September 2010
Beginner
376 pages
12h 7m
English
In Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, the composer illustrated the animal characters of a children’s story by identifying each with a specific orchestral instrument. Decades before that, the French composer Saint-Saëns undertook a similar project when he penned Carnival of the Animals, which he called a “zoological fantasy.”1 In it, the characteristics of animals like lions, elephants, and kangaroos are portrayed musically through an imaginative application of instrumentation and structural composition.
The most celebrated movement of the work is “The Swan,” or “Le Cygne.” The ...
Read now
Unlock full access