Le carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) is a musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The orchestral work has a duration between 22 and 30 minutes.

History

was composed in February 1886 while Saint-Saëns was vacationing in a small Austrian village. It was originally scored for a chamber group of flute/piccolo, clarinet (B flat and C), two pianos, glass harmonica, xylophone, two violins, viola, cello and double bass, but is usually performed today with a full orchestra of strings, and with a glockenspiel substituting for the rare glass harmonica. The term for this rare 11-piece musical ensemble is a "hendectet" or an "undectet."

Saint-Saëns, apparently concerned that the piece was too frivolous and likely to harm his reputation as a serious composer, suppressed performances of it and only allowed one movement, , to be published in his lifetime. Only small private performances were given for close friends like Franz Liszt.

Saint-Saëns did, however, include a provision which allowed the suite to be published after his death. It was first performed on 26 February 1922, and it has since become one of his most popular works. It is a favorite of music teachers and young children, along with Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. In fact, it is very common to see any combination of these three works together on modern CD recordings.

Movements

There are fourteen movements: {|align=right | |}

;I (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion) Strings and two pianos: The introduction begins with the pianos playing a bold tremolo, under which the strings enter with a stately theme. The pianos play a pair of scales going in opposite directions to conclude the first part of the movement. The pianos then introduce a march theme that they carry through most of the rest of the introduction. The strings provide the melody, with the pianos occasionally taking low runs of octaves which suggest the roar of a lion, or high ostinatos. The movement ends with a fortissimo note from all the instruments used in this movement.

;II (Hens and Roosters) Strings without cello and double-bass, two pianos, with clarinet: This movement is centered around a pecking theme played in the pianos and strings, which is quite reminiscent of chickens pecking at grain. The clarinet plays small solos above the rest of the players at intervals. The piano plays a theme based on the crowing of a rooster's Cock a Doodle Doo.

;III (Wild Asses; quick animals) Two pianos: The animals depicted here are quite obviously running, an image induced by the constant, feverishly fast up-and-down motion of both pianos playing scales in octaves. These are Asses that come from Tibet, which are known for their great speed.

;IV (Tortoises) Strings and piano: A slightly satirical movement which opens with a piano playing a pulsing triplet figure in the higher register. The strings play a maddeningly slow rendition of the famous 'Galop infernal' from Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld.

;V (The Elephant) Double-bass and piano: This section is marked Allegro pomposo, the perfect caricature for an elephant. The piano plays a waltz-like triplet figure while the bass hums the melody beneath it. Like "Tortues," this is also a musical joke - the thematic material is taken from the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream and Berlioz's "Dance of the Sylphs" from The Damnation of Faust. The two themes were both originally written for high, lighter-toned instruments (flute and various other woodwinds, and violin, accordingly); the joke is that Saint-Saëns moves this to the lowest and heaviest-sounding instrument in the orchestra, the double bass. On the track "Effervescing Elephant", recorded by Syd Barrett on his final solo album Barrett, the opening coda of "The Elephant" can be heard played on tuba. Throughout the long-running Carry On Films, The Elephant was used as the signature tune for the characters played by Hattie Jacques, when they first appeared on screen.

;VI (Kangaroos) Two pianos: The main figure here is a pattern of 'hopping' fifths preceded by grace notes.

;VII Strings without double-bass, two pianos, flute, and glass harmonica: This is one of the more musically rich movements. The melody is played by the flute, backed by the strings, on top of tumultuous, glissando-like runs in the piano. The first piano plays a descending ten-on-one ostinato, in the style of the second of Chopin's études, while the second plays a six-on-one. These figures, plus the occasional glissando from the glass harmonica — often played on celesta or glockenspiel—are evocative of a peaceful, dimly-lit aquarium. According to British music journalist Fritz Spiegl, there is a recording of the movement featuring virtuoso harmonica player Tommy Reilly - apparently he was hired by mistake instead of a player of the glass harmonica. The recording in question is of the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra on the Naxos label.

;VIII (Characters with Long Ears) Two violins: This is the shortest of all the movements. The violins alternate playing high, loud notes and low, buzzing ones (in the manner of a donkey's braying "hee-haw"). Music critics have speculated that the movement is meant to compare music critics to braying donkeys.

;IX (The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods) Two pianos and clarinet: The pianos play large, soft chords while the clarinet plays a single two-note ostinato, over and over; a C and an A flat, mimicking the call of a cuckoo bird. Saint-Saens states in the original score that the clarinetist should be offstage.

;X (Aviary) Strings, piano and flute: The high strings take on a background role, providing a buzz in the background that is reminiscent of the background noise of a jungle. The cellos and basses play a pick up cadence to lead into most of the measures. The flute takes the part of the bird, with a trilling tune that spans much of its range. The pianos provide occasional ping and trills of other birds in the background. The movement ends very quietly after a long ascending scale from the flute.

;XI (Pianists) Strings and two pianos: This movement is a glimpse of what few audiences ever get to see: the pianists practicing their scales. The scales of C, D flat, D and E flat are covered. Each one starts with a trill on the first and second note, then proceeds in scales with a few changes in the rhythm. Transitions between keys are accomplished with a blasting chord from all the instruments between scales. After the four scales, the key changes back to C, where the pianos play a trill-like pattern in thirds, in the style of Charles-Louis Hanon or Carl Czerny, while the strings play a small part underneath. This movement is unusual in that the last three blasted chords do not resolve the piece, but rather lead into the next movement, with a pattern similar to the chords that lead from the second to the third movements of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3.

;XII (Fossils) Strings, two pianos, clarinet, and xylophone: Here, Saint-Saëns mimics his own composition, the Danse macabre, which makes heavy use of the xylophone to evoke the image of skeletons playing card games, the bones clacking together to the beat. The musical themes from Danse macabre are also quoted; the xylophone and the violin play much of the melody, alternating with the piano and clarinet. The piano part is especially difficult here - octaves that jump in quick thirds. Allusions to "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (better known in the English-speaking world as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), the French nursery rhymes "Au clair de la lune", and "J'ai du bon tabac" (the piano plays the same melody upside down), the popular anthem Partant pour la Syrie, as well as the aria Una voce poco fa from Rossini's The Barber of Seville can also be heard. The musical joke in this movement is that the musical pieces quoted are the fossils of his time.

;XIII Le cygne (The Swan) Two pianos and cello: This is by far the most famous movement of the suite due to it being a staple of cellists. It is often performed solo and is used to showcase the interpretive skills of the cellist. The lushly romantic cello solo (which evokes the swan elegantly gliding over the water) is played over rippling sixteenths in one piano and rolled chords in the other (representing the swan's feet, hidden from view beneath the water, propelling it along).The Swan Theme has also been played by a double bass that "sings", sounding gracefully similar to the cello in a version conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

A short ballet, The Dying Swan, was choreographed in 1905 by Mikhail Fokine to this movement and performed by Anna Pavlova. Pavlova gave some 4,000 performances of the dance and "swept the world."

;XIV Full ensemble: The finale opens on the same tremolo notes in the pianos as in the introduction, which are soon reinforced by the wind instruments, the glass harmonica and the xylophone. The strings build the tension with a few low notes, leading to glissandi by the piano, then a pause before the lively main melody is introduced. This movement is somewhat reminiscent of an American carnival from the middle of the 20th century, with one piano always maintaining a bouncy eighth note rhythm. Although the melody is relatively simple, the supporting harmonies are ornamented in the style that is typical of Saint-Saëns' compositions for piano; dazzling scales, glissandi and trills. Many of the previous movements are quoted here from the introduction, the lion, the asses, hens, and kangaroos. The work ends with a series of six "Hee Haws" from the Jackasses, as if to say that the Jackass has the last laugh, before the final strong group of C major chords.

Musical allusions

As the title suggests, the work follows a zoological program and progresses from the first movement, , through portraits of elephants and donkeys ("Those with Long Ears") to a finale reprising many of the earlier motifs.

Several of the movements are of humorous intent:

uses the theme of Jean-Philippe Rameau's harpsichord piece ("The Hen") from his Suite in G major, but in a quite less elegant mood. depicts piano students practicing scales. makes good use of the well-known "Galop infernal" from Jacques Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, playing the usually breakneck-speed melody at a slow, drooping pace. uses a theme from Hector Berlioz's "Danse des sylphes" (from his work The Damnation of Faust) played in a much lower register than usual as a double bass solo. The piece also quotes the Scherzo from Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is heard at the end of the bridge section. quotes Saint-Saëns' own as well as three nursery rhymes, "J'ai du bon tabac", (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) and , also the song Partant pour la Syrie and Rossini's aria, "Una voce poco fa" from The Barber of Seville. The section is thought to be directed at music critics: they are also supposedly the last animals heard during the final, braying.

Ogden Nash verses

In 1949, Ogden Nash wrote a set of humorous verses to accompany each movement for a Columbia Masterworks recording of Carnival of the Animals conducted by Andre Kostelanetz. Recited on the original album by Noël Coward, they are now often included when the work is performed. The conclusion of the verse for the "Fossils", for example, fits perfectly with the punchline-like first bar of the music:

:At midnight in the museum hall :The fossils gathered for a ball :There were no drums or saxophones, :But just the clatter of their bones, :A rolling, rattling, carefree circus :Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas. :Pterodactyls and brontosauruses :Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses. :Amid the mastodontic wassail :I caught the eye of one small fossil. :"Cheer up, sad world," he said, and winked— :"It's kind of fun to be extinct."

In popular culture

In 1999, Walt Disney Animation Studios incorporated the "" into Fantasia 2000. In the film, a flock of flamingos are annoyed by another flamingo playing with a yo-yo and attempt to make him fall into step with their dance routines. The music was recorded by James Levine conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with the preceding narration done by James Earl Jones.

A surf-rock version of "Aquarium" covered by Dick Dale was used as the theme song of the Space Mountain roller coaster at Disneyland in California from 1996 to 2003. This same version was featured in the game .

"The Swan" is used in the 2005 film My Summer of Love by P. Pawlikowski. Tamsin performs it on her cello when Mona visits her house for the first time.

"Aquarium" is featured in the trailers for the 1994 film Only You, the 1974 film The Godfather Part II, the 1995 film Babe, the 2006 film Charlotte's Web and the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and appears to be one of the influences on the main theme in Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast and is especially prominent in the cue titled "The West Wing". It is also the opening theme music to the 1978 film Days of Heaven and the opening and closing theme in the 1992 film documentary, Visions of Light. "Aquarium" is played throughout the Simpsons episode "The Wife Aquatic", and can be heard in the episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show entitled "The Cat That Laid the Golden Hairball". The Aquarium also runs repeatedly through out an episode of How I Met Your Mother in season 5 or 6. It is also heard in the video game Crash Tag Team Racing, and along with "Swan" is part of the soundtrack of the video game Burnout Paradise (2008 edition). It is also used in the film Impressions de France, shown at the French theater in EPCOT's Showcase of Nations (see Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida).

Australian/British classical crossover string quartet Bond remade a version of the Aquarium movement on their album Born, although Camille Saint-Saëns is uncredited .

The theme from the "Royal March of the Lion" was used as the musical motif for the Dreyfus Fund commercials which aired on American television. This pairing of the music and the Dreyfus Lion was used for many years starting in the early 1950s.

Roland Petit's ballet Proust ou les intermittences du cœur uses the Ouverture to open both acts.

In 1976, Warner Brothers produced a television special directed by Chuck Jones featuring an abridged version of The Carnival of the Animals with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck playing the piano duo. (It opens with Bugs and Daffy arguing over the pronunciation of the composer's name, Bugs calmly pronouncing it "Kameel Sann-Sawns," which approaches the correct French, and Daffy repeatedly insisting angrily that it is pronounced "Caymile Saynt Sayens," which is incorrect and improperly Anglicized.) The live-action orchestra is conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. "The Turtle", "The Mule", "The Cuckoo" and "The Swan" are omitted, a brief version of "The Pianists" is heard in the end credits, and the verse for "The Mule" is tacked onto the verse for "The Jackass."

In 1992, Dove Audio released an all-star cast recording (Dove 30560 {cassette}/30700 {CD}) performed by the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra conducted by Lalo Schifrin:

Parts of the suite were used as the intro to Kylie Minogue's 2011 Aphrodite World Tour.

Satire

Both "Weird Al" Yankovic and Peter Schickele have recorded new versions of the Carnival of the Animals, both also as "b" sides of new versions of Peter and the Wolf. Yankovic's version, on his album Peter and the Wolf recorded in 1988, is titled "Carnival of the Animals, part II," and features new poems in the style of Ogden Nash written and read by Yankovic, and with new music in the style of Saint-Saëns composed and performed by Wendy Carlos. Schickele's version, recorded on Sneaky Pete and the Wolf in 1993, keeps the original Saint-Saëns' music, but has new poems written and read by Schickele.

References

External links

2011 recording for organ and piano combined, by David Owen Norris and David Coram

Video Performance of Le Cygne by Julian Lloyd Webber

Bond discography - Born, featuring the "Aquarium" movement as "Oceanic"

Category:Compositions by Camille Saint-Saëns Category:Ballets to the music of Camille Saint-Saëns Category:1886 compositions Category:Segments from Fantasia 2000

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns () (9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony).

Early years

Saint-Saëns was born in Paris, France on 9 October 1835. His father, a government clerk, died three months after his birth. He was raised by his mother, Clémence, with the assistance of her aunt, Charlotte Masson, who moved in. Masson introduced Saint-Saëns to the piano, and began giving him lessons on the instrument. At about this time, age two, Saint-Saëns was found to possess perfect pitch. His first composition, a little piece for the piano dated 22 March 1839, is now kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Saint-Saëns's precociousness was not limited to music. He learned to read and write by age three, and had some mastery of Latin by the age of seven. His first public concert appearance occurred when he was five years old, when he accompanied a Beethoven violin sonata. He went on to begin in-depth study of the full score of Don Giovanni. In 1842, Saint-Saëns began piano lessons with Camille-Marie Stamaty, a pupil of Friedrich Kalkbrenner, who had his students play the piano while resting their forearms on a bar situated in front of the keyboard, so that all the pianist's power came from the hands and fingers but not the arms. At ten years of age, Saint-Saëns gave his debut public recital at the Salle Pleyel, with a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 15 in B-flat major (K. 450), and various pieces by Handel, Kalkbrenner, Hummel, and Bach. As an encore, Saint-Saëns offered to play any of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas from memory. Word of this incredible concert spread across Europe, and as far as the United States with an article in a Boston newspaper.

He then studied composition under Fromental Halévy at the Conservatoire de Paris. Saint-Saëns won many top prizes and gained a reputation that resulted in his introduction to Franz Liszt, who would become one of his closest friends. At the age of sixteen, Saint-Saëns wrote his first symphony; his second, published as Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, was performed in 1853 to the astonishment of many critics and fellow composers. Hector Berlioz, who also became a good friend, famously remarked, Il sait tout, mais il manque d'inexpérience ("He knows everything, but lacks inexperience").

Middle years

For income, Saint-Saëns played the organ at various churches in Paris, with his first appointment being at the Saint-Merri in the Beaubourg area. In 1857, he replaced Lefébure-Wely at the eminent position of organist at the Église de la Madeleine, which he kept until 1877. His weekly improvisations stunned the Parisian public and earned Liszt's 1866 observation that Saint-Saëns was the greatest organist in the world. He also composed a famous piece called Danse Macabre at this time.

From 1861 to 1865, Saint-Saëns held his only teaching position as professor of piano at the École Niedermeyer, where he raised eyebrows by including contemporary music—Liszt, Gounod, Schumann, Berlioz, and Wagner—along with the school's otherwise conservative curriculum of Bach and Mozart. His most successful students at the Niedermeyer were André Messager and Gabriel Fauré, who was Saint-Saëns's favourite pupil and soon his closest friend.

Saint-Saëns was a multi-faceted intellectual. From an early age, he studied geology, archaeology, botany, and lepidoptery. He was an expert at mathematics. Later, in addition to composing, performing, and writing musical criticism, he held discussions with Europe's finest scientists and wrote scholarly articles on acoustics, occult sciences, Roman theatre decoration, and ancient instruments. He wrote a philosophical work, Problèmes et mystères, which spoke of science and art replacing religion; Saint-Saëns's pessimistic and atheistic ideas foreshadowed Existentialism. Other literary achievements included Rimes familières, a volume of poetry, and La crampe des écrivains, a successful farcical play. He was also a member of the Astronomical Society of France; he gave lectures on mirages, had a telescope made to his own specifications, and even planned concerts to correspond to astronomical events such as solar eclipses.

In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, despite being over in barely six months, left an indelible mark on the composer. He was relieved from fighting duty as one of the favourites of a relative of emperor Napoleon III, but fled nonetheless to London for several months when the Paris Commune broke out in the besieged Paris of winter 1871, his fame and societal status posing a threat to his survival. In the same year, he co-founded with Romain Bussine the Société Nationale de Musique in order to promote a new and specifically French music. After the fall of the Paris Commune, the Society premiered works by members such as Fauré, César Franck, Édouard Lalo, and Saint-Saëns himself, who served as the society's co-president. In this way, Saint-Saëns became a powerful figure in shaping the future of French music.

In 1875, nearing forty, Saint-Saëns married Marie Laure Emile Truffot, who was just 19. They had two sons, both of whom died in 1878, within six weeks of each other, one from an illness, the other upon falling out of a fourth-story window. For the latter death Saint-Saëns blamed his wife, and when they went on vacation together in 1881 he simply disappeared one day. A separation order was enacted, but they never divorced.

From 1877 to 1889, he lived at 14, rue de la Monsieur-de-Prince, and the apartment house is marked by a plaque.Photo of the plaque

Later years

In 1886 Saint-Saëns debuted two of his most renowned compositions: The Carnival of the Animals and Symphony No. 3, dedicated to Franz Liszt, who died that year. That same year, however, Vincent d'Indy and his allies had Saint-Saëns removed from the Société Nationale de Musique. Two years later, Saint-Saëns's mother died, driving the mourning composer away from France to the Canary Islands under the alias "Sannois". Over the next several years he travelled around the world, visiting exotic locations in Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Saint-Saëns chronicled his travels in many popular books using his nom de plume, Sannois.

In 1908, he had the distinction of being the first celebrated composer to write a musical score to a motion picture, The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (L'assassinat du duc de Guise), directed by Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes, adapted by Henri Lavedan, featuring actors of the Comédie Française. It was 18 minutes long, a considerable run time for the day.

In 1915, Saint-Saëns traveled to San Francisco, California and guest conducted the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, one of two world's fairs celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal.

Saint-Saëns continued to write on musical, scientific and historical topics, travelling frequently before spending his last years in Algiers, Algeria. In recognition of his accomplishments, the government of France awarded him the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur. A street in Paris and in Marseilles is named in his honor.

Saint-Saëns died of pneumonia on 16 December 1921 at the Hôtel de l'Oasis in Algiers. His body was repatriated to Paris, honoured by state funeral at La Madeleine, and interred at Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Relationships with other composers

Saint-Saëns was either friend or enemy to some of Europe's most distinguished musicians. He stayed close to Franz Liszt and maintained a fast friendship with his pupil Gabriel Fauré, who replaced him as organist and choirmaster when he retired. Additionally, he was a teacher and friend to Isidor Philipp, who headed the piano department at the Paris Conservatory for several decades and was a composer and editor of the music of many composers. But despite his strong advocacy of French music, Saint-Saëns openly despised many of his fellow-composers in France such as Franck and d'Indy, and while he praises the musical genius of Jules Massenet in his 1919 book Musical Memories, he also states pointedly in the same chapter that he had no use for Massenet personally. Saint-Saëns also hated the music of Claude Debussy; he is reported to have told Pierre Lalo, music critic, and son of composer Édouard Lalo, "I have stayed in Paris to speak ill of Pelléas et Mélisande." The personal animosity was mutual; Debussy quipped: "I have a horror of sentimentality, and I cannot forget that its name is Saint-Saëns." On other occasions, however, Debussy acknowledged an admiration for Saint-Saëns's musical talents.

Saint-Saëns had been an early champion of Richard Wagner's music in France, teaching his pieces during his tenure at the École Niedermeyer and premiering the March from Tannhäuser. He had stunned even Wagner himself when he sight-read the entire orchestral scores of Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, and Siegfried, prompting Hans von Bülow to refer to him as "the greatest musical mind" of the era. However, despite admitting appreciation for the power of Wagner's work, Saint-Saëns defiantly stated that he was not an aficionado. In 1886, Saint-Saëns was punished for some particularly harsh and anti-German comments on the Paris production of Lohengrin by losing engagements and receiving negative reviews throughout Germany. Later, after World War I, Saint-Saëns angered both French and Germans with his inflammatory articles entitled Germanophilie, which ruthlessly attacked Wagner.

Saint-Saëns edited Jean-Philippe Rameau's Pièces de clavecin, and published them in 1895 through Durand in Paris (re-printed by Dover in 1993).

According to a well known anecdote which has not been confirmed, however, Saint-Saëns stormed out of the première of Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) on 29 May 1913, allegedly infuriated over what he considered the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet's opening bars.

Reputation

Saint-Saëns began his musical career as a musical pioneer, introducing to France the symphonic poem and championing the radical works of Liszt and Wagner at a time when Bach and Mozart were the norms. By the dawn of the 20th century, Saint-Saëns was an ultra-conservative, fighting the influence of Debussy and Richard Strauss. This is hardly surprising—Saint-Saëns's career began while Chopin and Mendelssohn were in their prime, and ended at the commencement of the Jazz Age; but his image endured for years after his death.

As a composer, Saint-Saëns was often criticized for his refusal to embrace romanticism and at the same time, rather paradoxically, for his adherence to the conventions of 19th-century musical language. He is remembered chiefly for works such as The Carnival of the Animals, which was not published in full until after his death - reportedly because Saint-Saëns feared it would affect his reputation as a serious composer; the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso for violin and orchestra, the operas Samson and Delilah and Henry VIII (of which only the first is frequently performed today), the Symphony No. 3; the second, fourth and fifth piano concertos; the third violin concerto; the first cello concerto; and the first violin sonata.

Music

Style

Saint-Saëns' concertos and many of his chamber music works are both technically difficult and transparent, requiring the skills of a virtuoso. The later chamber music pieces, such as the second violin sonata, the second cello sonata, and the second piano trio, are less accessible to a listener than earlier pieces in the same form. They were composed and performed when Saint-Saëns was already slipping out of popularity and, as a result, they are little known. They show a willingness to experiment with more progressive musical language and to abandon lyricism and charm for more profound expression.

The piano music, while not as deep or as challenging as that of some of his contemporaries, occupies the stylistic ground between Liszt and Ravel. At times brilliant, transparent and idiomatic, the music for two pianos includes the Variations on a Theme by Beethoven, the Scherzo, a palindromic piece that uses a blend of modern tonalities and conventional gestures, and the Caprice arabe, a rhythmically inventive fantasy that pays homage to the music of northern Africa. Although Saint-Saëns was considered old-fashioned in later life, he explored many new forms and reinvigorated some older ones. His compositional approach was inspired by French classicism, which makes him an important forerunner of the neoclassicism of Ravel and others.

In performance, Saint-Saëns is said to have been "unequalled on the organ", and rivaled by only a few on the piano. However, Saint-Saëns's concert style was restrained, subtle, and cool; he sat unmoving at the piano. His playing was marked by extraordinarily even scales and passagework, great speed, and aristocratic refinement. The recordings he left at the end of his life give glimpses of these traits. He was often charged with being unemotional and business-like, less memorable than other more charismatic performers. He was probably the first pianist to publicly perform a cycle of all the Mozart piano concertos. In some cases these influenced his own piano concertos; for example, the first movement of his 4th Piano Concerto in C minor strongly resembles the last movement of Mozart's 24th Concerto, which is in the same key. In turn, his own concertos appear to have influenced those of Sergei Rachmaninoff and other later Romantic composers. Throughout his life, Saint-Saëns continued to play with the technique taught to him by Stamaty, using the strength of the hand rather than the arm. Claudio Arrau never forgot the ease with which Saint-Saëns played (he cites Chopin's fourth scherzo as an example).

Musical works

Saint-Saëns's early start and his long life provided him with time to write hundreds of compositions; during his career, he wrote many dramatic works, including four symphonic poems, and thirteen operas, of which Samson et Dalila and the symphonic poem Danse macabre are among his most famous. In all, he composed over 300 works and was the first major composer to write music specifically for the cinema, for Henri Lavedan's film The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (Op. 128, 1908).

Saint-Saëns wrote five symphonies, although only three of these are numbered. He withdrew the first, written for a Mozartian-scale orchestra, and the third, a competition piece. His symphonies are a significant contribution to the genre during a period when the French symphonic tradition was otherwise in decline. Saint-Saëns also contributed voluminously to the French concertante literature; he wrote five piano concertos, three violin concertos, two cello concertos, and about twenty smaller concertante works for soloist and orchestra, including a colorfully orchestrated piano fantasy, Africa; the Havanaise and the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso for violin and orchestra; and the Morceau de concert for harp and orchestra. Of the concertos, the Second Piano concerto is one of the most popular of virtuoso piano concertos, and the Third Violin Concerto and First Cello Concerto also remain popular.

In 1886 he wrote his final symphony, the Symphony No. 3, avec orgue (with organ), one of his best-known works. The motif of the third became the inspiration for the 1978 song If I Had Words by Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley. Aided by the monumental symphonic organs built in France by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, at that time the world's foremost organ builder, this work demonstrates the spirit of "gigantism" and the confidence of France in the Belle Époque at the end of the 19th century, a period that produced the Eiffel Tower, the Universal Exposition at Paris. The confident Maestoso fourth movement perhaps reflects the confidence of Europe in its technology, its science, its "age of reason". He was frequently named as "the most German of all the French composers", perhaps due to his use of counterpoint.

In 1886, Saint-Saëns also completed The Carnival of the Animals, which was first performed privately on 9 March. In contrast with the work's later popularity, Saint-Saëns forbade complete performances of it shortly after its première, allowing only one movement, Le cygne (The Swan) for cello and two pianos, to be published in his lifetime. Carnival was written as a musical jest, and Saint-Saëns believed it would damage his reputation as a serious composer. In fact, since its posthumous publication, this work's imagination and musical brilliance have impressed listeners and critics.

Saint-Saëns also wrote six preludes and fugues for organ, three in Op. 99 and three in Op. 109, of which Op. 99, no. 3 in E flat major is most often performed.

The opera Hélène was composed by Saint-Saëns for the great Australian soprano, Dame Nellie Melba, in 1904. Unstaged after its premiere in Monaco, it was performed in the soprano's home city (Melbourne) during January 2008.

One of Saint-Saëns's symphonic poems, Le rouet d'Omphale, Op. 31, became famous to a new generation of listeners beginning in 1937 through its use of the ominous middle section of it as the theme to the long-running radio program, The Shadow.

Controversies

Saint-Saëns was thought to have ethnically Jewish traits, especially in his youth. Adolphe Boschot said that Saint-Saëns could not be of Jewish origin because his uncle was a priest,

He was also rumoured to be homosexual.

Media

References

Further reading

Michael Stegemann: Camille Saint-Saëns and the French Solo Concerto from 1850 to 1920. Portland OR: Amadeus Press, 1991. ISBN 0-931340-35-7

External links

Piano Rolls (The Reproducing Piano Roll Foundation)

Saint-Saens playing his own Piano Concerto #2 (opening)

Saint-Saens playing Valse Nonchalente Op.110

Saint-Saens playing Rhapsodie d'Auvergne Op.73

Category:1835 births Category:1921 deaths Category:People from Paris Category:Child classical musicians Category:Composers for violin Category:Composers for pipe organ Category:French classical pianists Category:French composers Category:French Roman Catholics Category:French classical organists Category:Opera composers Category:Romantic composers Category:French military personnel of the Franco-Prussian War Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:Alumni of the Conservatoire de Paris Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Category:Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery Camille Saint-Saëns Category:Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur