Le Carnaval des Animaux

Grande Fantaisie zoologique

Saint-Saens the teacher at the Ecole Niedermeyer (from 1861-1865) had already promised a Carnaval des Animaux to his pupils. Twenty years later he once again took up the idea and implemented it. In the remoteness of a small locality in Austria, to which the composer had withdrawn after a concert tour across Germany in 1886, he wrote the music within a few days. It had been intended as a surprise in a carnaval concert with the famous celloist Lebouc, to whom it offered an opportunity to display his virtuosity in a piece which was to become one of the greatest successes for the composer and the soloist: No. 13 of the Carnaval - Le Cygne (the swan). This was regarded as a masterpiece of perfect melodic invention up to a long way into the twentieth century.

The small pieces offer entertainment in a way which recalls Erik Satie with all its exaggerations, distortions, the penetration and the ridicule of too familiar things. The lion is characterised by a blustered royal march; mules, characteristic as sluggish creatures, are depicted as "fast animals" . Then there is a humorous presentation of the most sensational dance of the Second Empire, the Can-Can from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, and the elephant is dancing to the music of the dance of the sylphs from the Condemnation of Faust by Berlioz and Mendelssohn's Summernight's Dream.

Was the fear to destroy the composer's reputation the reason why Saint-Saens himself had prohibited performances of the complete Carnaval des Animaux a few years after the first performance, with the exception of Le Cygne? Only in his Will there was a clause repealing the prohibition, which was immediately followed by publication by Durand.

(English translation cited from score of Peters,1973)

ROM 123