Previous
Carnival of the Animals - Saint-Saëns (1886)
Next
Soundtracks:
Days of Heaven
Babe
Create with parts and themes
Stories from the music history
Music mall
Watch a video movie
Films with classics

Carnival of the Animals

Saint-Saëns wrote one of the best musical jokes in history, and he did it with typical French style and grace. But he also paid a heavy price, for millions remember his caricaturist "Carnival of the Animals" instead of his best serious works. The humorous description of the zoo, as Saint-Saëns saw it, charmed many people and made the "Carnival" one of the most popular works in concerts for youth.
However this work is also a parody, a scorning description the composer gave the phenomena that surrounded him, such as portraying music critics as donkeys braying at a new work they have just heard, or the turtles dancing to the sound of Offenbach's "Can-can", played slowly. The composer even scorns his own music, played in Paris over and over again, with irony.
Photograph courtesy of Dr. Jacob DafniThe "Carnival of the Animals" pieces:
  1. Introduction and the lions' royal parade
  2. Cocks and chickens
  3. Savages
  4. The turtles - the gallop from Offenbach's "Orpheo", played slowly
  5. An elephant - aparody of the Sylaphies waltz from "Orpheo" by Berlioz
  6. The Kangaroo
  7. The aquarium
  8. Creatures of long ears
  9. The cuckoo in the forest
  10. Birds
  11. Fossilized creatures - imitation of popular melodies played to the death, including his own "The Dance of Death"
  12. The swan - the most famous tune for cello and piano, that became one of the best-loved Romantic movements.
  13. Pianos - a new kind of animal, which the composer heard in his tours in Paris, sounding musical scales up and down
  14. A joint dance of all animals - animals are heard one by one
  15. Music critics "bray" their critique of the piece - the long-eared creatures return
Go to the main menu
Home
Listen to a MIDI example
Example
The country in which it was written
Country
About the composer
Composer
The form of the work
Form
The period
Period

Back to last screenMusixCool© By Nadav DafniTo The Listening Guide