Saint-Saëns specified in his will that the work should be published posthumously. He relented only for the famous cello solo The Swan, which forms the penultimate movement of the work, and which was published in 1887 in an arrangement by the composer for cello and solo piano (the original uses two pianos). Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image. All those performances were semi-private, except for one at the Société des instruments à vent in April 1892, and "often took place with the musicians wearing masks of the heads of the various animals they represented".
There were other performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of Mi-Carême. Ī few days later, a second performance was given at Émile Lemoine's chamber music society La Trompette, followed by another at the home of Pauline Viardot with an audience including Franz Liszt, a friend of the composer, who had expressed a wish to hear the work. This zoological fantasy was received with great enthusiasm. Monsieur Lebouc managed to assemble a definitive line-up of eminent performers: Messieurs Saint-Saëns, Diémer, Taffanel, Turban, Maurin, Prioré, de Bailly and Tourcy who, after a very interesting program, took part in the first performance of a very witty fantasy burlesque, composed for this concert by Saint-Saëns and entitled the Carnival of the Animals. He had apparently intended to write the work for his students at the École Niedermeyer de Paris, but it was first performed at a private concert given by the cellist Charles Lebouc on 3 March 1886: On 9 February 1886 he wrote to his publishers Durand in Paris that he was composing a work for the coming Shrove Tuesday, and confessing that he knew he should be working on his Third Symphony, but that this work was "such fun" ( ". mais c'est si amusant!"). From the beginning he regarded the work as a piece of fun. Le Coucou au fond des bois (The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods)įollowing a disastrous concert tour of Germany in 1885–86, Saint-Saëns withdrew to a small Austrian village, where he composed The Carnival of the Animals in February 1886. Personnages à longues oreilles (Characters with Long Ears) Hémiones (animaux véloces) (Wild Donkeys Swift Animals) Introduction et marche royale du lion (Introduction and Royal March of the Lion) The set of options available for the Dream Aquarium moving screensaver will satisfy the most demanding virtual aquarist: you can change the number and species of fish, form any landscape, adjust the air supply and the amount of light and a lot more.
And how about the game mode when you get to feed the fish if you see that their behavior becomes too agitated or, otherwise, too slowly paced! Naturally, it is just a pleasure to watch how angelfish, catfish, barbels and other cichlids scurrying about their entire virtual habitat looking for food, playing and fighting (which cannot be avoided in a limited space!). The 3D screensaver is so realistic that it will take some time for your guests to figure out that it is not a regular video in front of them but a computer simulator. With simple hand movements, you build the landscape to your liking and fill the aquarium with those inhabitants that sometimes you cannot obtain in real life. The use of the most cutting-edge graphics technologies allowed us to create a dream aquarium the inhabitants and landscape of which do not require any visits to a pet shop.
The Dream Aquarium 3D screensaver allows you to return those happy times when the trees used to be large and the colors used to be only bright. Who didn't try to become an advanced aquarist as a child hoping to amaze classmates by his or her encyclopedic knowledge about inhabitants of the underwater world? Unfortunately, these attempts were in vain in most cases: the necessity to keep an aquarium perfectly clean on a daily basis is a duty that a child becomes tired of too quickly.