"Danse Macabre"
poem by Henri Cazalis
music by
On a sounding stone
With a blanched thigh-bone
The bone of a saint, I fear;
Death strikes the hour
Of his Wizard power
And the specters make haste to appear.
From their tombs they rise
In their deathly guise
Obeying the summons dread.
And gathering round
With reverence profound
They salute the King of the Dead.
Then he stands in the middle
And tunes up his fiddle
And plays them a gruesome strain.
And each gibbering wight
In the moon’s pale light
Music dance to that wild refrain.
Now the fiddle tells
As the music swells
Of the graveyard’s ghastly pleasures.
And they clatter their bones
As with hideous groans
They reel to those maddening measures.
The churchyard quakes.
And the old abbey shakes
To the tread of that midnight host.
And the sod turns black
On each circling track
Where a skeleton whirls with a ghost.
The night wind moans
In shuddering tones
Through the gloom of the cypress tree.
While the mad mob raves
Over yawning graves
And the fiddle bow leaps with glee
So the swift hours fly
‘Til the reddening sky
Gives warning of daylight near.
Then the first rooster crow
Sends them scurrying below
To sleep for another year.
poem by Henri Cazalis
music by
Camille Saint-Saëns
On a sounding stone
With a blanched thigh-bone
Death strikes the hour
Of his Wizard power
And the specters make haste to appear.
From their tombs they rise
In their deathly guise
Obeying the summons dread.
And gathering round
With reverence profound
They salute the King of the Dead.
Then he stands in the middle
And tunes up his fiddle
And plays them a gruesome strain.
And each gibbering wight
In the moon’s pale light
Music dance to that wild refrain.
Now the fiddle tells
As the music swells
Of the graveyard’s ghastly pleasures.
And they clatter their bones
As with hideous groans
They reel to those maddening measures.
The churchyard quakes.
And the old abbey shakes
To the tread of that midnight host.
And the sod turns black
On each circling track
Where a skeleton whirls with a ghost.
The night wind moans
In shuddering tones
Through the gloom of the cypress tree.
While the mad mob raves
Over yawning graves
And the fiddle bow leaps with glee
So the swift hours fly
‘Til the reddening sky
Gives warning of daylight near.
Then the first rooster crow
Sends them scurrying below
To sleep for another year.
Click HERE to open the Listening Map (look on page 4 of this pdf file)
Click HERE to open a youtube version of the music
or click on the title of this blog entry above for a video using this music
Click HERE for information about Camille Saint-Saëns,the composer
Click HERE for information about Henri Cazalis, the poet
Click HERE for information about the music "Danse Macabre"
Click HERE for background on La Danse Macabre, the late-medieval allegory
Click HERE for more information about Dia de los Muertos
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