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Danse Macabre (arr B.Sheldon)

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Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns (arr. Brian Sheldon)


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General Info

Year: 1874
Duration: c. 3:15
Difficulty: III (see Ratings for explanation)
Original Medium: Symphony
Publisher: Unknown
Cost: Score and Parts - Unknown


Instrumentation

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Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

Danse Macabre, Op. 40, is a tone poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, which is based on an old French superstition. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked the piece into a tone poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin.

According to legend, "Death" appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year. The piece makes particular use of the xylophone to imitate the sounds of rattling bones. Saint-Saëns uses a similar motif in the Fossils movement of The Carnival of the Animals.

- Program Note from Wikipedia


Media

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State Ratings

None discovered thus far.


Performances

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Works for Winds by This Composer

Adaptable Music


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Resources