On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music

Saint-Saëns, Camille, 1835-1921Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5

Word count: 29K words
Chapters: 3

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music by Camille Saint-SaënsAuthor: Saint-Saëns, Camille, 1835-1921,Language: English, Class: MT: Music: Musical instruction and study, Composition, Release Date: Nov 7, 2009

Editor's review

This is a short essay by Saint-Saëns on the performance of music, and especially on the interpretation of early music. Brief as it is, it distills a composer-performer's practical thinking on how a score becomes sound. It discusses the measure of performance, tempo, dynamics, and questions of style, and turns toward early music, a field often neglected by modern performers; it is useful both for understanding nineteenth-century ideas of performance and as background to the early-music revival. It is best read as a piece of performance aesthetics to be revisited rather than as a systematic textbook: readers who bring concrete experience of playing or listening will find it easier to enter into dialogue with its judgments. The electronic edition comes from Project Gutenberg, making it easy to search and excerpt; it suits casual reading between practice sessions, before preparing a lesson, or after a concert, to reconsider familiar repertoire through Saint-Saëns's eyes.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Music students studying piano or organ who want to understand questions of performance style
Listeners interested in nineteenth-century ideas of performance and the history of early-music interpretation
Teachers looking for short reading material for music history or performance-practice courses

Not a good fit for

Readers with no grounding in music theory or Western music history who want to start from scratch
Instrumental learners expecting a systematic playing manual or step-by-step technical guidance

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the overall argument, then annotate against the pieces you are currently practicing.
Listen alongside recordings reflecting the aesthetics of the period or early-music interpretations to test the judgments on tempo and dynamics.
Excerpt the passages on handling early music and take comparative notes against the claims of today's early-music movement.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What musical background do I need to read this book?

It deals with performance concepts such as tempo, dynamics, and style, so basic music theory and a general knowledge of Western music history will make it much smoother. Readers without that background can still follow it, but may find it hard to appreciate its criticism of specific performing habits; a little background on nineteenth-century music is advisable first.

How does it differ from ordinary books on performance teaching?

It is not a step-by-step method but a composer's discussion grounded in aesthetic and practical experience, focused on judgment and taste rather than fingering or practice routines. What readers gain is a perspective on performance, not a technical plan to follow directly.

Why discuss early music in particular?

Saint-Saëns treats early music as a touchstone for a performer's stylistic awareness: faced with the gap between notation and actual sound, the performer must make judgments. The topic also connects to concerns of the later early-music performance movement.

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About the author

Saint-Saëns, Camille, 1835-1921 Author

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was a French composer and pianist, and one of the rare polymaths in music history. This library holds four of his works: Portraits et souvenirs, Musical Memories, On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music, and Rimes familières. These texts are largely recollections, essays, and reflections on musical performance, the understanding of early music, and the people and times he witnessed. Saint-Saëns writes with clarity and restraint, combining a musician's professional judgment with a cultivated literary taste; when discussing performance practice he attends to historical evidence, while his portraits and reminiscences carry gentle observation and humor. Though not his best-known musical works, they offer a first-hand view of French musical life from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and reveal another side of a composer who thought about art through words. Public information is limited, so this note introduces only the works held here.