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Music: Camille Saint-Saëns - Carnaval de los animales - Data in English y Espanol - Links to more CSS







Camille Saint-Saëns - Carnaval de los animales




El carnaval de los animales (en francés: Le carnaval des animaux) es una suite musical en 14 movimientos compuesta por el compositor romántico francés Camille Saint-Saëns. Esta obra orquestal tiene una duración de entre 22 y 30 minutos.
Historia

El Carnaval fue compuesto en febrero de 1886, mientras Saint-Saëns veraneaba en un pequeño pueblo de Austria. Originalmente, fue concebida para un grupo de cámara compuesto de flauta, clarinete, dos pianos, armónica de cristal, xilófono, dos violines, viola, violonchelo y contrabajo, pero también se suele interpretar hoy en la versión para orquesta de cuerda, y con un glockenspiel en sustitución de la infrecuente armónica de cristal.

El compositor planeó la obra como broma para un día de carnaval, así que aparecen leones, gallinas, tortugas, canguros, burros y varios animales más y tiene toques de buen humor por aquí y por allá. Uno de ellos es que Saint-Saëns tomó prestada música de otros compositores y la puso en un contexto muy distinto del original. Así insertó desde canciones antiguas francesas hasta el “Can-can”, pasando por un trozo de la Danza macabra del mismo Saint-Saëns.

El autor, según parece temeroso de que la obra resultara demasiado frívola y pudiera perjudicar su reputación de compositor serio, prohibió que esta obra se editara mientras él viviera (con excepción de una sola pieza: “El cisne”). Sólo se dieron interpretaciones privadas para un círculo de amigos íntimos, como Franz Liszt.

Sin embargo, Saint-Saëns dispuso en su testamento que la suite podría ser publicada tras su muerte, y desde entonces se ha convertido en una de sus obras más populares.
Referencias musicales

Como sugiere el título, la obra sigue un programa zoológico y va desde el primer movimiento ("Introducción y marcha real del León"), pasando por los retratos del elefante y el burro ("Personajes con largas orejas") hasta el final, cuando retoma muchos de los temas anteriores.

Varios de los movimientos contienen guiños humorísticos:

    "Pianistas" describe a unos estudiantes de piano mientras practican sus escalas.
    "Tortugas" utiliza de manera ingeniosa el conocido can-can de la operetta de Jacques Offenbach Orfeo en los Infiernos, tocando la habitualmente dislocada melodía a un tempo inusualmente lento y pausado.
    "L'Éléphant" es la "Dance des sylphes" de Hector Berlioz en una tesitura mucho más grave que el original, a manera de solo para el contrabajo.también cita brevemente el Scherzo de "El sueño de una noche de verano" de Felix Mendelssohn. Se escucha al final de la sección que sirve de puente modulante.
    "Fósiles" cita la Danza macabra del propio Saint-Saëns, así como dos canciones infantiles, J'ai du bon tabac y Ah ! vous dirai-je, Maman (Campanitas del lugar), y también el aria de Rossini de El barbero de Sevilla
    Se cree que la sección de los 'Personajes con largas orejas' va dirigida a los críticos musicales: también son los últimos animales que se escuchan en la apoteosis final, rebuznando.
    "Hémiones" Los dos pianos se lanzan en una desenfrenada carrera en tonalidad de do menor, emulando el comportamiento esquivo de estos inusuales animalitos.
    "Le cygne" una de las partes más tranquilas de la obra, en donde dos pianos y un cello interpretan el sereno y natural paseo de un cisne en su hábitat natural.
    "Final" el abrupto despertar de los pianos, seguidos por el glockenspiel nos anuncian que el final de la obra ha llegado y con el, se pasa revista a la mayoria de los animales representados en escena.
    "Voliére" los pianos con sus melodiosos adornos acompañan a la flauta quien virtuosamente representa el libre vuelo de los pájaros, entre otras.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_carnaval_de_los_animales




The Carnival of the Animals
(Le carnaval des animaux) is a humorous musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Written for private performance by an ad hoc ensemble of two pianos and other instruments, the work lasts around 25 minutes.

History

Following a disastrous concert tour of Germany in 1885–86, Saint-Saëns withdrew to a small Austrian village, where he composed The Carnival of the Animals in February 1886.[1] It is scored for two pianos, two violins, viola, cello, double bass, flute (and piccolo), clarinet (C and B♭), glass harmonica, and xylophone.

From the beginning, Saint-Saëns regarded the work as a piece of fun. On 9 February 1886 he wrote to his publishers Durand in Paris that he was composing a work for the coming Shrove Tuesday, and confessing that he knew he should be working on his Third Symphony, but that this work was "such fun" ("... mais c'est si amusant!"). He had apparently intended to write the work for his students at the École Niedermeyer, but in the event it was first performed at a private concert given by the cellist Charles Lebouc on Shrove Tuesday, 9 March 1886.

A second (private) performance was given on 2 April at the home of Pauline Viardot with an audience including Franz Liszt, a friend of the composer, who had expressed a wish to hear the work. There were other private performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of Mi-Carême, but Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image. He relented only for the famous cello solo The Swan, which forms the penultimate movement of the work, and which was published in 1887 in an arrangement by the composer for cello and solo piano (the original uses two pianos).

Saint-Saëns did specify in his will that the work should be published posthumously. Following his death in December 1921, the work was published by Durand in Paris in April 1922, and the first public performance was given on 25 February 1922 by Concerts Colonne (the orchestra of Édouard Colonne).[2]

Carnival has since become one of Saint-Saëns's best-known works, played by the original eleven instrumentalists, or more often with the full string section of an orchestra. Normally a glockenspiel substitutes for the rare glass harmonica. Ever popular with music teachers and young children, it is often found on a CD in combination with Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
Movements

There are fourteen movements:

I Introduction et marche royale du lion (Introduction and Lion's Royal March)

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 Poules et coqs (Hens and Cocks)

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 Hémiones (animaux véloces) (Wild Asses: Swift Animals)

Two pianos: The asses 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 dziggetai, asses that come from Tibet and are known for their great speed.

IV Tortues (Tortoises)

Strings and piano: A 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' (commonly called the Can-can) from Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld.

V L'éléphant (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 Kangourous (Kangaroos)

Two pianos: The main figure here is a pattern of 'hopping' fifths preceded by grace notes. When the fifths ascend, the tempo gradually speeds up and the dynamics get louder, and when the fifths descend, the tempo gradually slows down and the dynamics get quieter.

VII Aquarium

Violin, Viola, Cello, (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.[3]

VIII Personnages à longues oreilles (Personages 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.[4]

IX Le coucou au fond des bois (The cuckoo in the Deep 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 Volière (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 pings and trills of other birds in the background. The movement ends very quietly after a long ascending scale from the flute.

XI Pianistes (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. In some performances, the later, more difficult, scales are deliberately played increasingly out of time. One published version of the music has the editor's note: "The pianists should imitate the hesitant style and awkwardness of a beginner".[5] After the four scales, the key changes back to C, where the pianos play a moderate speed 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 Fossiles (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, according to Leonard Bernstein's narration on his recording of the work with the New York Philharmonic, is that the musical pieces quoted are the fossils of Saint-Saëns's time.

XIII Le cygne (The Swan)

Main article: Le cygne

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."[6]
XIV Finale

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. The melody is a quote of Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Little Swans from Swan Lake. (Perhaps Saint-Saëns is saying this is the Swan song of the piece). The Finale is somewhat reminiscent of an American carnival of the 19th 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, Introduction et marche royale du lion, 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:

    Poules et coqs uses the theme of Jean-Philippe Rameau's harpsichord piece La poule ("The Hen") from his Suite in G major, but in a quite less elegant mood.
    Pianistes depicts piano students practicing scales.
    Tortues 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.
    L'éléphant 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.
    Fossiles quotes Saint-Saëns' own Danse macabre as well as three nursery rhymes, "J'ai du bon tabac", "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman" (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) and "Au clair de la lune", also the song Partant pour la Syrie and Rossini's aria, "Una voce poco fa" from The Barber of Seville.
    The Personnages à longues oreilles section is thought to be directed at music critics: they are also supposedly the last animals heard during the finale, 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 "Finale" 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 Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour.
    "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 throughout 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 [1].
    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."
    Gary Burghoff was the Narrator for a video recording (released in 1989 on VHS by Twin Towers Enterprises) of Carnival of the Animals performed by the Mormon Youth Symphony and combining live action with animation, setting the performance in the San Diego Zoo before an audience of children and their parents. One of the more amusing segments places the two pianists in an enclosure with a sign reading "Please Don't Feed the Pianists".
    Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons served as narrators in a 1990 video recording from Video Artists International featuring Paul Lustic Dunkel conducting a chamber orchestra consisting of one violin, one flute, one viola, one cello, a double-bass, a clarinet, two pianos, a xylophone and a glass harmonica.
    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[7] The recording included celebrities Arte Johnson, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Betty White, William Shatner, Ted Danson, Lily Tomlin, Audrey Hepburn, Jaclyn Smith, Joan Rivers, Dudley Moore, Lynn Redgrave, Walter Matthau and Deborah Raffin reciting Nash's poetry.
    The "Aquarium" movement was utilized by Kylie Minogue as part of the opening sequence of her Aphrodite World Tour.
    The "Aquarium" movement is also traditionally played during red carpet premiers at the Cannes Film Festival, as the cue for the entrance of the cast and crew of the featured film.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals








Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (French pronunciation: ​[ʃaʁl kamij sɛ̃sɑ̃s]; 9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist of the Romantic era. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah (Opera), Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony No. 3 (Organ Symphony).





Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (París, 9 de octubre de 1835 — Argel, 16 de diciembre de 1921) fue un compositor, director de orquesta, organista y pianista francés de música académica.

Músico muy dotado —fue un virtuoso pianista y también un excelente improvisador al órgano—, espíritu curioso por todo, escritor, caricaturista, gran viajero, Saint-Saëns desempeñó un papel excepcional en la renovación de la música francesa, tanto por su enseñanza —tuvo como alumnos, entre otros, a Gabriel Fauré y a André Messager—, como, sobre todo, por su actividad en favor de la música nueva —fue uno de los fundadores de la «Société Nationale de Musique», destinada a tocar y difundir la música francesa. Puede considerársele un jalón esencial de la renovación que condujo a Claude Debussy y a Maurice Ravel.

Saint-Saëns fue un intelectual multifacético. Desde pequeño se dedicó al estudio de la geología, la arqueología, la botánica y la entomología, específicamente a la rama de los lepidópteros. Fue también un excelente matemático. Además de la actividad musical como compositor, intérprete y crítico, se dedicó a las más variadas disciplinas, y se entretuvo en discusiones con los mejores científicos europeos y escribió doctos artículos sobre acústica, ciencias ocultas, escenografía teatral en la Roma Antigua e instrumentos antiguos. Fue miembro de la Sociedad Astronómica de Francia, poseía un telescopio, y organizaba sus conciertos de tal modo que coincidieran con algunos acontecimientos astronómicos (como eclipses solares). También escribió una obra filosófica, Problemas y misterios, un volumen de poesía, Rimes familières, y la comedia La crampe des écrivains, que tuvo un gran éxito.

Su extensa obra —elaboró más de 400 composiciones, en las que abordó casi todos los géneros musicales— es muy ecléctica, de un gran clasicismo y de una perfección a menudo un poco forzada, lo que ha motivado que se la considere demasiado académica, en Francia, sobre todo. Sin embargo, a menudo es una música de gran belleza, con una gran calidad de escritura. Fue también el primer gran compositor que escribió música para el cine.

Aunque vivió casi siempre en París, se consideraba hijo adoptivo de Dieppe, pequeña ciudad de la Alta Normandía, donde se instaló en 1888. Hoy día su legado se expone en el Château-Musée de dicha localidad, en una sala expresamente dedicada a él, el salón Saint-Saëns.



 






Music: Camille Saint-Saëns - Carnaval de los animales - Data in English y Espanol - Links to more CSS





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