The Carnival of the Animals is a humorous musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), written for Shrove Tuesday 1886. From the beginning, Saint-Saëns regarded the work as a piece of fun and received much criticism for its childish facet, in contrast to his own "serious composer" status. "The Swan," the thirteenth movement of the Carnival, is one of the most well-known movements of the suite, especially in the cello version, since unlike the others it can be played in concert out of context. Devoid of the other movements' caricatural distortion, "The Swan" is a very poetic cello solo with piano.