This track is from a CD called Arthur Fiedler * Boston Pops - Pops Concert (RCA 1987). Here's what it says in the liner notes: Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre (originally a song) gives a faithful orchestral narration of the events of a Henri Cazalis' poem describing what happens in a cemetary when "Death plays a dance tune, Zig and Zig and Zig, on his fiddle." Harp notes betoken the tolling of midnight, and then Death tunes his fiddle--in the minor; use of harmonicas in the orchestra's strings lends eeriness to the tuning, and the xylophone creates an effect of skeletons stealing forth and waltzing. With the voice of the oboe, one hears the cock crow his signal of dawn--and the skeletons scamper away and are quiet.
1 comment:
I used to listen over and over to this recording of "Danse Macabre" on a classical musical LP set when I was a kid! Conjured up in my mind's eye very vivid images of spectral dancers, waltzing away in an abandoned old hall. Thanks for this, and thank you VERY MUCH INDEED for the photo from Viewmaster FRANKENSTEIN. I've never seen one before and always have wanted to!
Max the drunken severed head
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