Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No.5 - Thibaudet / Concertgebouw Orchestra

Dolphins behave better after listening to Bach and Beethoven, study finds

Bottlenose dolphins enjoyed listening to Bach as part of the study. Picture: Getty

By Sophia Alexandra Hall, ClassicFM

@sophiassocials

 

Beethoven’s ‘Almost a Fantasy’ and ‘The Swan’ by Saint-Saëns are just some of the pieces of classical music enjoyed by Italian dolphins involved in this latest scientific study. 

Most scientists agree that dolphins are very intelligent creatures. The species have demonstrated in multiple studies that they are quick learners, empathetic, self-aware, and great at problem solving.

But a recent study published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science has now proved that dolphins are also music lovers, and that classical music specifically could improve social behaviours of the aquatic animals.

Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy found that playing classical music resulted in the dolphins showing more interest in each other, giving more gentle touches and swimming in synchrony for longer.

Eight dolphins in the eastern beach-front city of Riccione, Italy, were played 20 minutes of classical music a day via an underwater speaker for seven sessions. The aquatic mammals heard a number of pieces of classical music including Bach’s Prelude BWV 846, Grieg’s ‘Morning Mood’ from Peer Gynt, Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau, Beethoven’s Almost a Fantasy, and ‘The Swan’ from The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns.

Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the Caribbean Sea. Picture: Getty

On other days, the dolphins were played the sound of rainfall for 20 minutes (auditory stimulus), given floating toys to play with for 20 minutes (an already known form of enrichment for the animals), or shown natural environments on television screens for 20 minutes (visual stimulus).

The group of dolphins was made up of five female and three male dolphins between the ages of five and 49 years old. Three of these dolphins, which are housed at a dolphinarium in Riccione, were born in the wild.

The researchers found that only the music had a long-lasting positive effect on the dolphins’ behaviour. As only classical music was used, the researchers admitted the results may not be specific to just the classical genre, but that classical music could be particularly useful when improving social behaviours in dolphins.

The use of music was also a particularly useful tool for when the animals were under stress or in situations that could lead to increased conflicts.

 Lead researcher Dr Cécile Guérineau said the way the dolphins acted, suggested they were showing happiness.

“This system is linked to reward, social motivation, pleasure and pain perception,” explained Dr Guérineau. “Activation of opioids receptors is correlated with a feeling of euphoria. [And] we know that in a wide range of animals – from mammals, monkeys, dogs, rats etc, to non-mammals, birds – endorphins, i.e. one type of endogenous opioids, are related to social bonding.

“Dolphins may also be able to perceive rhythm because they are a vocal-learning species. It may be that, similar to how dancing at a party makes us feel good and helps people to bond, when dolphins synchronize to a beat, they also feel good and connect with their fellow swimmers.”

The Greatest Composers of Film Music Saint-Saëns, Breil, Steiner and Korngold

 by Hermione Lai, Interlude

Auguste and Louis Lumière

I am just an ordinary city girl, and one of the greatest joys during the burning hot day of summer is a visit to my local cinema. Sitting in a comfy chair in a chilled air-conditioned room with a huge bag of popcorn in my hand while I look at a giant screen and listen to beautiful music on surround sound is one of my greatest joys. I certainly prefer it to looking at my computer or TV screen at home, with my mother or siblings interrupting me all the time. So I decided to write a little blog on the greatest composers of film music, and I’ll start with a bit of trivia.

Cinématographe

Do you know what extraordinary event took place in Paris on 28 December 1895? I give you a little hint by telling you that it involved the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. Maybe you know that the Lumière brothers were manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their Cinématographe motion picture system. On that specific day in 1895, in what is considered the birth of cinema, they showed a series of short films to a Parisian audience. Even more remarkable is the fact that a pianist improvising on popular tunes accompanied this first screening. 

L’Assassinat du duc de Guise

It seems a bit funny, but the so-called silent film era wasn’t silent at all, but included music to establish a mood. As literally thousands of movie theaters sprang up in Europe and the United States, the solo piano was the most common instrument for musical accompaniment. “In a number of theaters, a percussionist was added to create special effects, and soon special theatre organs were built to produce a wide range of musical colors and effects, including gunshots, animal noises, and traffic sounds.” Larger theaters were known to feature ensembles, including chamber orchestras and occasional singers. We also know that the music played during screenings generally fell into three different types; borrowings from Classical music, arrangements of well-known popular, patriotic, or religious tunes, and newly composed music. Here then is the second trivia for today. Do you know who is generally credited with composing the first original film score? The answer is Camille Saint-Saëns, who wrote original music for the film “L’Assassinat du duc de Guise” (The Assassination of the Duke of Guise) in 1908. 

Sheet music of “The Perfect Song” from
The Birth of a Nation

For our next trivia question we turn to the United States and “the most controversial film ever made in the United States,” also called “the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history.” The silent film in question was called “The Birth of a Nation” and featured a plot, part fiction and part history, that chronicles the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the relationship of two families in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. While Abraham Lincoln is portrayed positively, as a friend of the South, the film “has been denounced for its racist depiction of African American. The film portrays them, many of whom are played by white actors in blackface, as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women. The Ku Klux Klan is portrayed as a heroic force, necessary to preserve American values, protect white women, and maintain white supremacy.”

Joseph Carl Breil in 1918

It’s all pretty horrible and makes me cringe, and some critics say that it “caused an entire century of racism.” However, the reason I decided to feature this particular film in this blog has nothing to do with the subject. Rather, it seems that the director D.W. Griffith “elevated cinema to an art form with this classical Civil War spectacle, and Joseph Carl Breil composed a three-hours-long landmark score that featured music by Richard Wagner, patriotic tunes for the Civil War scenes, “and new music featuring a number of leitmotifs to accompany the appearance of specific characters.” “The Perfect Song” is regarded as the first marketed theme song from a film, with critics calling the score “a mix of Dixieland songs, classical music and vernacular heartland music; an early, pivotal accomplishment in remix culture.” 

The Carnival of the Animals: a guide to Saint-Saëns’ humorous musical masterpiece

Saint-Saens – Carnival of the Animals. Picture: Getty

By Siena Linton, ClassicFM London

 

Lions, swans, donkeys and… pianists? Here are all 14 movements of The Carnival of the Animals, and what they’re about. 

The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns took himself quite seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he banned one of his best-known pieces from being performed in public until after he had died, in case it damaged his reputation as a composer of “serious” music.

Thankfully, the wishes set out in his will were granted, and The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1922, a year after his death, and received its public world premiere on 25 February that year.

The Carnival of the Animals is a comedic musical suite, comprised of four short movements, that was written for a bit of light relief after the composer returned from a fairly disastrous concert tour.

Originally written in 1886, the piece is now one of the works Saint-Saëns is best remembered for, and has provided a staple for the cello repertoire as well as inspiration for John Williams’ score to the Harry Potter film franchise.

Here are each of the 14 movements in order, their titles, and what they’re all about.

1. Introduction and Royal March of the Lion

   A bold and stately introduction, fit for the king of the jungle. Piano tremolos with dark and brooding strings open the introduction before a dramatic piano glissando heralds the arrival of the roaring ruler.

   Enter: the lion. A regal major chord fanfare rings out from the two pianos, before union strings play out the big cat’s theme, ornamented by marching piano triplets and high trills.

   
   

2. Hens and Roosters

   Persistent pecking is immediately brought to mind when the piano and violins begin their incessant staccato quavers, interrupted by irregular chirrups.

   The two pianos pass between them a parody of the rooster’s ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’, and stretched out scratchy string glissandos mimic the cooing and braying of the hens.

3. Wild Donkeys (Swift Animals)

   Saint-Saëns portrays the skittishness of wild donkeys with a hurricane of racing semiquavers, played in octaves by two pianos.

   The flighty creatures are gone almost as quickly as they arrived, as the whole movement only lasts around 30 seconds.

4. Tortoises

   Ah, to be a slow-moving tortoise lazing around in the afternoon sun. Saint-Saëns was really having a laugh when he wrote this one.

   Over pulsing piano chords, in a triplet rhythm, a string quartet plus double bass plays an agonisingly slow rendition of Jacques Offenbach’s Can-Can from his opera Orpheus in the Underworld. Well played, Camille, well played.

5. The Elephant

   Saint-Saëns clearly felt as if he hadn’t ridiculed the animal kingdom enough, as his scornful gaze next fell on the poor elephant.

   In a duet between the double bass and the piano, the Carnival’s elephant is cruelly taunted into dancing by a heavily satirical waltz. Famously not known for being light on their toes, Saint-Saëns characterises the elephant in a juxtaposition of light piano notes and staccato melodies with the deep, weighty tones of the double bass.

   There are more thinly veiled musical jokes here too, as Saint-Saëns quotes melodies from Felix Mendelssohn’s sprightly ‘Scherzo’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ from Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, both originally written for high-pitched instruments with light tones.

6. Kangaroos

   The kangaroo isn’t often represented in Western classical music, and it’s hard to imagine any composer capturing their bounding energy quite as well as Saint-Saëns did.

   Two pianos pass between them two melodies: a sprightly staccato scale, complete with grace notes, that gets louder and faster as it rises and softer and slower as it falls.

7. Aquarium

   From the Australian desert to the depths of the ocean, Saint-Saens’ Aquarium effortlessly captures the beauty and wonder of the underwater world.

   The twinkling high notes of the piano and glass harmonica, the pure and open tone of the flute, and the shimmery mystical sound of muted strings all come together to wash over the listener in a stream of swirling notes.

8. Characters with Long Ears

   Enough with this serious music malarkey, thought Saint-Saëns, and after that brief but beautiful watery interlude, he returned to his musical jokes. Although the title is a little cryptic, many believe it to be a taunt at music critics, comparing them to braying donkeys.

   A duet between two violins, they alternate between high notes at the very top of the instrument’s range and sliding notes towards the bottom of the register, mimicking the animal’s signature “hee-haw”.

9. The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods

   Two pianos play steady, soft quaver chords, replicating the calm, vast expanse of the forest.

   A single offstage clarinet interjects occasionally with a two-note calling card, mimicking the cry of the cuckoo.

10. Aviary

    Quietly buzzing tremolos on violins and viola set the scene for this movement, a flurry of airborne activity as the flute takes to the skies in a whirlwind of notes.

    With a melody that spans nearly the entire range of the instrument, the flute swoops and dives in relentless runs of demi-semi-quavers as two pianos join the chorus of the skies with intermittent chirrups and trills.

11. Pianists

    Saint-Saëns wasn’t satisfied with only poking fun at the animal kingdom and takes a jibe at pianists. Ooh, burn.

    This must have been more than a little tongue-in-cheek, as Saint-Saëns was a pianist himself. This movement is just like listening to simple piano finger exercises, and on the original score, the editor even specified that the two performers “should imitate the hesitant style and awkwardness of a beginner”. In some performances, the pianists even deliberately move out of sync with one another.

12. Fossils

    As all good things come to an end, so do animals become fossils. In Leonard Bernstein’s iconic narration of The Carnival of the Animals recorded with the New York Philharmonic he pointed out the joke, which is that all the pieces quoted in this movement were the ‘fossils’ of Saint-Saëns’ time.

    Beginning with a bit of self-deprecation, the movement opens with a bone-rattling xylophone melody that quotes Saint-Saëns’ own work, Danse Macabre, written just over 10 years earlier, before moving on to poke fun at French nursery rhymes, including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and ‘Au clair de la lune’, as well as an extract from Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville. The click-clack of the xylophone is also joined by a clarinet, two pianos, a string quartet and double bass.

    
    

13. The Swan

    Perhaps the most famous of the 14 movements and certainly the most graceful, Saint-Saëns couldn’t stay away from writing beautiful melodies for too long.

    Two pianos evoke the rippling flow of a body of water, over which glides the soaring and elegant swan. Even Saint-Saëns himself could recognise the brilliance of this work, and it was the only part of The Carnival of the Animals that he permitted to be published during his lifetime. 

14. Finale

    Saint-Saëns’ dazzling finale sees all 11 performers come together for the first time in the entire piece. It opens with the same piano trills as in the introduction and is soon fleshed out by the piccolo, clarinet, glass harmonica and xylophone.

    The movement cycles quickly through the animals that have appeared before with spirited interjections from the lions, hens and kangaroos, before the donkey has the last laugh with six “hee-haws” that bring the piece to a close.

Camille Saint-Saëns - His Music and His Life

Camille Saint-Saëns - Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 17 (1858) {Pascal Rogé}

by Georg Predota , Interlude 

Camille Saint-Saëns in 1900

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was one of the leaders of the French musical renaissance during the later part of the 19th century. He was a scholar of music history and tolerant of a wide range of musical issues and directions. He tellingly wrote: “I am an eclectic spirit. It may be a great defect, but I cannot change it; one cannot make over one’s personality.” His views on expression and passion in art conflicted with a prevailing Romantic aesthetic that was engulfed by Wagnerian influences.

Camille Saint-Saëns, 1846

In his memoirs he wrote, “Music is something besides a source of sensuous pleasure and keen emotion, and this resource, precious as it is, is only a chance corner in the wide realm of musical art. He who does not get absolute pleasure from a simple series of well-constructed chords, beautiful only in their arrangement, is not really fond of music.” Saint-Saëns possessed a mastery of compositional technique, and his ease, ingenuity, naturalness and productivity was compared to “a tree producing leaves.” Yet, during a period of extreme musical experimentations, Saint-Saëns remained stubbornly traditional, and by the time of his death on 16 December 1921, his compositional style was considered deliberately old fashioned. Scathing critical opinion suggested “Saint-Saëns has written more rubbish than any one I can think of. It is the worst, most rubbishy kind of rubbish.” 

Saint Merri Church in Paris

Saint-Saëns was born in the Rue du Jardinet in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on 9 October 1835. Two months after the christening, his father died of consumption and young Camille was taken to the country. “It is not generally realized,” a music critic wrote, “that Saint-Saëns was the most remarkable child prodigy in history, and that includes Mozart.” He produced his first composition at age 3, and publically performed a Beethoven violin sonata at age 4. Saint-Saëns made his official public debut at the Salle Pleyel at the age of ten, performing piano concertos by Mozart and Beethoven. An anecdote tells that he offered to play as an encore any of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory. Hector Berlioz admiringly wrote, “This young man knows everything, and he is an absolutely shattering master pianist,” with Franz Liszt declared him “the world’s greatest organist.” In addition to his musical prowess, Saint-Saëns excelled in his academic studies. He distinguished himself in the study of French literature, Latin, Greek, and Divinity. He acquired a taste for mathematics and the natural sciences, including archaeology, astronomy and philosophy. At the age of thirteen, Saint-Saëns was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire where he specialized in organ studies and took formal courses in composition. 

The old Conservatoire de Paris, early 19th century

Saint-Saëns competed for the Prix de Rome in 1852, but the award went to Léonce Cohen instead. Upon graduation from the Conservatoire, Saint-Saëns accepted the organist post at Saint-Merri, and by 1858 he was appointed organist of La Madeleine, the official church of the Empire. Saint-Saëns became a teacher at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse and he counted Fauré, Messager and Gigout among his most prominent students. Although he supported and promoted the music of Liszt, Schumann, and Wagner, Saint-Saëns wrote, “I admire deeply the works of Richard Wagner in spite of their bizarre character. They are superior and powerful, and that is sufficient for me. But I am not, I have never been, and I shall never be of the Wagnerian religion.” Going against the grain of French musical life in the mid-19th century, his main love was instrumental music. Extraordinarily active in the field of chamber music, not only as a composer but also as a performer, he might rightfully be considered one of the pioneers of French chamber music. Saint-Saëns left his teaching position in 1865 and pursued a career as a performer and composer.

Saint-Saëns at the piano for his planned farewell concert in 1913,
conducted by Pierre Monteux

Saint-Saëns was an excellent craftsman with a fine sense of musical style, and he placed his talents into the services of the Société Nationale de Musique. He wrote important articles in support of performing music by living French composers, and embarked on a number of operatic projects. His opera Le timbre d’argent had its première at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1877, and he scored a solid success with Samson et Dalila, a work that kept a foothold on the international stage. Saint-Saëns was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1881, and he was made an officier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1884. Always a keen traveler, Saint-Saëns made 179 trips to 27 countries between 1870 and the end of his life. Avoiding Parisian winter, Saint-Saëns spent substantial portions of the year in Algiers and various places in Egypt. He resigned from the Société Nationale in 1886, and although his popularity in France began to wane, he was still regarded as the greatest living French composer in America and England.

Interior of Saint-Saëns’ tomb in Montparnasse

Saint-Saëns performed his last concert on 6 August 1921, and concluded his conducting career shortly thereafter. He died of a heart attack on 16 December 1921 in Algiers, and his body was taken back to Paris for a state funeral at the Madeleine. During a period immersed in modernism of all kinds, Saint-Saëns remained stubbornly traditional, and his steadfast dedication to musical moderation, clarity, balance and precision deservedly earned him the nickname “French Beethoven.” Contemporary critics, on the other hand, polemically called him “the greatest composer without talent.” From the perspective of music history, however, we now understand that Saint-Saëns compositional approach, deeply inspired by French classicism, was an important forerunner of the neoclassicism practices of Ravel and others.

The Story Behind: Carnival of the Animals

Published by StringOvation Team on March 10, 2021

Composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) composed Le Carnaval des Animaux (Carnival of the Animals) in 1886 while taking a vacation in a small, beautiful Austrian village. The whimsical suite features 14 different movements, each one featuring an animal or group of animals. 

In the past century and a half, the work has become one of the romantic-era composer’s most famous works, which is ironic because he was a bit embarrassed about it being published at all.

From the Serious Spawns the Whimsical

At the time, Camille Saint-Saëns at the height of his musical and compositional career. By the year 1886, he had garnered widespread public acclaim and was known as a serious and mature composer. Saint-Saëns was already well-admired by the public for previous piano and violin concertos as well as other orchestral pieces. The pianist, organist, and composer had also published and performed several operas by that time. Although his operas didn’t gain much public traction in the moment, they didn’t diminish his reputation either. 

By the mid-to-late 1870s, Saint-Saëns enjoyed positive receptions in his honor across the European continent, adding to his reputation as a respected composer with his Danse Macabre in 1874, a superb First Cello Concerto, Op. 33, and a fourth piano concerto in 1875.

The year 1886 was an intense one for Saint-Saëns. He embarked on his Symphony #3 Organ in C minor, Op. 78. A San Francisco Symphony program note describes how immensely challenging the creative process was for him, “On May 18, 1886, Saint-Saëns wrote from London to his publisher, Auguste Durand: ‘We have sight-read the symphony. I was right: it is really terribly challenging.’” The process of composing the symphony was so difficult in fact, that Saint-Saëns took a break in the middle of the work and headed to Austria to rest.

Of course for the true composer “a restorative vacation” rarely means a complete break from music because the entire world is filled with song and inspiration. While he may have put his Third Symphony on hold for a bit, Saint-Saëns’ creative and artistic soul became entranced by the musical interpretation of the animals he had witnessed both in the small Austrian vacation town as well as throughout his world travels. (In addition to being a musical genius, Saint-Saëns was an avid world traveler, archaeologist, and writer.)

Thus, The Carnival of the Animals commenced, but only on paper...

Publication Put on Hold for 34 Years

Carnival of the Animals is typically the first of Saint-Saëns’ compositions a classical music lover ever hears and is considered one of his best works. Thus, it’s hard for contemporary musicians and audiences to believe his reluctance to publish and perform the work. Instead, Saint-Saëns struck a deal that the piece would not be published or performed (with one exception noted below) until after his death, which didn’t occur for another 34 years. 

The gorgeous and lyrical orchestral piece is 14 movements long. As mentioned before, each one represents a single or group of animals, often depicted with humor and wit and exceptionally creative use of instrumental voicing. We invite you to listen to the Royal Philharmonic performing the full 14 movements as you read their descriptions. 

If you aren’t already familiar with the work in its entirety, we suspect you’ll recognize more than one or two of them:

I. Introduction et marche royale du lion (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion)

II. Poules et coqs (Hens and Roosters)

III. Hémiones - animaux véloces (Wild Asses - quick animals)

IV. Tortues (Tortoises)

V. L'éléphant (The Elephant)

VI. Kangourous (Kangaroos)

VII. Aquarium

VIII. Personnages à longues oreilles (Characters with Long Ears)

IX. Le coucou au fond des bois (The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods)

X. Volière (Aviary)

XI. Pianistes (Pianists)

XII. Fossiles (Fossils)

XIII. Le cygne (The Swan)

XIV. Finale

There was one exception to Saint-Saëns’ “no publishing rule,” and that was for Movement 13: Le Cygne (The Swans). Watch the famous movement performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Kathryn Stott below:

Ultimately, the Carnival of the Animals feels like the ultimate expression of Saint-Saëns and his many talents. His virtuoso level of musicianship and composition, combined with his powers of archaeological observation, interests in the natural world, and abilities as a storyteller, yielded one of the most entertaining, moving, and famous classical music pieces ever written.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op 78 Järvi

Camille Saint-Saëns - Le Carnaval des animaux, The Carnival Of The Anima...

Camille Saint-Saëns - The Swan -Der Schwan