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发信人: nlpir (regent), 信区: Music
标  题: Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens[转载]
发信站: 荔园晨风BBS站 (Sat Dec 14 22:16:04 2002), 站内信件

【以下文字转载自 English 讨论区】
【原文由 nlpir 所发表】
         A SALUTE TO FEATHERS, FUR, AND FINS

                      An appreciation of
          Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saens

Camille Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals is a set of orchestral
character pieces, each of which is meant to describe a particular
animal, usually by mimicking the sounds it makes or characterizing the
way it moves or carries itself. The piece is scored for two solo
pianos and a small orchestra of flute, piccolo, clarinet, xylophone,
glass harmonica (usually replaced these days by celesta or
glockenspiel in performance), and strings. This Carnival is a humorous,
often parodistic work. Saint-Saens only allowed the piece to be
performed twice during his lifetime (once publicly by the Societe de
la Trompette and once in a private performance requested by Franz Liszt,
the famous piano virtuoso and composer who was a close friend of
Saint-Saens), likely because he feared the work would hurt his
reputation as a serious composer. Only the movement "The Swan" was
published before the composer's death; that particular movement became a
stunningly popular work with cellists and audiences alike, remaining
one of Saint-Saens's most successful pieces for many years afterward.

The work is in fourteen movements:

I. "Introduction and Royal March of the Lion"--is very regal and grand,
featuring a full, swaggering figure in the strings and fast, running
scales in the pianos that convincingly mimic lion roars.

II. "Hens and Cocks"--is a humorously nervous movement, with jittery
string figures that suggest scratching, clucking hens and staccato
figures followed by trills in the pianos that sound much like crowing
roosters.

III. "Wild Asses"--the great running speed of these beasts is evoked
by the use of frantic, intense scalar passagework in the two pianos.
There is no orchestral accompaniment here.

IV. "Tortoises"--Saint-Saens makes clever use of parody to suggest the
slow-motion torpor of these creatures by quoting the famous can-can
melody from Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. Normally
performed at breakneck tempo, the tune here is played painfully slowly
by low-register strings, surrounded by a throbbing triplet accompaniment
in the pianos. Occasional use of stumbling dissonances completes the
picture of this painfully poky reptile.

V. "The Elephant"--consists of a brisk, but lumbering and clumsy waltz
melody played by the contrabasses and supported by an earnest piano
accompaniment. A parodistic quote from Berlioz's Valse des Sylphes
occurs here.

VI. "Kangaroos"--is scored just for the two pianos and consists of
clipped, irregular phrases that suggest the hopping of startled roos.

VII. "The Aquarium"--a tankful of peacefully swimming fish is evoked
by slow, languorous music which is decorated by delicate filigree
material in the glass harmonica. The effect is placid and serene.

VIII. "Personages with Long Ears"--suddenly breaks the contemplative
mood in unmistakable fashion. Scored just for the violins, the sounds
emitted here leave no doubt that these "personages" are donkeys.

IX. "The Cuckoo in the Forest"--a quiet, cryptic passage in the pianos
is continually interrupted by a cuckoo-ing clarinet.

X. "The Aviary"--busy, yet relaxed melodic figures run through the
pianos and flute over a rustling string accompaniment. The similarity in
sound to a flock of mixed birds is very noticeable.

XI. "Pianists"--well, what can be said? Some pianists are beastlike! Our
intrepid piano pair plays a keyboard exercise passage over and over,
transposing up a step each time. They are asked in the score to miss
some notes while they play. The strings grouse out short commentary
chords and figures in interruption.

XII. "Fossils"--is an extremely parodistic movement. Here, Saint-Saens
sardonically interweaves numerous overly-familiar melodies, including
two French nursery rhymes ("J'ai du bon tabac" and "Ah vous dirais-je
maman"), a snippet of the aria "Una voce poco fa" from Rossini's opera
The Barber of Seville, and his own Danse Macabre into a most curious
entity. Saint-Saens evidently felt these melodies were so famous that
they had become museum fossils, worthy only of residing among dinosaur
bones and pickled jars of worms.

XIII. "The Swan"--as suggested above is a work for solo cello with piano
accompaniment. The movement is warm and expressive, evoking the gliding
grace of a contemplative swimming swan.

XIV. "Finale"--is a merry closer, which recapitulates snippets from many
of the previous movements. Suggestions of the lion, fossils, wild
asses, hens and cocks, kangaroos, cuckoo, and pianists pass quickly in
succession. The "Personages with Long Ears" get their two pennies
worth in just before the final chords.

So, is Carnival of the Animals a good piece? I say yes, with a few
modest reservations. Parody has a notoriously short shelf life (if you
don't believe me, take a look at an old "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in"
show sometime--talk about dated material!), but for some reason, the
parody elements work well here over repeated listenings. I believe
this occurs because we don't need to know the joke to like the
movement in question. In "The Elephant," for example, one can enjoy
the hulking contrabass melody and not at all know a Berlioz waltz is
being quoted here. And "Fossils" somehow manages to suggest lifeless
skeletons not only by its employment of well-worn ditties, but also by
its prominent use of xylophone (an instrument that conjures up the image
of clattering bones very well), its clipped and angular rhythmic sense,
and its curiously exuberant use of minor mode melody; somehow, it all
comes up femurs and clavicles to me.

The movement "Pianists" seems a bit ham-handed. Holly quite rightly
pointed out to me the other day that one cannot ordinarily portray
incompetence effectively by writing poor-quality music or by playing
music sloppily. The joke tends to get lost in the lack of technique. One
of the best performances of this movement I've ever heard featured
the pianists playing their parts flawlessly (if rather mechanically);
the music itself conveys the humor well enough without resorting to
the sloppy execution asked for in the score by Saint-Saens.

Other movements work well enough, but raise nagging doubts. For example,
the "Cuckoo in the Woods" section is a bit long for my taste. And
"The Swan" shows its age a little bit, seeming a bit too much like a
relic from a bygone era when repressed ladies fanned themselves and
swooned with delight over the latest hackneyed parlor piano potboiler.
But these reservations are not enough to spoil the generally positive
view of the work we all seem to share.

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                         ☆☆☆ 古典音乐台 ☆☆☆

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