The Swan (The Carnival of the Animals)

Saint-Saëns wrote Le carnaval des animaux in February 1886, during a rest in a small Austrian town, for a private Shrove Tuesday concert among friends — and then forbade its publication. The parodies were too pointed: Offenbach's can-can slowed to a crawl for the tortoises, Berlioz and Mendelssohn filed among the fossils, pianists included between the animals as a species practising scales. He feared the fourteen movements would undo his standing as a serious composer. Only Le cygne was allowed out during his lifetime. The full score appeared in 1922, the year after his death, and never left the repertory.