Reference Music: Composer – Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns was a composer, pianist, and organist and one of my favourite composers. Samson et Dalila a masterpiece and has remained a reliable crowd pleaser since its premiere in 1877.

Another master-piece is Danse Macabre (first performed in 1874) is the name of opus 40 by Saint-Saëns.

The composition is based upon a poem by Henri Cazalis, on an old French Superstition:

Zig, zig, zig, Death in a cadence,
Striking with his heel a tomb,
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin.
The winter wind blows and the night is dark;
Moans are heard in the linden trees.
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack—
But hist! of a sudden they quit the round,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.

According to the ancient superstition, "Death " appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death has the power to call forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle (represented by a solo violin with its E-string tuned to an E-flat in an example of scordatura tuning). His skeletons dance for him until the first break of dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.

There's no question about Saint-Saëns’ homosexuality; he was reported to have had a marked preference for Algerian boys, and was a devotee of Parisian pissoirs even in old age.