Saint-Saëns, Camille - Danse Macabre

Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre has long been available in the composers own sizzling transcription for two pianos. By contrast, the standard piano duet arrangement of the piece (by Ernest Guiraud) appears to have been derived from the orchestral score, and i s often disappointingly thin. An obvious solution was to make the present new duet arrangment, following the composers two-piano version as closely as possible.
As a symphonic poem, Danse Macabre was elaborated (in 1874) from Saint-Saëns earlier song-setting of a poem by Henri Cazalis - a sort of French Tom OShanter without the chase, in which the devil, playing a mistuned fiddle, conjures skeletons from thei r graves at midnight into a macabre dance. Saint-Saëns orchestral version was the first orchestral score to use a xylophone, in a tune that he later recycled for "Fossils" in Carnaval des animaux". Roy Howat

Danse Macabre arr. piano duet