Sunday, Nov 1, 2020 • 23min

Danse Macabre - Camille Saint-Saens

Classical Music: The Stories

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For Halloween week, Carl chooses a well known piece all about the antics of the dead on Halloween night.

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Carl Roewer

00:15

Welcome to "Classical Music: The Stories".

01:15

Good morning, good evening and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. I should also mention a happy Halloween to anyone who celebrates this holiday, and because it's Halloween where I am, I decided to do a Halloween themed episode, so you're all very welcome here.

01:38

The piece I've chosen today, which you heard at the beginning, is called "

Danse Macabre

", which I think is quite fitting for this week. "

Danse Macabre

" meaning "dance of death", and it was written by the French composer

Camille Saint-Saëns,

who was quite an influential person at that time.

02:03

He was born in France in 1835 and he's best known for his this work and also his "

Carnival of the Animals

" of which "

The Swan

" is most famous. I am sure a lot of you know "

The Swan

02:19

He was seen a bit like Mozart as a prodigy and he's often grouped with Mozart as the two greatest classical music pop prodigies of those times. He eventually went on to teach very famous composers, such as

Gabriel Fauré

Georges Bizet

and

César Frank.

Gabriel Fauré

then went on to teach

Maurice Ravel,

and both of those men have been said to have had a deep impression from

Camille Saint-Saëns

02:56

So, this piece of music "

Danse Macabre

" is a tone poem. A tone poem is a piece of music which tells the story and is continuous, it doesn't finish, and they can range in times from anything; literally from six minutes, which is this piece, all the way up to its ours, and it's like, a tone poem can only really be described by what it actually does, which is tell a story. It can't be described by the time, because there are so many different times.

03:32

This tone poem tells the legend of the

"Danse Macabre

", which is French legend. The legend being that on Halloween night, the Devil calls forth every single dead person from their grave and invites them for one evening of festivities, on October 31st, before they disappear back into their graves again, until next year.

04:01

The idea of the legend is to show that everyone, no matter what their rank was in real life, everyone is equal in death. And I think that's what

Camille

wanted to show that throughout this piece of music, he kept it consistent.

04:21

He kept repeating the phrases and repeating the ideas and subjects, which gives us an idea of consistency, and that's what we get in the human race: when they're dead, they're consistent, they don't have rank anymore, and I think he did that really well. I think it's really important to convey that I suppose in a piece of music.

04:45

This piece is also rife with information about what's happening at one time. That's quite important in a tone poem as, back in the day, concert programs — I mean, they were basically non existent —, they just showed what was going to be played; they had no notes whatsoever. So, the composer really had to try and make it clear what he was trying to say at that point, or she was trying to say at that point.

05:16

So, it opens — which you all heard — with the harp, and for those of you who counted how many times the harp plays the note, is indeed 12, and that signals the start, which is midnight — 12 strokes of midnight played by the harp before, out of nowhere, comes the solo

violin

playing as the Devil, which is it's an interesting combination: the

violin

and the Devil.

05:49

The

violin

is often seen as a kind of a a flowery, kind of virtuosic, happy instrument, but

Camille Saint-Saëns

, he gave the

violin

a really deep, sultry role in this piece of music. And I suppose a lot of violinists nowadays they do enjoy playing it, because it gives them a different perspective on things that they would never normally get.

06:16

Camille Saint-Saëns,

he originally wrote this for piano and solo soprano, which is the highest that lady voice can go, but he was encouraged by his really good friends. Who were also all very famous composers namely

Rossini

Berlioz

and

Liszt

, they all encouraged him two go in a different direction.

06:47

Like Brahms, last week,

Camille Saint-Saëns

had the kind of friends that would tell him if they didn't think something worked, and he also had the kind of friends whom he trusted and therefore he took their advice on board every single time. And, in this case, they encouraged him to leave the soprano and piano and change it into an orchestral piece and

Saint-Saëns

changed it very quickly — He changed the soprano part to the

violin

part.

07:23

The

violin

, when it comes in, this is gonna get quite technical now, when the

violin

comes in, they play two chords back and forth. To be exact, they are the chords of A and E-flat.

07:40

And, back in medieval times, this interval that was created by the chords translated from the Latin, basically, it was called the Devil in the music, and this was quite important when it came to writing these notes. When

Camille Saint-Saëns

heard about this, he knew that when the Devil came in, it had to be these two notes.

08:07

So, he used them and, as soon as the Devil has played their bit, then the entire orchestra is knocked into a massive flurry of excitement and movement, which keeps going throughout. It's just like, you can really almost hear the skeletons having a massive laugh and huge amount of fun.

08:34

I mean, part of the reason that you can hear that, is because of the

xylophone

, the

xylophone

being a percussion instrument, and

Camille Saint-Saëns

used that to to portray the sound of bones rattling, which he managed I think really well.

08:54

And at the very end, there's a massive climax, and that climax suddenly dies away and then you come to the coda, the coda being the end of the piece and it begins with an

oboe

, a single

oboe

calling out a simple line, which is supposed to represent the rooster or the cockerel crowing, heralding morning.

09:23

And from there, you can hear, first of all, the flurry of excitement as the skeletons return to their graves, and then the

violin

comes back in with a very new tune, which you haven't heard before. I suppose, a lament, as to why they aren't alive anymore before the

violin

disappears itself, and that's the end of the piece. It's as simple as that.

09:48

When it was first performed in France — Paris, to be exact — it wasn't very well received. People didn't like it, people didn't think it was very good, they saw the the screeching of the

violin

, the

xylophone

and its repetitive nature was really quite awful.

10:14

And people believe that it had some kind of pre-echo to another very famous piece, based solely on repetition called "

Boléro

" by

Maurice Ravel.

Boléro

" being a piece that relies solely on the repetition of two melodies, and people believed that "

Danse Macabre

" was kind of a prelude to this, as

Ravel

was deeply influenced by

Saint-Saëns,

but well, today we can now say with confidence that they were all completely wrong and silly.

10:53

It's now thought as his masterpiece and the piece that makes him famous among people today. That and his other piece, which has gained him fame, "

The Carnival Of The Animals

", which does include "

The Swan"

, very famous cello solo — which I think most of you would know.

11:16

For me, I think this piece is brilliant and the reason for that is because it's a lot of fun to listen to. And, there's a bit in the middle of it where the

timpani

gets the solo. The

timpani

, which is a percussion instrument, gets the tune and they played just two notes.

11:34

But, it sounds so exciting because, well, the

timpani

hardly ever gets the tune. Let's be real, it's a percussion instrument used solely for creating drama, and when they play the tune, the melody, there is something that's very different. A new sound has been created and it's really, really interesting to listen to.

11:57

Overall, I think the composer was exactly right to do everything that he did. The 12 strokes of midnight in the beginning make it so exciting, because you think, "What's going to happen next?", there's just a massive amount of silence after that and then out of nowhere comes the

violin

. I think it's genius writing and I really think that it's absolutely right that it gets the publicity that it does today.

12:27

A little bit more about

Saint-Saëns

, I already mentioned that he was born in France in 1835, his father died after two months and he lived in with his mother and his widowed, but at three, it was already clear that he was going to be a musical genius.

12:47

It is said that he already had perfect pitch — which is being able to pitch a note exactly as to what it is — and he was already able to pick up tunes on the piano, much like the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from about 70 years beforehand. So, his aunt saw this talent and she got him a teacher and from there, his musical life blossomed.

13:20

Other notable pieces that he composed were his

Organ Symphony

, the

Symphony No. 3

Camille Saint-Saëns

was also a gifted organist and so he played the organ in that premier. He also composed a very famous

violin

piece, which is seen as one of the most famous solo

violin

pieces to date, called the "

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso

13:51

I love that piece, I think it's a lot of fun, much like his "

Danse Macabre

", but if I had to choose a piece by him, it would be this one, his "

Danse Macabre

". I think that's his best and I think it's his most fun and is the piece that I enjoy listening to the most at the moment.

14:08

He died in 1921. At that point he had kind of built up a little bit of controversy surrounding his pieces. His "

Danse Macabre

" was received not that well, and from there, it was kind of difficult enough to get work again, but he's still composed and he still performed to packed audiences.

14:29

But when he died, people didn't see him as the master that Beethoven had been, for example, which I think is really sad. I think he deserved more recognition, but there you go. I suppose everyone is equal in death.

14:48

So, I think that's all there is to say about this piece. Just as a sort of post scriptum, if you wanted to explore the music of

Camille Saint-Saëns

a little bit more, I would definitely recommend his "

Carnival Of The Animals

" for anyone who hasn't listened to that. It's basically a piece written for the purpose of children to understand the different instruments of the orchestra.

15:12

You get all the different instruments playing animal each, in a in a sort of collection of little pieces and I think it's very sweet, actually, lovely little piece. And then of course, if you're feeling brave, then go for the

Symphony No. 3

, the

Organ Symphony

. That is fabulous piece, absolutely brilliant. So yeah, that'll be it for today.

15:36

So, to finish off, here is the full

"Danse Macabre

" by

Camille Saint-Saëns

, I managed to find the first ever recording of this piece, ever recorded, which is

Leopold Stokowski,

classical music great of the time — some of you may know him from the Disney movie

Fantasia

, as the conductor of all the music there.

16:04

And so, yeah,

Leopold Stokowski

and the

Philadelphia Orchestra,

also in

Fantasia

, they were the first recording of "

Danse Macabre

" ever and that is exactly what I've got for you here today.

16:19

So, thank you very much for listening and please, enjoy the full "

Danse Macabre

" by

Camille Saint-Saëns

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