The Oldie

MUSIC RICHARD OSBORNE

You need to be a person of some consequence to be given a state funeral on Christmas Eve, but that is what was granted the 86-year-old Camille Saint-Saëns, elder statesman of French music a century ago, after his death in December 1921.

He had already received a full military funeral in the French provincial city of Algiers where he’d been wintering; protocol demanded as much for a holder of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.

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