The String Quartet

To conclude the weeks we spent in France, we have arrived at the great leader of the Société Nationale de Musique, the platform that since 1871 has contributed a lot to revaluation of instrumental music, and especially chamber music, in France, primarily from France, as well, the Ars Gallica, Camille Saint-Saëns. He liked to borrow from other composers. One could easily forget that String Quartet No. 1 in E minor was written in 1899 and is not some unknown work by Mendelssohn from sixty years ago. Or by Beethoven, in the case of the dramatic Molto Adagio. In the three-movement Second String Quartet in G major, Haydn and Mozart were the main inspirators. It is like Saint-Saëns kept going further back in time as the years went by.