For Mclean Melody’s concert at Brightview Senior Living Center, I chose to play a piece called The Swan by Camille Saint-Saens on the cello. This was a very wonderful piece to play, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it for the senior residents at Brightview.
The Swan is a decently hard piece to play. The difficulty around this piece is not because of its tempo, but because of the dynamics, playing the right notes, and making sure to play in a calm and serene way with the bow. It’s a nice piece for cello players who are more advanced, because while anyone can play the piece, not everyone can play it well.
Background of “The Swan” :
In 1886, Camille wrote “Carnival of Animals” for entertainment. This composition included “The Swan”, “The Lion”, “Wild Donkey” and other animals present in a carnival. Although he wrote so many pieces for this “Carnival of Animals” composition, he decided to keep it private, because he thought the humorous and lighthearted pieces would ruin his reputation as a serious composer. The only piece he published was “The Swan” simply because of its beauty and popularity. The piece was was written for a cello and piano to perform, where the cello would play a flowing melody, while the piano would accompany it with rippling sixteenth-notes.
“The Swan” became famous when a ballerina, Anna Pavlova, decided to use the piece in one of her ballet’s. This ballet was named, “The Dying Swan”, and she performed this particular ballet over 4,000 times throughout her career, solidifying it as one of her most famous ballet’s and etching the song into the minds of countless people around the world.
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