Carnival of the Animals

What gives Sebastian Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-sufficient.

– Camille Saint-Saëns, from a letter to Camille Bellaigue, 1907

This is a long overdue post: because I’m still struggling with a lack of creative energy – drained most certainly by the tedious legal reading and writing process; also perhaps I’ve just not been sleeping much lately to want to discover some random things to unleash my unfounded writing…

Until today, that is… Pandora saves the day…

Yes I opened the magic box, even after deciding to refuse their service when Pandora limited my listening potentials to only 40 hours per month. But I realized I just can’t live without the ghost in the machine deciding for me what to listen, and on occasion – deliver something new and fascinating.

In fact, Pandora saved my creative desire today by introducing me to Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals.

The story goes: I was sitting in my office, typing away some meaningless analysis about this whole new media crap, and suddenly my mind was transported to a landscape of the wild; I hear a beautifully balanced song that strikes the form into its emotional expression in a perfect way; playful yet masterfully presented.

I was curious enough to wiki it and found out some very interesting facts about Camille Saint-Saëns and the Carnival of the Animals.

Saint-Saëns was a French composer mostly struggled with his professionalism to music and perhaps his inner ode to the vivacious side of life. He composed this piece of music, yet refused to allow its performance fearing such production will surly jeopardize his upheld persona. In fact, he only allowed one movement, Le Cygne, to be published in his lifetime. Luckily for me, life is but a passing moment, and the spirit of Saint-Saëns survived in his music.

In the Carnival of the Animals, put into the context of Saint-Saëns’ intent and will, I found salvation. Lost in the legal universe of the mumbo-jumbo, I too struggle with the quality demand of professionalism and formalistic intervals of repetitive writing. Yet, the story of this music inspired me to look beyond the limited span of my obligation to legal writing, and brought forth the forgotten wisdom of Buddhism: that all things must change and shall be balanced, even it is beyond my comprehension and hope. Now I see that perhaps one day, my personal legacy to my own benefit, will manifest the certainty of balance between technical writing and creative mumbling. I only devoted to this short moment in passing to learn how to write better, and in its eventual outcome I shall hope to remember myself as a better thinker able to communicate clearly… but as I can see from the way I write today, it will be a long and arduous journey.

In passing, I leave you with a short video and a set of humorous verses to accompany Andre Kostelanetz’s recording of Carnival of the Animals:

At midnight in the museum hall
The fossils gathered for a ball
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
A rolling, rattling, carefree circus
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.
Amid the mastodontic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil.
"Cheer up, sad world," he said, and winked-
"It's kind of fun to be extinct."