Cellofun Repertoire Catalogue: Saint-Saens
It is incredible to think that Camille Saint Saens (1835-1921) was born just 8 years after the death of Beethoven yet died 20 years after Scott Joplin’s invention of ragtime, just as Duke Ellington was rising to prominence and just a few years after the appearance of dodecaphonic (serial) music. What gigantic musical transformations he must have observed over his lifetime and what a wonderful composer he was.
The following link takes us to the cellofun transcription of his magnificent “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” for violin:
Saint Saens: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso
Instead of using Popper studies as a way to work intensively on our thumbposition we can also choose to work on repertoire excerpts. The entire catalogue of repertoire compilations of thumbposition passages, grouped according to their composer, can be found on the “Making Thumbposition Easy” page, but here is the compilation of passages from the music of Saint-Saens (principally from his First Cello Concerto Op 33) that could, should, or must, be played in thumbposition. Saint Saens wrote two cello concertos: the extremely popular Nº 1 in A minor Op 33 (written in 1872), and the almost unknown Nº 2 (from 1902). The second concerto is not included as a source for these thumbposition repertoire passages.