Sunday 14 February 2010

The connection is...

... all of the animals/situations featured in the last blog post are different compositions from Le Carnaval des Animaux by French composer Camille Saint-Saƫns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnrDNoy4_9U (Me attempting to play the double bass theme from The Elephant on piano, with one hand.)

There are 14 compositions:

Introduction and royal march of the lion (represented by male African lion, Panthera leo)
Hens and cocks (represented by, well, hens and cocks, Gallus gallus)
Wild asses (skeleton of kulan, Equus hemionus kulan, to represent this)
Tortoises (a pair of radiated tortoises, Astrochelys radiata)
The elephant (African savannah elephant, Loxodonta africana)
Kangaroos (stuffed and mounted Doria's tree kangaroos, Dendrolagus dorianus)
Aquarium (an aquarium with Canara pearlspots, Etroplus canarensis)
Characters with long ears (obviously supposed to be a donkey, so represented by Poitou donkey, Equus asinus)
The cuckoo in the depths of the woods (a stuffed and mounted common cuckoo, Cuculus canorus)
Aviary (the three galliforms in the cage being a rooster, a male blue peafowl, Pavo cristatus, and a male pheasant, Phasianus colchicus)
Pianists (represented by myself)
Fossils (trilobites, specifically Calymene niagarensis)
The swan (a mute swan, Cygnus olor, with a seemingly-crooked neck)
Finale (a mixture of many of the above animals)

I wasn't sure if anyone would get the connection, it's just that I've been listening to this a lot lately and was inspired to set up a little quiz.

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