Music for Biodiversity

The Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saens

Camille Saint-Saens was a French composer who lived from 1835 to 1921. He was a child prodigy, reading and writing at age 3, performing music at 5, composing music soon thereafter. He was renowned during his time as an organist—the finest in the world according to some.

His most famous work today is The Carnival of the Animals. It consists of 14 short movements, each representing an animal or group of animals. The work is light and intentionally humorous. Because Saint-Saens was a serious composer, he didn’t like Carnival. In fact, he never allowed it to be performed while he was alive. Only one private performance occurred while he was alive, just after he wrote the work, He did allow one movement—The Swan—to be performed, as the most serious and beautiful part of the work. The Swan is in the repertoire of every serious cellist. It is a lyrical piece, slow and graceful, rather like the swan swimming in water (Saint-Saens obviously never got too close to a nesting swan—they are neither lyrical or graceful as they charge the intruder!).

I chose this music to represent biodiversity, of course, because it is a series that depicts a variety of animals. Hence, it is bio-diverse. The personalities of the different movements are also diverse, representing anthropomorphic views of the species—a combination of aesthetic and symbolic attitudes towards nature. One movement, called “Fossils,” can even represent the idea of species extinctions and the need to pay heed to their passing.

The Carnival of the Animals, and particularly The Swan movement, has been featured as theme music in many movies and special features. It is a part of the music of the Disney animated film Fantasia. And it has been treated tongue-in-cheek by Weird Al Yankovic and others.

Trumpter swan by John James Audubon

Ogden Nash, the famous humorist poet, wrote a series of poems to accompany each movement, for a recording of the work in 1949. Here is his poem to accompany Birds:

BIRDSPuccini was Latin, and Wagner Teutonic, And birds are incurably philharmonic, Suburban yards and rural vistas Are filled with avian Andrew Sisters. The skylark sings a roundelay, The crow sings “The Road to Mandalay,” The nightingale sings a lullaby, And the sea gull sings a gullaby. That’s what shepherds listened to in Arcadia Before somebody invented the radia.

The website for the complete set of poems is http://www.ncusd203.org/river_woods/musicweb/rwwebsite/carnival_animals/nash_carnival.html .