[2] The work was dedicated to Émile Lemoine, a mathematician and founder of the chamber music society La Trompette, who had long requested Saint-Saëns to compose a piece featuring the trumpet.

Hugo Wolf and others praised the work, and some consider it a neglected masterpiece in Saint-Saëns's oeuvre, admired for its skillful writing, musical humor, and effective balancing of the unusual instrumental forces.

[1] For many years, Lemoine had asked Saint-Saëns to compose a special piece with the trumpet to justify the name of the society, and jokingly he would respond that he could create a work for guitar and thirteen trombones.

[3] Hugo Wolf, who attended a performance of the septet in Vienna on 1 January 1887, wrote: "What was most engaging about this piece, distinguished by its skillful exploitation of the trumpet, was its brevity.

[7] In October 1907, Saint-Saëns confessed to Lemoine: "When I think how much you pestered me to make me produce, against my better judgment, this piece that I did not want to write and which has become one of my great successes, I never understood why.

"[n 2] The septet was performed at Saint-Saëns' last public appearance as a pianist, shortly before his death, on the occasion of a celebration that Académie des Beaux-Arts members threw for him.