Music History Monday: The Parrot

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 […]

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