Vladimir Saint-Saëns and The Carnival of the Animals: Why the Composer Banned His Most Famous Music
On October 9, 1835, Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris, a man who began composing at three and at ten took the stage of the Salle Pleyel and offered, as an encore, to play from memory any Beethoven sonata the audience chose. From this prodigy grew France’s wittiest composer, and his greatest joke still fills halls.
Imagine: Moscow, the present day. On stage is a symphony orchestra, with Vladimir Yatskevich at the podium. In the hall are families with children who have come to “the classics” for the first time. Within four minutes they recognize an elephant in the double basses, a cuckoo in the clarinet, and in two pianos pianists who just cannot get through their scales. This is The Carnival of the Animals, a work that Saint-Saëns forbade to be performed in his lifetime.
The anatomy of the most famous joke in music history
1. A debut at ten
Saint-Saëns is a rare case where the word “prodigy” is no exaggeration. At ten he played Mozart and Beethoven concertos with an orchestra, at thirteen he entered the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1908 he wrote one of the first film scores in history. The virtuosity laid down in childhood can be heard in every score of his: there is not a single accidental note.
2. The banned Carnival
The Carnival of the Animals was written in 1886 in a few days, for friends, for Shrovetide. Fourteen pieces in which the composer parodies colleagues, critics and himself: “Fossils” quotes his own Danse macabre, and “Pianists” is placed in the same row as donkeys and tortoises. Saint-Saëns feared the public would stop taking him seriously and forbade the suite to be published in his lifetime. He made an exception only for “The Swan.” The Carnival was heard by the public in full in 1922, a few weeks after the author’s death. Since then it has been his most performed music.
3. Why it is the perfect entrance to the orchestra
The Carnival is built like a tour of the orchestra: each piece shows one instrument or group in close-up. The elephant is a double bass solo. The cuckoo is two notes of the clarinet from offstage. The aquarium is flute, strings and shimmering bells. The swan is the cello. A child who hears this once remembers forever how each instrument sounds. For a conductor it is an exam too: the joke works only if the orchestra plays it absolutely seriously and with jeweler’s precision.
