The Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens
Much to my dismay from initial rememberings, this piece is not, in fact, part of the intro for Sherlock Holmes. It is, however, the intro for a British T.V show called Jonathan Creek that I've enjoyed in the past, so that's something, at least. Either way, it's quite an inspired piece that is lovely to listen to, and this essay is aimed towards telling you a bit more about it, and completing one of the last school assignments I have left before being done with High School. Kinda weird, that.
Hope you enjoy this writing and the music, have yourself a lovely day, and see you tomorrow at eight AM for more!
The Danse Macabre by Mackinley Clevinger, May 19, 2016
Music comes in numerous forms, its history full of landmarks where bright and innovative minds decided that it was time for something new to hit the stage and be explored by following generations for centuries after that soul had perished and left an eternal mark on the world they would leave. One such innovation in music was a type of work known as a tone-poem; a story without words, told instead through the use of musical instruments that plant an image, an idea, in your mind without the need for a single syllable to be heard.
A great number of tone poems that continue to grip our imagination were created in the nineteenth century, the term ‘tone poem’ itself first being put into use in the same time-span. Often these tone poems, also known as symphonic poems, would be based on great works of art or literature, evoking the same feeling through the musical medium and adding their own embellishments to create something unique.
Among such names as Franz Liszt’s ‘Mazeppa’ and Richard Strauss’ ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ lies another symphonic poem of incredible merit: The ‘Danse Macabre’ by Camille Saint-Saens, a reworked version of an earlier piece that had lyrics which the composer chose to strip away, focusing solely on telling the story of ‘Egalite, Fraternite’ by Jean Lahor with a full range of instruments.
As the story goes, the cry of a rooster signals the end to their revels, and the piece slows with a tumultuous quieting down as the orchestra repeatedly rises and falls, finally coming to a stop with the violin playing a quiet, solo piece before a poignant end. With the promise of Death’s return next Halloween to raise the dead once more, an unforgettable tune is complete that continues to influence our minds over a century after its induction to the world.
It’s an impressive song to listen to, made all the more so when confronted by how complex the work is to be created by a single man. The ‘Danse Macabre’ makes use of a violin, piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, timpani, xylophone, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, harp, and strings; an entire orchestra bent around telling an audience an exhilarating tale of the darker side of the divine.
By all reports, the first performance of the ‘Danse Macabre’ was not well-met by its audience in 1875; they were put off by the screeching of the violin and the unsettling nature of a musical piece that tried to instill the sense of a graveyard full of dancing skeletons under the thrall of Death himself into the audience. While such may not have been well-received in nineteenth-century Europe, a more modern world has found great appreciation for this stellar work of art.
If you’ve listened to the ‘Danse Macabre’, then you can likely recognize the main theme that the violin plays in all its haunting glory; the same theme that appears in the opening sequences for episodes of a lovely British T.V show known as ‘Jonathan Creek’ that ran in the late nineteen-nineties. A musical piece composed in 1874 that was used over a century later to appear at the start of every episode of a show that ran for years shows an appreciation that has only grown, not waned, over the years.
As a symphonic poem, the ‘Danse Macabre’ tells the perfect story to accompany such a mournful melody, the composition of instruments and the dynamic of their interwoven parts captivating the mind of the listener as Death calls for a Halloween night revelry. Such was the greatness of Camille Saint-Saens’ work that it has found its way, over a century and a half after its creation, into modern popular media, the hearts of music lovers everywhere, and into your head.