CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS, French composer, born. French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist, known especially for his orchestral works The Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre, Samson et Dalila, and Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony). Saint-Saëns began his musical career as a child prodigy and pursued a life in music until he died at age 86. He was a pianist and organist who composed works, as he put it, “as an apple-tree produces apples.” He brought forth prodigious quantities of musical apples, and if some, to modern ears, are a little green or even rotten, they are more than made up for by the large number of perfect polished fruit. It cost a great deal of money to be a full-time composer, and Saint-Saëns was no struggling artist in a rooftop garret. He was supported by a large behest from an older friend, Henri Libon, and the nature of their friendship has always been open to interpretation.

There’s no interpretation necessary, however, to understand Saint- Saëns own sexuality. Though he is reported to have had a marked preference for Algerian boys, he was a devotee of Parisian pissoirs even in old age. In an amusing memoir, the composer Henri Busser records coaxing his ancient colleague, now reduced to merely peeking, from the local pissoirs. In 1875, Saint-Saëns married Marie-Laure Truffot and they had two children, André and Jean-François, who died within six weeks of each other in 1878. Saint-Saëns left his wife three years later. The two never divorced, but lived the rest of their lives apart from one another. On being accused of homosexuality at a social occasion, he is reported to have countered ‘Non. Je ne suis pas homosexuel, je suis pédéraste!’ “No, no, my dear, I am not a homosexual. I am a pederast.” Not everyone, after all, acknowledges that the two are not synonymous.