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Danse Macabre (first performed in 1875) is
the name of opus 40 by French composer
Camille Saint-Saëns.
The composition is based upon a poem by Henri
Cazalis, on an old French superstition:
Zig, zig, zig, Death in a cadence,
Striking with his heel a tomb,
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin.
The winter wind blows and the night is
dark;
Moans are heard in the linden trees.
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,
The bones of the dancers are heard to
crack—
But hist! of a sudden they quit the
round,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has
crowed.
According to the ancient superstition,
"Death" appears at midnight every year on
Halloween. Death has the power to call forth
the dead from their graves to dance for him
while he plays his fiddle (represented by a
solo violin with its E-string tuned to an
E-flat in an example of scordatura tuning).
His skeletons dance for him until the first
break of dawn, when they must return to their
graves until the next year.
The piece opens with a harp playing a single
note, D, twelve times to signify the clock
striking midnight, accompanied by soft chords
from the string section. This then leads to
the eerie E flat and A chords (also known as
a tritone or the "Devil's chord") played by a
solo violin, representing death on his
fiddle. After which the main theme is heard
on a solo flute and is followed by a
descending scale on the solo violin. The rest
of the orchestra, particularly the lower
instruments of the string section, then joins
in on the descending scale. The main theme
and the scale is then heard throughout the
various sections of the orchestra until it
breaks to the solo violin and the harp
playing the scale. The piece becomes more
energetic and climaxes at this point; the
full orchestra playing with strong
dynamics.Towards the end of the piece, there
is another violin solo, now modulating, which
is then joined by the rest of the orchestra.
The final section, a pianissimo, represents
the dawn breaking and the skeletons returning
to their graves.
The piece makes particular use of the
xylophone in a particular theme to imitate
the sounds of rattling bones. Saint-Saëns
uses a similar motif in the Fossils part of
his Carnival of the Animals.
Artwork:Remedios Varo,"Les Feuilles Mortes".
Played by:National Philharmonic Orchestra
London ,conductor:Leopold Stokowski.
Tags : Camile Saint Saens Danse Macabre |
