an organ transcription of Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens: recorded at a concert I attended on July 12 2016

Jul 13, 2016, 03:30 AM

This is one of my favourite orchestral pieces of all time. I've loved it ever since my music teacher introduced it to me when I was eight. I was so excited when I found out that an organ transcription had been composed for it. The piece is actually a tone poem which musically relates the story of an old French myth. On All Hallows Eve, Death appears in a graveyard playing upon a fiddle (although in this case it's actually the trumpet stop of the organ). He releases all the dead people in the cemetery from the bonds of the grave, and they dance about with him as zombies and skeletons. Nice, friendly story, isn't it? :-) Just the thing to tell your kiddies before bed-time. :-P Anyway, the dance becomes more and more frenzied as all the dead folks take over the graveyard. Then a rooster crows, heralding the approach of dawn, and all the undead scurry back to their hidey-holes until the next Hallowe'en. Hope you like this as much as I did! Wish you could have been there to hear it live with me. The bloomin' trumpet stop was right behind me, so it scared the heck out of me when I first heard it. #concerts #music #organ #Saint-Saens