Danse macabre in G Minor

It’s midnight, in a graveyard where Death summons skeletons to dance till daybreak while he plays his fiddle. Such is the scenario of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, which, like many works by the composer, started out as something other than it ended up. Initially a simple song, it grew into a tone poem for orchestra, the voice replaced by solo violin. And from its premiere in 1875, it’s been a celebrated piece of ghoulish fantasy, often adapted for piano or as creepy background music for TV and cinema. The story unfolds vividly in sound: the midnight chimes depicted by 12 repetitions of the note D on a harp; the rattling skeletons portrayed by xylophone, with references to the tritone; the disturbing interval of three whole tones (in this case A to E flat) known in medieval times as "the devil in music". And to guarantee you get the point, the woodwinds also quote the Dies Irae chant formerly sung at Masses for the Dead.