Foreword

CUI Shiguang

The Making of Carnival of Animals

French piano music has played an important role in Western piano literature,and has given an important impetus to the development of new piano music in the 20th century.Camille Saint-Saëns(1835—1921)is representative of French piano music composers in the late romantic period.He demonstrated the exquisite charm of French art with his own works.The Carnival of Animals for two pianos and orchestra is a novel,lively,humorous and singular work.He used an entertaining approach to produce a musical composition that is appealing to people.

The Carnival of Animals(Le Carnaval des Animaux),subtitled The Zoo Fantasia,was written when Saint-Saëns travelled to Bohemia and Austria during the carnival holiday break in Koflach,a small village near the historical and cultural city of Graz,Austria in February of 1886.In the beginning,Saint-Saëns regarded the work as merely for fun.It was first performed at a private concert given by the cellist Carles Lebouc on the 9th of March,1886.The second private performance was given on 2nd of April at the home of Pauline Viardot,with audience members including Franz Liszt,a friend of the composer who had expressed a wish to hear the work.After several private performances,Saint-Saëns specified that the work should not be published in his lifetime.However,he relented only for the famous cello solo The Swan,which forms the penultimate movement of the work,published in 1887 in an arrangement by the composer himself for cello and solo piano(the original uses two pianos).Following his death in December of 1921,the restrictions on the work were removed,and the full score was published by Durand in Paris in April of 1922.Carnival of Animals has become one of Saint-Saëns’s best-known progressive works.

Saint-Saëns outlined the Carnival as a proposition to sketch out musical pieces about animals.Besides some joking around,he demonstrated that the use of various techniques——such as exaggeration,distortion,and other special methods——would produce completely different musical images.This especially showed not only his warmth,wit,and sense of humor,but also his amazing sparks of inspiration.However,Saint-Saëns’s ban on the work indicated that he did not want to be misunderstood by later generations because of his humor.He would have rather regarded these playful gestures as entertainment for his friends.So,what kind of jokes did he make in this work?

Number 4-Tortues-It makes good use of the well-known Galop Infernal from Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld,playing the usually breakneak speed melody at a slow,drooping pace.Above the melody,thick chords lined with continuous triplets are carried.

Number 5-L’éléphant-This uses a theme from Hector Berlioz’s Danse des Sylphes(from his work The Damnation of Faust)played in a much lower register than usual as a double bass solo.The piece also quotes the scherzo from Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.It is heard at the end of the bridge section.Here,the light elf’s prancing unexpectedly turned into an elephant's awkward heavyweight dance.

Number 11-Pianiste-This depicts a piano student practicing scales,and perhaps some of the exercises of Hanon and Czerny.Making fun of empty sounds is no different from animals.

Number 12-Fossiles-This is a particularly exaggerated one.The xylophone simulates the sound of the bones striking vividly in the museum’s prehistoric skeleton.The music quotes Saint-Saens’s own Danse Macabre.This would have been harmless enough,but then the children’s song Ah Vous Dirai-je,Maman appeared——in the form of Mozart’s popular Variations for piano based on the theme—as well as a beautifully coloratura soprano aria loved by everyone on the European opera platform,Rossini’s Una Voce Poco Fa from The Barber of Seville.These were all specific symbols in the musical life of that time.However,all of them were now associated here with ancient creatures.This proved quite humorous.

Number 14 -Final-The final ensemble opens on the same tremolo notes on piano I as in the introduction,and reinforced by piano II,that built the tension before The Four Little Swans(The Cygnets)(from Tschaikowsky’s ballet Swan Lake,composed only ten years prior)is introduced as the main melody.Although it is relatively simple,the supporting harmonies are ornamented in the style that is typical of Saint-Saëns’s music for the piano; dazzling scales,glissandi and trills.Many of the previous movements are quoted here from the introduction; the lion,the asses,the hens and the kangaroos.The work ends with a series of six “hee-haws” from the jackasses,as if to say that the jackass has the last laugh,before the final strong group of C major chords.

This masterpiece of Saint-Saëns is very commendable.With its elegant style and charm,it interacts with the strange and vivid animal images in every portion.He placed the Swan(Le Cygne)in an important position-one before the finale,when all of the dozens of pieces before seemed to prove as foil and contrast.The lusty,romantic cello solo with two pianos is one of the most well-known movements of the suite.The elegant temperament and noble image of the Swan is indisputably the center of this work,immediately becoming one of the favorite pieces of music lovers.A version for cello with solo piano was the only publication of this work in Saint-Saëns’s lifetime.The Dying Swan,a short ballet,was choreographed in 1905 by Mikhail Fokine to this movement and performed by Anna Pavlova,in which she gave some 4,000 performances of the dance and swept the world off its feet.

Carnival of Animals Three Piano Version

In 1989,while working at Syracuse University,I sought to find interesting ensemble pieces for students.However,I discovered that there were no practical versions of Saint Saëns’s Carnival of Animals.In terms of the compilation of this work,the two lead pianos and the orchestra were partially downsized tothe ensemble of the third piano.Therefore,I produced such a musical score at that time for the class and school concert.The world premieres of this version at official concerts were at the Steinberg International Music Festival in Xiamen,China(October 2017)and at the China Sanya International Piano Festival(February 2018).The two lead pianos were played by Qin Chuan/Zhou Ting(Xiamen),and Yuan Jie/Chen Yunjie(Sanya).I personally directed and played the third piano.The Carnival of Animals played on three pianos had unexpected stage effects at the concerts and demonstrated the strong vitality of Saint-Saëns’s musical language from another angle.On the centenary of the death of Saint-Saëns,I edited and produced this new version,which was published for the first time in the world by Shanghai Music Publishing House under the Shanghai Original brand——certainly an event that Saint-Saëns could not have ever imagined.French culture has left an indelible mark on Shanghai’s music culture since more than a century ago.Now,this classical work of Saint-Saëns Carnival of Animals three pianos version has come to Shanghai,and it has been a very pleasant journey.

(English Text: Robert Schwartz)

About The Typo

The typo in the full score of the first edition of a hundred years ago in the “Aquarium”—the harmony of the piano I is inconsistent with the piano Ⅱ and the orchestra(piano Ⅲ )in the second and the fourth beats of 25th and 27th bars(marking with a star),is suspected that the typo was printed.Here,all have been corrected by the editor as the following(double stars marking “**”):

In “Personages with Long Ears”,the effect of high-position overtone played by a solo violin(marking with a star),can not be re-produced on the piano,and if playing it on stage in the nature of a solo piece by the piano,here,the marks on double stars(**)should be the closest transplant:

崔世光，1978年至1984年期间为中央乐团钢琴独奏家兼创作组成员、中国音乐家小组成员，多次赴包括苏联、东欧和西欧等国家的四十多个城市交流演出。1984年就读于美国Syracuse大学音乐学院，获两个硕士学位，于1987年至1993年受聘于该校，任教六年。曾在英国奥德堡音乐节、奥地利缪瑙中国文化研讨会、因斯布鲁克第17届国际音乐教育大会、迈阿密全美音乐教师年会上作中国钢琴音乐专题讲座。1990年在《美国音乐教师》杂志上发表文章介绍中国音乐教育状况，是首次由中国音乐家向西方读者所作的专题介绍。崔世光创作的钢琴作品在形式与技法上以中西融汇著称，其钢琴作品多次在国内及国际的作品比赛中获得奖项。1992年，埃德温·拜赫尔钢琴协会为庆祝美东著名的阿达蒙特暑期钢琴音乐学校创立50周年，在纽约举办了钢琴作品国际比赛。崔世光的组曲《钢琴上的福斯特》成为全球征集的六十余部作品中唯一的获奖作品。崔世光的演奏亦由中央人民广播电台、中国唱片公司等录制发行。

CUI Shiguang appointed as a resident concert pianist and composer of The Central Philharmonic Society in Beijing.During that time,he toured annually throughout China,and also as a member of Chinese Musician’s group performing in the USSR,and over forty major cities in Europe under the cultural exchange program.He completed his master’s degree at Syracuse University School of Music in 1987.His name is also on board as a member of piano faculty for six years(1987—1993).His compositions for piano works have been consistent prizewinner in many composition competitions both nationally and internationally.In 1992,a suite for piano solo,Pianofoster,won him the first prize in the International Piano Music Composition Competition organized by Edwine Beher Piano Association,New York,to honor of the 50th anniversary of the Adamant Music School.His compositions are often considered rooting in the traditional Chinese culture with rich folk diversities,but also evolved constantly along the lines of Western compositional techniques.His performances were recorded and released by the China National Radio,the China Record Company,etc.