DANSE MACABRE (score & parts)

Danse macabre was written in 1874 by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). The piece begins with a single note, D, played 12 times (representing the 12 strokes of midnight). Then ‘Death’ enters, playing a dissonant A-E flat tritone (sometimes known as the devil’s interval) which summons the dead to rise from their graves and to begin dancing. Saint-Saëns directly quotes a Dies irae plainsong and a theme that he mimics in a later work, Fossils (from the Carnival of the Animals). The frenzied dancing is interrupted at dawn when the cockerel crows (played by the oboe) and the skeletons return to their graves.

Danse macabre is considered one of Saint-Saëns’ masterpieces. It is widely heard in the concert hall and has been incorporated into many films and TV programmes including: Shrek The Third, the western Tombstone (1993), the Disney animation Mickey’s House of Villains (2002), Hugo (2011), BBC TV’s Jonathan Creek, the Nickelodeon series Deadtime Stories, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Surely a Halloween favourite?!

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