Carnival of the animals fossils song
It’s unclear whether he was trying to escape his harsh memories, or being lured by lands where he could more easily and anonymously fulfil his predilections. He continued to travel extensively, particularly in north Africa his wanderings inspired such works as his Africa Fantasy and his Piano Concerto No.
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Saint-Saëns vanished a second time after his mother’s death in 1888 – eventually turning up under an assumed name in Las Palmas. Three years later, while the couple were on holiday, he went out one day and failed to return. Grief-stricken, Marie was unable to feed the six-month-old baby he was sent to her mother for care, but failed to thrive and died soon afterwards. But in 1878, the two-year-old André fell out of the window of their fourth-floor apartment and was instantly killed. It’s generally thought now that he was homosexual, but aged 40 he married the much younger Marie Truffot and soon had two infant sons. Nonetheless, his life held tragedy aplenty. Nor was music enough to satisfy his mental agility: an expert mathematician, zoologist, botanist, fossil hunter and astronomer, he once used the proceeds of a bestselling piece to commission a telescope with which, from his Parisian rooftop, he examined the stars. Raised by his mother and great-aunt following his father’s early death, he experienced a meteoric career as a child prodigy pianist – he once offered to play as an encore, from memory, any one of the 32 Beethoven sonatas. Saint-Saëns had been composing since the age of three. Saint-Saëns had been composing since the age of three You can appreciate he might not want all that to be overshadowed by a humourous salon work about animals. His works encompass every genre, from 13 operas, including Samson et Dalila, and the first film score by a well-known composer ( L’Assassinat du duc de Guise, 1908), down to a mini-extravaganza for a band of toy instruments entitled Les odeurs de Paris. It wasn’t as if he had written nothing else.
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He suspected it might prove too popular for his own good. Indeed, word about the work was spreading like wildfire, inducing the shrewd Saint-Saëns to stipulate that it must only be published until after his death (except for ‘The Swan’, which was released on its own). Here a star-studded rendition was given for an audience that included the elderly Franz Liszt, whose curiosity had been piqued. Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals was first aired in a private concert in March 1886, and next in April at the salon of Pauline Viardot, the singer, composer and musical celebrity to whose feet artistic Paris flocked en masse. Saint-Saëns’ Carnival Of The Animals: A grand zoological fantasy