Camille Saint-Saëns. By Jean Gallois. (Collection Musique/Musicologie.) Sprimont: Mardaga, 2004. [382 p. ISBN 2-87009-851-0. euro36.] Index.
After decades of relative neglect, French music and musical life of the late nineteenth century has in recent years become the subject of renewed interest. Scholars have begun to reexamine the rather simplistic generalizations about the music, institutions, and major figures of this period that had been codified during the first decades of the twentieth century and then passed down without question for several generations. Our understanding of one of the most important and interesting periods in French musical history has, as a result, grown …