Dance of Death(Saint-Saëns)
さぁ、今日は死の舞踏(フランス語: Danse macabre)はサン＝サーンスの交響詩です。彼が作曲した4つの交響詩の中で最も有名です。フランスの詩人アンリ・カザリスの奇妙で幻想的な詩に着想を得て、1872 年に最初に歌として作曲され、1874 年に管弦楽作品として編纂されました。真夜中の時計が鳴ると同時に骸骨が現れ、不気味に踊り始め、徐々に激しさを増していきます。しかし、雄鶏の鳴き声が夜明けを告げると、彼らは墓に逃げ帰り、その地域は再び静かになります。(English) Today, the Dance of Death (French: Danse macabre), Op. 40, R. 171, is a symphonic poem by Camille Saint-Saëns. It is the most famous of the four symphonic poems composed by Saint-Saëns. Inspired by the bizarre and fantastic poem by the French poet Henri Cazalis, it was first written as a song in 1872 and compiled as an orchestral work in 1874. At the stroke of the clock at midnight, skeletons appear and begin to dance eerily, gradually increasing in intensity. However, when the rooster's call announces the dawn, they flee back to their graves, and the area becomes silent once more, which is described descriptively.
Dance of Death(Saint-Saëns)
1)
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.
2)
According to 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 following year.
3)
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 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 central theme is heard on a solo flute and is followed by a descending scale on the solo violin.
4)
The rest of the orchestra, particularly the lower instruments of the string section, then joins in on the descending scale.
The central theme and the scale are then heard throughout the various areas of the orchestra until it breaks to the solo violin and the harp playing the scale.
5)
The piece becomes more energetic and climaxes at this point; the full orchestra plays with solid dynamics.
Towards the end of the work, another violin solo, now modulating, is joined by the rest of the orchestra.
The final section, a pianissimo, represents the dawn breaking and the skeletons returning to their graves.
6)
The piece uses 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.
Dance of Death (Saint-Saëns)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM
https://classic-info.net/saint-saens-danse-macabre/