Theme et Variations op. 88
Ant. Rubinstein
Some time ago Rubinstein left the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, where he had been for so many years, and visited Dresden, in search of rest and quietness, and laid aside all business for the time. For any further information, I must refer my readers to his "Autobiography," a fragment published in America, and "A Conversation Upon Music," published by Augner.
C. Saint-Saëns.
The French composer, Saint-Saëns, considers a piano a useless item in the art of composition, at all events in his case, for he rarely, if ever, makes use of one when composing, even to play over completed works.
Some MS. paper and a pencil are the only materials he works with, and he has composed whole operas without a musical instrument in the house.
This manner of composing M. Saint-Saëns finds a great saving of valuable time (and if composers' time is not important, whose is?), and he does not consider that ideas come any the more readily when seated before a piano; in fact, rather the reverse.
The portion of MS. will be familiar to those who have studied his works.
