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Outdoors with Coggin Heeringa: Unearthing the undead

"The Dance of Death" (1493) by Michael Wolgemut

Camille Saint-Saëns "Danse macabre" includes frantic violin calls and bone-chilling percussion. The deadly dance reminds listeners that as day breaks, the living carry on, but the shadow of death looms ever closer.

“Danse macabre” is a tone poem set on Halloween night. And it is appropriately creepy.

Composer Camille Saint-Saëns based it on a French legend, but the concept of the "dance of death" goes all the way back to the Middle Ages to the time of the Black Death and other devastating plagues and pandemics.

In song and picture, the allegorical "danse macabre" depicts the living and the dead dancing together. But in this dance, the rich and poor, the Pope and the peasant, the emperor and the serf all dance together along with Death. No matter one’s power or possessions, Death conquers all.

In Saint-Saëns's tone poem, Death — represented by a frantic, dare I say screechy violin — calls the dead to rise from the grave to dance with the living while the woodwinds play the “Dies irae" (Day of wrath) from the Latin Requiem Mass. The ghoulish dance accelerates until a rooster crows (represented by an oboe) announcing the dawn while the dry bones of the dead (represented by a xylophone) return to their graves.

Not just on Halloween... in fact, more often in the breeding season, male birds including roosters announce the dawn. They are not singing for joy. Most male birds are territorial. With the dawn call, a male bird is announcing to other birds that he survived the night (at least this time) and that his territory is still his — so stay out!

In "Danse macabre" when dawn breaks on All Saints' Day, the dead return to the grave. And the living go on... for now.  But they are reminded that Death is the great equalizer.  

Happy Halloween!

"Outdoors with Coggin Heeringa" can be heard every Wednesday on Classical IPR.