Septet for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) completed his Septet for Trumpet, Piano, and Strings in 1880 for Émile Lemoine’s chamber music society “La Trompette.” In fact, he had actually premiered the Préambule movement a year earlier for the society. Given that Lemoine was pleased with the movement and hoped for more of the same, Saint-Saëns eventually included an additional three movements to make it a much longer work. The instrumentation appears to be a result of Lemoine’s request that Saint-Saëns write a piece for the society’s usual array of instruments but that he also include a part for trumpet—thus, the idiosyncratic ensemble of a trumpet, two violins, viola, cello, double bass, and piano was born.
Like many of his contemporaries from the late 19th century, Saint-Saëns was invested in revisiting older forms of music and breathing new life into them. In this septet, the composer incorporates forms of 17th-century French dance music into a four-movement work performed by his unique ensemble. The first movement opens with a grand, percussive flair which quickly becomes a march. The second section of the movement provides an apt contrast at a much softer dynamic but it never quite shakes the forward motion of the march, which returns in full force again before the end of the Préambule. The Menuet follows, opening much like the first movement did with strength and bombast. But in this movement the ensemble switches between a demonstrative march and a gliding dance with such frequency that, eventually, instead of sounding merely like contrasting sections of one movement, they being to function as verse and refrain of the same song. The third movement introduces more opportunities for soloistic expression, with longer melodic lines that move effortlessly from one instrument to the next. Finally, the playful Gavotte allows the piano to take center stage and a brief return of material from the first movement before ushering all instruments toward an abrupt, yet exciting finale.

© Jason Stell and Emily Mascinup