DESCRIPTION:
Le carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals) is a musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns.

Le carnaval was composed in February 1886 while Saint-Saëns was vacationing in a small Austrian village.

Aquarium

Strings without double-bass, two pianos, flute, and glass harmonica: This is one of the more musically rich movements. The melody is played by the flute, backed by the strings, on top of tumultuous, glissando-like runs in the piano. The first piano plays a descending ten-on-one ostinato, in the style of the second of Chopin's études, while the second plays a six-on-one. These figures, plus the occasional glissando from the glass harmonica — often played on celesta or glockenspiel—are evocative of a peaceful, dimly-lit aquarium.