Talk:The Carnival of the Animals

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My CD cover says that the "People with Long Ears" were actually meant to be critics. Can anybody check this information? --Pt 22:22, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I looked up your question regarding Saint Saens's The Carnival of the Animals. It seems like "People with Long Ears" may have been referring to donkeys, though some sources do think that he was making a political statement. No one knows for sure... Flcelloguy 18:51, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

The violins are going "hee-haw" from the outset. The French Wikipedia article is written with a wit forbidden in English Wikipedia. Note how there isn't a whiff of an idea in this article that these are jeux d'esprit— even, I suspect, in the swooping lyricism of The Swan. --Wetman 02:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Reference for the identification of 'Persons with Long Ears' as critics here [1]. I thought this was so well-known as to be incontrovertible: otherwise, why did CS-S not just call the movement 'asses'? Garrick92 10:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dances des sylphes

I'm doubtful of the claim that L'Éléphant is derived from Hector Berlioz's Dances des sylphes, for two reasons:

  1. It is called "Ballet des sylphes", not "Dances des sylphes."
  2. Ballet des sylphes doesn't sound much like L'Éléphant to me. --220.237.67.125 08:50, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'Satire'

User:118.92.189.35 has just added a long section headed 'Satire' claiming that the movements "in fact" satirise various people and institutions. No citations are given, so I propose to delete this section unless the material is justified very soon. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not OR, so far as I know, as I'm pretty sure I've read it before. I'll check my various linar notes to see what turns up. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:25, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I've removed it. That editor had posted a chunk of OR at Robin Hood, thought I should check on what else they wrote. The one strong claim made - that Saint Saens himself said that the swan was about Pavlova - couldn't possibly be true, since the piece was written 5 years before Pavlova went to ballet school. Clearly that piece was identified with her later, but the assertion that it was written as a caricature of her is ludicrous. It may well be true that the piece was intended to caricatures other people; but we need something better researched than this. Bazzargh (talk) 12:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, my searchings didn't turn up anything like the paragraph was saying. I could have sworn I've read SOMETHING -- I do know the "Wild Asses" movement is supposedly referring to critics as asses, and the "Pianists" movement is pretty obvious in what it's doing. Beyond that, no idea. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:32, 28 March 2008 (UTC)