One of the most famous works of classical music is the orchestral suite "Carnival of the Animals", by Camille Saint-Seans. Each piece in the suite is intended to create a visual picture in the listener's mind of a different animal, such as a swan, elephant, kangaroo, etc. Such imagery is usually accomplished by recreating charactaristic movements of each animal with musical sound. Thus, the lumbering elephant is represented by a low-register bass melody, the graceful swan becomes a legato, solo 'cello line, and the kangaroo's hops are depicted by quick glissandos in the piano.
Although this is the best-known example of animal imagery in music, it is by no means the first. Following is a collection of musical moments in which composers attempted to create pictorial images of animals in their music.
Both Scarlatti and Chopin wrote keyboard pieces which attempted to recreate the sound of a pet cat running across a keyboard: The "Cat's Fugue" by Scarlatti, and the "Cat's Waltz" by Chopin. Cats are favorite subjects of many composers, perhaps because of their very unique choreography of motion, as well as their characteristic "meow" (In fact, Rossini wrote a duet for two sopranos in which "meow" was the only word.). In the "Coffee Cantata" of J.S. Bach, the composer had fun with the line, "Die Katzen laesst das Mausen nicht" (Cats will never give up chasing mice). In this case, he depicted the frenzied, start-and-stop motion of a cat stalking a mouse in the flute part:
The sixteenth-note runs represent the sudden surges of motion a cat typically displays when chasing real or imaginary prey. This is a good example of an animal being depicted by recreating its characteristic movements.
One of Bach's favorite animal depictions was the snake, its slithery motions easily depicted by melisma passages in the voice or obligato part. A well known-example is found in the "St. Matthew Passion", in the which the soprano laments that a child of God has become a serpent (refering to Judas):
A less obvious example is found in the Christmas Oratorio. I had always been enchanted by the string arabesque in the alto aria Bereite dich, Zion, never suspecting that this obligatto:
was, in fact, intended to represent the movement of snakes. As Schweitzer pointed out in "J.S. Bach", the aria was originally taken from an earlier secular cantata (This was one of two arias taken from that cantata for use in the Christmas Oratorio, the other being Schlafe, mein Liebster). The aria originally dealt with the child Hercules being surrounded by snakes in his crib. Hence, the "snake-like" obligatto in an aria about the birth of Christ.
While the snake's slithering is easily heard in such passages, Franz Schubert was faced with the challenge of depicting the movement of a fish in his song, Die Forelle (The Trout). Fortunately, Schubert was up to the challenge, creating a picture of the fish "darting to and fro" with this accompaniment patter:
Most classical music lovers know this pattern from the composer's famous "Trout" Quintet, based on the original song. It proved to be one of his most enduring works.
The text of Haydn's "Creation" is full of references to animals, and the composer clearly enjoyed depicting them with his music. Following the biblical text, Haydn begins with the lion, its roar represented by a trill in the basses and cellos:
immediately followed by the tiger, its leaps portrayed by quick, ascending runs in the strings:
The image of the stag is created by summoning pictures of the hunt with a passage reminiscent of hunting horns:
Haydn uses similar imagery for the horse:
While the quiescent cow is protrayed with this pastoral theme:
These are fairly conservative examples of animal imagery in music, since Haydn was bound by the conventions of the Viennese Classical school. It is a tribute to his genius that he was able to create such vivid pictures within the confines of Classical thought.
Perhaps the most alluring animals to depict musically are birds, since the sounds they make are very close to music already. In addition to the other animals, Haydn included bird representations in the Creation, devoting an aria to them. After using a sweeping ascending figure to portray the flight of the eagle, he uses this passage to represent the call of the dove:
Trills are commonly used by composers in their portrayal of bird calls, having a very bird-like quality.
In Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, he made no bones about it: In the second movement, he made it clear in his score exactly which birds he was depicting in this passage:
One of these birds, the Nightengale, was depicted somewhat differently by Schubert in Die Nachtigall:
Why is the depiction of animals so prevelant in the music of the great composers? Perhaps it reflects a desire to return to their ultimate roots; after all, the first music was merely a mimicking of nature. The preceding examples show that even the greatest levels of sophistication are subject to influence from the most primeval sources.