Richibi’s Weblog

Just another WordPress.com weblog

Tag: Modest Mussorgsky

November 2, 2012

“The Carnival of the Animals” – Saint-Saëns/Nash/Disney

in the same spirit of “music as literature” as in
Liszt’s “Années de pèlerinage“, or Mussorgsky‘s
“Pictures at an Exhibition“ especially, Camille
Saint-Saëns, composed his “Le carnaval des
through an anthropomorphised menagerie 
where the description is impressionistic rather
than narrative, which is to say more painterly
 
he composes in patches of musical textures
instead of melodic and linear paragraphs,
incompatible with the original association
of music as melody, or song, one’s response
would become thereby more intellectual
than emotional, one does not swoon, or
even sway, in other words, as marvel at the
synesthetic imagination, which lets you see
sounds and hear pictures
 
you’ll hear here, or “hear, hear”, the turtles
doing their determined interpretation of the 
can-can, at an improbable crawl, in playful
reference to Offenbach‘s “Galop infernal”,
mad gallop, from his “Orpheus in the  
“Underworld“, other such instances of 
compositional salutations follow, not at
all an unusual practice among composers,
great and small 
 
you’ll be enchanted by the shimmering
ethereality of the aquarium, by the grace
and majesty of the now mythic swan,
among other zoological bedazzlements, 
in 14 movements, in therefore essentially
a symphony, a piece for orchestra with
several movements
 
here they are        
I.      Introduction et marche royale du Lion
               (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion)
II.     Poules et Coqs 
               (Hens and Cocks)
III.    Hémiones (animaux véloces) 
               (Wild Asses)
IV.   Tortues
                (Tortoises)
V.     L’Éléphant 
                (The Elephant)
VI.    Kangourous 
                (Kangaroos)
VII.   Aquarium
VIII.  Personnages à longues oreilles
                (Personages 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
 
 
you’ll want to read the poems that Ogden 
Nash later wrote about them, his very own
“Carnival of the Animals“, that now often
accompany the piece, a mistake, I find, for
exposing two entirely idiosyncratic and 
incompatible sensibilities opposite each
other, thereby taking away from each 
 
but Walt Disney has, and you will too have,
a great deal of fun nevertheless with both
of them, though they’re somewhat in his
version abridged, no swan 
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
Leave a comment
September 29, 2012

“Pictures at an Exhibition” – Modest Mussorgsky‏

 
“You are definately (sic) now in Chopin mode!“, a friend
writes, much as the culture itself would’ve found
itself after a surfeit of Chopin, giving way to of
course newer inventions in art  
 
if there is an overview that would present the
fundamental outline of what was occuring at
the time it is that the heart was giving way to
the mind, late Romanticism still throbbed with
stirring passions, but a more exploratory
psychological perspective would begin to  
dominate, spurred on by a more analytical
approach to everything, even the arts
themselves to the arts themselves, science
had been unearthing revelations, painters
analyzed paint, writers parsed writing, 
composers deconstructed musical composition
 
all investigated potentiality and purpose within
the area of their field to discover if it still had
relevance, and if so, how and why
 
the first step in moving away from emotion in
music was through an attempt at notational
description, to have music become evocative 
of a scene rather than of a sentiment through
orchestrations of sound, an intellectual appeal
to the more probing cerebellum rather than to 
the more facile and evident strings of a rhythmic,
ardently and compellingly pulsing, but primal 
and therefore unreasoning, heart
 
which could also easily become self-indulgent,
only the very best, Chopin, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, avoid it, let me add here the never
ever maudlin, always enchanting, Walt Disney,
who cuts mighty, mighty close to the saccharine
in his post-Second-World-War epoch, as do as
skilfully also indeed the other two in theirs
 
it’s all in the rubato, I think, where musical magic
is allowed to turn into pandering kitsch
 
 
here’s Modest Mussorgsky describing “Pictures
at an Exhibition“, each movement a particular
pictorial work, separated by the return of the
original theme, the “Promenade”, representative
of the amble forward, curatorial and monocled, 
I think, to the next considered instalment 
 
here’s the same thing again in a neat transcription
for guitar 
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
Leave a comment