Book Description
The animals are having a carnival, and the guests are arriving. There's the majestic lion, the braying mules, the dancing elephant, and the bouncy kangaroos. Even the fossils join in with a fast and rattly dance. Everyone is invited!Nearly 150 years ago, the composer Camille Saint-Saeuml;ns was asked by his pupils to write a musical joke for them. He wrote the Carnival of the Animals, a piece people enjoyed so much that it has now become one of Saint-Saeuml;ns's most famous works.This accessible commentary, in a picture-book format, helps children follow each section of Saint-Saeuml;ns's classic piece while they listen to the CD. Whimsical illustrations, a simple text, and evocative melodies create an ideal introduction for young children to the world of classical music.
Customer Reviews:
Two Two Year Old Thumbs Up!.......2007-10-17
I purchased this for my son right before his 2nd birthday. He loved it. It kept his attention during in 10 hour flight to France. The pictures and music are a great combonation.
Lovely Book to Share with Children.......2007-05-29
My 2.5 year old boy-girl twins really like this book and the music. I gave them the book/cd one week and they have listened to it about 2-3 times each day since I gave it to them. They like the pictures and point out things going on in the pictures. I like the descriptions in the book about what each animal is doing. The description is right on target with what is going on in the music and it is short enoguh to read aloud during the music and still enjoy listening to it.
We bought this book/cd because our kids really like "Peter and the Wolf" and grasped the idea that the instruments were telling the story of a person or animal.
Very good.......2007-04-11
Nice music, very good text in a book, explaining what you hear and also gives you some details about the author and music instruments. I just do not like very much the illustrations style, but this is very personal.
Good but the CD keeps falling out...........2006-06-30
I am a preschool teacher and purchased this for use in the classroom. One of the things I did not like about it was that the CD does not stay in the book and keeps falling out, so I am worried about it getting scratched. The children enjoy acting out the animals to the music so I am glad that I did get it for the planned body movement in the classroom. I am a big fan of classical music and the book that goes with the CD is well drawn and written.
GREAT FOR KIDS!.......2006-06-27
I use this book and CD collection in my preschool music classes. Sometimes I just do one song a week. Sometimes I save it until the end of the year and spend the whole session reading and dancing to the music pretending to be the various animals . They love it. The funny thing to me is that my grade school class (6-10 years old) saw it in my bag and asked about it and so I read them a bit and played a few selections at the end of class they loved it and insisted that I bring it back so that I could finish it. They love the music and the movement too!
Book Description
Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats for CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS! Tap your feet, clap your hands, let the words flow and the music swell, and allow these poems and pictures to transport you. Inspired by Saint-Saëns' famous "zoological fantasy," this magnificent book combines specially commissioned work by thirteen acclaimed modern poets with bold and glorious illustrations by Satoshi Kitamura.
The accompanying fifty-five-minute CD, performed by the Apollo Chamber Orchestra, features a reading of each of the fourteen poems followed by the appropriate musical passage, beautifully evoking for young listeners each of the animals in Saint-Saëns' famous 1886 fantasy for two pianos and orchestra.
Featuring specially commissioned poems by: * Gerard Benson * James Berry * Valerie Bloom * Charles Causley * Judith Chernaik * Gillian Clarke * Wendy Cope * Gavin Ewart * Cicely Herbert * X. J. Kennedy * Adrian Mitchell * Edwin Morgan * Kit Wright *
Customer Reviews:
I thought this book was not so good.......2006-09-19
I rate Carnival Animals two stars for fun illustrations and two pages of laughter. Thirty five percent of the poems that flow through the book are energizing. This book is like a taco: the good layer is the meat and cheese or illustrations; the bad layer is the lettuce and tomato or the rest of the poems.
Reviewed by Ben
Animalia Musicale.......2006-05-05
None of us get enough poetry in our lives. Our day-to-day interactions rarely cause us to stop and consider a work of Dickinson or even ponder a dollop of Frost. New Yorkers, however, have it easy. They get to see poetry every day. Thanks to the Poems on the Underground program that started in London and spread across the Atlantic, I get to read poems on the subway to and from work almost every day. So who should I thank for this chance to broaden my mind while crammed into someone's armpit? Thank Judith Chernaik, the founder of the same project. Now, however, Chernaik has expanded into the skittish world of children's literature. With Saint-Saens' light-hearted musical creation, "Carnival of the Animals" as her inspiration, she has culled poems from the brains of thirteen poets (including herself). In turn, Candlewick Press brought in well-established illustrator Satoshi Kitamura to whip up some pretty pictures for the equally pretty poems. The result is a wild concoction of image and sound. Poems leap off the page almost as beautifully as their visual counterparts. I have absolutely no idea who this book is supposed to be for in the end, but it's certainly nice enough to look at.
There are fourteen poems in all (no Table of Contents, sorry), with thirteen dedicated to the animals featured in Saint-Saens' music. Without so much as an Introduction, we immediately hit upon James Berry's faintly melancholy thoughts on the lion. From there we are whisked into a wild array of poems and animals. Gavin Ewart gives your average kangaroo a fairly metropolitan feel. Valerie Bloom tackles Saint-Saens', "The Aviary" and wins the book's Most Evocative Award. By the end we see the animals we've met now all on a stage with instruments in hand. The performance is done, and you are left remembering as wild an amalgamation of poetry, music, and visual art as you'll ever find again.
Kitamura's style of illustration has never done anything for me in the past. It's always struck me as cute but lacking. Now, as if to show me how wrong I've always been, Kitamura's pictures in this book burst from the pages with a kind of frenzied glee. He's gone haywire with "Carnival". Watercolors may be sepia toned one minute and then show an equallly dignified image of horses running across a green grass plain. The poem "Pianists" manages to be well-ordered around the text, and then explode into a sumptuous feast of colors and images comparable only to what happens when you close your eyes and press hard on your eyelids. His tortoises dance, his swan looks as if it should be accompanied by a haiku, and about the time you reach the dinosaur bones playing the clarinet you'll never want to leave the book again.
But who was this written for? Admittedly it's fairly easy to tell from the start that these were not children's poets Chernaik tapped. So perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised when Gerard Benson likens donkeys to theater critics or Gillian Clarke gives us elegant lines about the cuckoo like, "grows fat on murder, and in a stolen house / sings her two notes in an angel's voice". The poets are all excellent, of course. You won't find me maligning Edwin Morgan or Charles Causley. There's a lot of free verse, some variegated rhyme schemes, but that's about it. Don't expect anyone to get too creative. This is not the book to use if you want to show kids what a haiku or a senryu or even a sonnet is. The poetic forms found here are just what struck each poet as apropos at any given time. No more. No less. You want different kinds of poems? Go locate Paul Janeczko's, "A Kick In the Head", instead. Will kids be interested in animal poems that never get silly like Douglas Florian or include factual information like Joyce Sidman's, "Song of the Water Boatman"? If I were to harbor a guess, I'd have to say no. They won't instantly take to this book. And though I shudder to say it, I suspect that John Lithgow's version of "Carnival of the Animals" (which came out a mere 3 years before this book) is going to entertain kids far far more.
I searched in vain for the reason why Chernaik chose now to cull a picture book out of music that has already lent itself to picture books so often before. Why even limit it to children? It seems a little odd to be putting out yet another Carnival of the Animals picture book so soon after the Lithgow book that was tied into a 2003 New York City Ballet production. Certainly this book wins in the looks department. And the poems are very nice, yes yes. Maybe you could make a gift of this to a particularly musically gifted child. But Lithgow's book had one particular advantage over Chernaik's. In both cases, a CD accompanies the book. Which is to say, both books come with one. But while Lithgow's listed the track names on both the inside of the book AND on the CD itself, Chernaik's leaves all track information completely mysterious. Track names are necessary. They allow us to allow the music to follow along with the book. In Lithgow's case, he even went so far as to read each poem before the music it applied to. In contrast, the Chernaik book seems to have included the CD as an afterthought. The tracks match up with each poem, yes, but it would have been nice to hear someone read those poems after each selection of music. Or even, for that matter, know what each selection was even called? If you're trying to pull one section or poem out for consideration, it's mighty hard to do so without a title on the CD. It's also a little odd that the Chernaik CD begins without Saint-Saens' Introduction. An editing decision or the result of not planning a poem for that particular piece?
I can see this book used to teach poetry to teens (sneaking in a little classical music know-how to boot). Maybe some kids as well. But while Chernaik is the queen of the subway poetry selections, she has a ways to go before she conquers the world of children's literature quite as effectively. A nice book, but I honestly don't know who you'd want to give it to.
Book Description
Authoritative editions of Schumann's Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 129; Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 33; Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104. Clear notation, glossaries, more.
Customer Reviews:
Great Concertos For The Cello.......2003-08-30
Three great cello concertos are included in this edition, with perhaps the Dvorak concerto being the best ever written for the instrument.
Dover's edition is put together well. Clear printing, score lays flat, and once again, how can you beat the price? Recommended for anyone that loves these concertos and wants to learn more about them.
Average customer rating:
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Carnival of the Animals
Ogden Nash , and
Camille Saint-Saens
Manufacturer: Audio Literature
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
 Nash, Ogden
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ASIN: 1558006648 |
Book Description
Dedicated to the memory of Franz Liszt, the composer's friend and mentor, Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3 ("Organ") ranks among the most important contributions to French symphonic music. In this work, Saint-Saëns achieves a synthesis of the traditional four-movement symphony with Liszt's characteristic thematic metamorphosis.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing score for an amazing piece.......2005-09-16
The full score for CSS's organ symphony is very well arranged, easy to read, and is of good quality. It is really a steal at that price and is good enough for review or study. I used it to transcribe the piece to another instrument. For an orchestra you would need to have the piece-wise score for each instrument which obviously costs much more, but this is a good alternative for simpler applications, is great for a conductor or for transcribing, and is perfect for the casual reader. Very durable too.
Organ Score Smashes!.......2000-06-26
In an era where good manuscripts are expensive and somewhat difficult to obtain, Dover has made available the consummate example of organ and symphony in harmony. With easy readablity and the trademark 'lay-flat' binding, Dover allows easy access to all parts of the score with little confusion. A must for all who enjoy listening to this piece as well as those who study scores and instumental relationships.
Book Description
Saint-Saëns' best-known work consists of 14 pieces scored for flute/piccolo, clarinet, glass harmonica (tuned glass bowls), xylophone, two pianos, and strings. Playfully borrowing themes from other works — including his own — the composer paints delightful musical portraits of a lion, chickens, turtles, an elephant, kangaroos, and the immensely popular swan.
Average customer rating:
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Camille Saint-Saens and the French Solo Concerto: From 1850 to 1920
Michael Stegemann
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Saint-Saens, Camille
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ASIN: 0931340357 |
Book Description
This is a study of Saint Saens's concertante works - five concertos for piano, three for violin, two for cello, and shorter works.
Customer Reviews:
A valuable book.......2000-04-12
This is one of very few books recognising the special features of French music of the Romantic Era, and in particular the important contribution of music written by Camille Saint-Saens. Following the introduction, the first chapter offers a 32-page insight into the composer's character and life. This, alone, is a rare encounter and comes eight years before the detailed biographies by Rees and Studd. The following ten chapters are split into two sections dealing with the "Concertante" works by Saint-Saens and the French Solo Concerto around the same time. Both sections are logically structured and equipped with references, comparisons and examples, while works by Lalo, Dubois, Faure, Franck, Chausson and Debussy, to mention but a few, are additionally addressed. The interested reader can gain even more knowledge by consulting the appendices complementing the main chapters. In summary, for anyone keen to explore French romantic music this is a valuable book, which has been extensively researched and clearly written.
Book Description
Two of Saint-Saëns' most popular works appear in this affordable volume. First composed in song form, Danse Macabre was later rewritten as a symphonic poem about the dance of death. Havanaise is among the most challenging violin and orchestra pieces. Based on the Cuban dance.
Average customer rating:
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Havanaise, Op. 83, & Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28, for Violin an: With Separate Violin Part
Camille Saint-Saens
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Chamber Music
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ASIN: 0486408620 |
Book Description
Sant-Saéns displayed a polished craftsmanship and sense of form in the elegant gems he composed for piano and violin. These two well-known, melodious works by the famed French composer — frequently performed standards of the violin repertoire — are now available for musicians and music lovers to enjoy in one convenient, authoritative volume.
Book Description
Elegance and virtuosity characterize the 2 popular piano works in this volume: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 and Piano Concerto No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 44. Both have been reprinted from the authoritative editions published by Durand et Cie, Paris, n.d. Instrumentation.
Customer Reviews:
Indispensible scores.......2002-01-15
I found that the edition of these two masterpieces of the piano concerto literature absolutely indispensible. Saint-Saens was such a master, and his subtle, elegant and powerful writing for piano and the orchestra leaps off the printed score. We need to have the other piano concerti (1, 3 and 5) printed with the same care, and all of his other concerti, particuarly those for cello and violin needs to be treated with the same consideration. An excellent publication that every music lover should have!
Saint Saens Better Known Piano Concertos.......2000-05-24
I thought that this book was excellent. I found that the edition was very much as Saint Saens intended and I beleive that it was enlightening and informative. The staves were easy to read and the piano part especially was clear. As far as the actual music goes, it is devine. Saint Saens is a personal favorite and owning this score has been a delight. I recommend this book to any appreciator of music and most definately any pianist.
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