de ro-se » [Kadouja, the singer,
In cloak of night,
Who waits beneath the holm oak
At fall of light,
Sings to the warrior grim,
Fierce and fey,
A rose-hued hymn.] The composer drew directly from their dramatic circumstances, transposing into an Oriental setting Geneviève's nightly ritual: waiting for ‘the warrior' Henri to return from patrol. In addition to fitting seamlessly within the known
Mélodies persanes, the exotic imagery of this work also reflected Geneviève's personal tastes. She was an avid traveler and deeply enamored of Regnault's Orientalist paintings—he had gifted her depictions of harems and Moorish architecture. During their rare moments together, she dreamt with him of escaping from the starving and freezing capital:
‘The danger was near, yet Paris continued making music. It was cold enough to freeze a man to death on the quays, the wind cut like a knife. But we thought of Tangier, the white patio, the reviving warmth, our next home, freedom,' she wrote in her diary on 10 December, shortly after this Saint-Saëns manuscript whose gift inscription is dated November 1870.
It is not known whether the piece was sung by Regnault during those months of siege, at evenings documented by Geneviève in her personal notes. He did however sing two
Mélodies persanes: "
Au cimetière" and "
Sabre en main", a warlike piece with bold vocal flourishes, later dedicated to Regnault's memory upon the publication of the
Mélodies persanes in 1872.
This deeply moving gift from Saint-Saëns was composed on the eve of the greatest tragedy in the life of young Geneviève—Henri Regnault was shot in the temple two months later at the age of 27, ‘killed by the Prussians at Buzenval, just days before the armistice signed on January 28. Saint-Saëns was devastated by the loss of this dear friend, a talented painter and fine singer with whom he had shared so many musical moments" (Société Camille Saint-Saëns)'. On hearing of his death, the composer is said to have wept for three days. At his funeral, Saint-Saëns himself played his
Marche héroïque [heroic march] on the organ dedicating it to his fallen friend, as well as
Au cimetière [at the cemetery], the
Mélodie persane Regnault had sung only days before his death—as if he had unknowingly performed his own funeral elegy.
‘Who would have thought as he sang: "To-day the roses; To-morrow the cypress!" that the prophecy would be realized so soon?' Saint-Saëns later wrote in
École buissonnière, Notes et souvenirs.A magnificent, previously unrecorded musical offering by virtuoso pianist and genius composer Saint-Saëns. Rediscovered no less than 154 years after its composition, this “seventh” Mélodie persane brings together two ill-fated lovers—Bréton the ‘singer' devoted to her ‘warrior' Regnault.
Camille Saint-Saëns, « Les Peintres musiciens », Ecole buissonnière, notes et souvenirs, p. 354-355.
Manon Bertaux, Camille Saint-Saëns et la guerre de 1870 : des Mélodies persanes à l'hommage à Henri Regnault (1843-1871), Circé. Histoire, Savoirs, Sociétés, Numéro 15, 2021/2.
Musical Memories By Camille Saint-Saëns Translated by Edwin Gile Rich, 1919
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