Danse macabre

The popular Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) actually started out as a song for voice and piano in 1872; the song’s text derived from an old French legend that reminded people about the fragility of life. Death is described as dancing men, women, and children to their graves—no matter their age, no matter their station in life, from the lowliest to the most exalted—all come to the same end. This legend also inspired Franz Liszt’s Totentanz (1849) which dramatizes the frolicking mayhem as a mini piano concerto. Like Liszt’s work, the Danse Macabre uses the medieval dies irae plainchant for motivic material. And perhaps recognizing the expressive power of the concerto model, Saint-Saëns revised the song to become a work for violin and orchestra. The choice of violin as the solo instrument was hardly random: the medieval tale refers to the devil scratching out a tune on his fiddle, causing all the dead to rise from the grave.
The Danse begins with a simple, quiet introduction by the orchestra. Twelve D’s in the harp toll the midnight hour, and onto the scene steps Old Nick with strident tritone double-stops in the solo violin. In addition to the legend’s “fiddling devil” motif, Saint-Saëns’ decision to highlight the violin plays on the then-current myth that Niccolò Paganini, that towering virtuoso, had taken “all necessary steps” to achieve such astounding skill on the violin. No similar tales were told about oboists or trumpeters, for instance, so Saint-Saëns’ choice of violin seems entirely apt.
The Danse main theme is based on two motives: a lyrical chromatic line descending from the tonic down to the dominant, and a more spirited dance figure. The former is picked up for fugal treatment in the development section, during which Saint-Saëns also varies the interval structure to add a more languorous mood and introduce secondary keys. Surging gestures signal the impending reprise of the violin’s opening tritones. But rather than simply restating the theme, Saint-Saëns overlaps the two main ideas, allowing the dancing figure to skip lightly over the more earth-bound descending bass line.
The work’s appeal is not hard to understand when one considers the factors deftly brought together in this short work: the haunting legend as backdrop, colorful harmonic progressions, violin virtuosity, and lush orchestration. Sounds like a formula for success. I wonder what Saint-Saëns had to do—what deal he had made—to acquire such knowledge. . . .

(c) Jason Stell