Le rouet d’Omphale, Op. 31

Composer: SAINT-SAËNS, Camille
  • Saint-Saëns composed Le rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel) in 1871.1
  • This work is a symphonic poem. At the time the symphonic poem was a new and unusual form, primarily associated with Franz Liszt, who coined the term “symphonic poem.”2
    • Liszt was a great supporter of Saint-Saëns’ music and Saint-Saëns, in gratitude, organized and conducted concerts of Liszt’s music.3
  • Saint-Saëns composed a total of four symphonic poems in the 1870s, each on mythological or legendary subjects. The others are Phaéton (1873), Danse macabre (1874), and La jeunesse d’Hercule (1877).4
  • Story: In Greco-Roman mythology, Hercules was a slave to the Queen Omphale for three years. In his servitude he was forced to dress as a woman and spin wool for the Queen at a spinning wheel.5
    • Listen for a musical evocation of the repetitive sound of a spinning wheel.6

Sources

  1. Daniel M. Fallon, Sabina Teller Ratner, and James Harding, “Saint-Saëns, (Charles) Camille,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 16, 2020, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000024335.
  2. Hugh Macdonald, “Symphonic poem,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 15, 2020,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000027250. 
  3. Fallon et al, “Saint-Saëns, (Charles) Camille,” Grove Music Online.
  4. Ibid.
  5.  “Rouet d’Omphale, Le,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, ed. Joyce Kennedy, Michael Kennedy, and Tim Rutherford-Johnson (Oxford University Press, 2012), accessed January 16, 2020, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199578108.001.0001/acref-9780199578108-e-7757. 
  6. Fallon et al, “Saint-Saëns, (Charles) Camille,” Grove Music Online.

Cut IDs

18136