Musical Parody in Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals

The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns created his famous Carnival of the Animals in 1886 as a humorous work for his students at École Niedermeyer. Carnival of the Animals was only performed privately during Saint-Saëns’ lifetime and published posthumously because he did not regard it as a serious work. The original score requires 11 instruments and the work’s 14 movements represent different animals, including piano students!

Saint-Saëns added to the satirical nature of many of the movements by parodying familiar and mostly French compositions of his time.  For example, he dramatically slowed down the popular Galop Infernal "Can-Can" from Jacques Offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld to represent slow moving tortoises as heard in the lower strings. In the movement The Elephant, Saint-Saëns used Dance des Sylphesfrom Hector Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. Saint-Saëns took the melody played by violins in the original and gave it to the biggest and deepest sounding string instrument – the double bass.

Saint-Saëns even parodied one of his own compositions, Danse Macabre.  It can be heard in the movement Fossils along with three popular nursery rhymes, J’ai du Bon Tabac; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; and Au Clair de la Lune.

The Evanston Symphony will be performing Carnival of the Animals in its first concert of the 2013-14 season at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 10 at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in Evanston. This concert, honoring Evanston’s 150 year celebration, also includes Ravel’s Bolero and Mussorgsky’s  Pictures at an Exhibition.