French composer Camille Saint-Saëns was born on October 9th, 1835 in Paris. After working as an organist in Paris between 1853 and 1857, he took over the position of organist at the renowned "Église de la Madeleine". From 1877 Saint-Saëns worked exclusively as a freelance composer and founded the "Société Nationale de Musique" together with other composers such as Gabriel Fauré and Cesár Franck. His compositions are strongly influenced by German Romanticism and by Hector Berlioz, next to whom he and Claude Debussy are considered to be the most important French composer. Camille Saint-Saëns died on December 16, 1921 in Algiers.