Musical Memories

Musical Memories is by Camille Saint-Saëns. The contents list Memories of My Childhood, The Old Conservatoire, Victor Hugo, The History of an Opéra-Comique, Louis Gallet and History and Mythology in Opera. The contents also name Pauline Viardot, Orphee Delsarte, Seghers, Rossini, Jules Massenet, Meyerbeer and Jacques Offenbach.

The text says that the writer's mother did not wish the writer to have a career as an infant prodigy, having higher ambitions and being unwilling for the writer to continue in concert work for fear of injuring his health. The text says that Maleden was born in Limoges, as his accent always showed, and describes a system in which the chords are not considered in and for themselves but in relation to the pitch of the scale on which they appear. The text says that the supplications sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered, and quotes Boschot as saying that what the work expresses above all is terror in the presence of annihilation.