A symptom of the eminence of Saint-Saens in the history of French music lies in his attitude towards the art as a whole, especially of the German masters,—­the absence of national bias in his perceptions.  He was foremost in revealing to his countrymen the greatness of Bach, Beethoven and Schumann.  Without their influence the present high state of French music can hardly be conceived.

It is part of a broad and versatile mastery that it is difficult to analyze.  Thus it is not easy to find salient traits in the art of M. Saint-Saens.  We are apt to think mainly of the distinguished beauty of his harmonies, until we remember his subtle counterpoint, or in turn the brilliancy of his orchestration.  The one trait that he has above his contemporaries is an inbred refinement and restraint,—­a thorough-going workmanship.  If he does not share a certain overwrought emotionalism that is much affected nowadays, there is here no limitation—­rather a distinction.  Aside from the general charm of his art, Saint-Saens found in the symphonic poem his one special form, so that it seemed Liszt had created it less for himself than for his French successor.  A fine reserve of poetic temper saved him from hysterical excess.  He never lost the music in the story, disdaining the mere rude graphic stroke; in his dramatic symbols a musical charm is ever commingled.  And a like poise helped him to a right plot and point in his descriptions.  So his symphonic poems must ever be enjoyed mainly for the music, with perhaps a revery upon the poetic story.  With a less brilliant vein of melody, though they are not so Promethean in reach as those of Liszt, they are more complete in the musical and in the narrative effect.

DANSE MACABRE

Challenged for a choice among the works of the versatile composer, we should hit upon the Danse Macabre as the most original, profound and essentially beautiful of all.  It is free from certain lacks that one feels in other works, with all their charm,—­a shallowness and almost frivolity; a facility of theme approaching the commonplace.

There is here an eccentric quality of humor, a daemonic conceit that reach the height of other classic expression of the supernatural.

The music is founded upon certain lines of a poem of Henri Calais (under a like title), that may be given as follows: 

          Zig-a-zig, zig-a-zig-a-zig,
    Death knocks on the tomb with rhythmic heel. 
          Zig-a-zig, zig-a-zig-zig,
    Death fiddles at midnight a ghostly reel.

The winter wind whistles, dark is the night;
Dull groans behind the lindens grow loud;
Back and forth fly the skeletons white,
Running and leaping each under his shroud. 
Zig-a-zig-a-zig, how it makes you quake,
As you hear the bones of the dancers shake.

* * * * *

But hist! all at once they vanish away,
The cock has hailed the dawn of day.