Danse Macabre Op.40
Saint-Saëns’ musical career stretched from the age of Berlioz and Chopin through to the era of Stravinsky and Ravel. He gave his first public performance as a child-prodigy pianist in 1845, and matured into France’s most respected composer of the late 19th century. He wrote the first French piano concerto (1858), the first French symphonic poem ("Le Rouet d’Omphale", 1871), and the world’s first film score ("L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise", 1908) yet rose to the head of the notoriously conservative French musical establishment – from which position, in old age, he himself delivered indignant attacks on the new music of Debussy and Ravel. He was a hard-working but very reserved man, and this comes through in his music, most of which is written with tremendous colour, vivacity and tunefulness, but gives away few of the composer’s own more intimate feelings. This, of course, poses no problem at all in the numerous works which Saint-Saëns wrote purely in order to entertain – and it’s these that have most strongly held their place in the repertoire. In fact, the most popular of all his works, the "Carnaval des animaux", was one for which he had no serious intentions at all – it was written purely as a joke to entertain some musical friends.
Danse Macabre doesn’t quite fall into this category but certainly displays the composer’s ability to paint musical pictures and craft good tunes. Originally written as a song to a Hallowe’en poem by Henri Cazali, Saint-Saëns turned it into a purely orchestral work in 1874, taking advantage of the opportunities for instrumental colour suggested by the poem:
"Moonbeams beak fitfully through the ragged clouds. Twelve heavy strokes sound from the church bell. (Harp and strings.) As the last stroke fades, strange sounds are heard from the graveyard, and the moonlight falls on a ghastly figure; it is Death, sitting on a tombstone and tuning his fiddle (Violin solo.)…The sinister notes of Death’s mistuned violin call the dead forth from their graves; they flutter around in a demoniacal dance. (A sweeping, chromatic waltz-tune.) Wilder and wilder race the rattling skeletons round the figure of Death as he beats time with his clattering skeleton foot. (The Xylophone joins the orchestra.) Suddenly, as if seized by a terrible suspicion, they stop. In the icy wind, (Rushing scale passages in the strings) Death’s notes cannot be heard. A tremor runs through the ranks of the dead. But Death’s goading notes once more shatter the silence and once again the dead hurl themselves into the dance, wilder than before. Suddenly Death stops his playing...the sound of a cock-crow is heard. (Oboe solo.) The dead scurry back to their graves and the weird vision fades away in the light of dawn".
R. G. Bratby, 2001
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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