1899—France

Camille Saint-Saëns, in his Portraits et souvenirs, reminisces about his years at the Paris Conservatory: “I loved its antiquity, the utter absence of any modern note, its atmosphere of other days. I loved that absurd court with the wailing notes of sopranos and tenors, the rattling of pianos, the blasts of trumpets and trombones, the arpeggios of clarinets…” (Fisk 142).