JOKE FOR HIS PUPILS

Radio Record, 20 May 1938, Page 19

JOKE FOR HIS PUPILS

ST. SAENS’ "CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS" WAS WRITTEN FOR FUN

THE musical career of the great French composer, Caimile Saint Saens, began at the advanced age of two, and finished with his death 84 years later. Saint-Saens has bimself related how at the age of two, he liked to listen to yarious sounds, such as the creak ing of doors and the striking of clocks. His great pleasure was What he termed "the symphony of the kettle, an enormous kettle which was placed ¢very morning in front of the fire." Seating himself by this, the little fellow waited with "a passionate curiosity for its first murmurs, its slow erescendo so full of surprises, and the appearance of a microscopic oboe, the sound of which rose lithe by little until the water had reached boiling point." He was then learning to vead, aud. six months later, when placed in front of a small piano, he did not strike the keyboard in a haphazard manner, as children do at that age, he "touched the notes one after another, and only left them when the sound had evaporated." This wonderful infant grew up ints a master among musicians, but a master who did not take himself too seriously. As a joke for his pupils he composed as a two-piano suite bis entertaining "Carnival of Animals." Much of the work is parody and even satire, but it is all geod-humoured, without a trace of rancour or unkindness. Suint-Saens was incapable of any uncharitable thought. The names of the movements #re sulHcient clue to the pictures they would present. There is the "Introduction aud Royal

Liou’s Mareh," "Hens and Cocks," Tortuises’’ (an absurd, slow version of twe lively Lunes from Offenbach’s "Orpheus in the Underworld"), "Vhe Elephant" (burlesquing Berlioz’s "Sylph's Dance." aud Mendelssubn’s "Song of a Summer Night’), "The Aquarium," "Pianists" (which imitates an awkward begiuner playing five-finger exercises and scales in various keys), "The Swan’ fini-

versally popular as a solo), and the "Finale" (in which several of the animals are introduced to each other witb harmonious effect). The work, which is very jolly and brilliant affair, will be heard from 4YA on Thursday, May 26, ft will be played by the Symphony Orchestra of Paris, under Georges True. oa J