Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre (art song)

Danse Macabre, Op. 40, is a tone poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, which is based on an old French superstition. The text comes from the poem “Égalité, Fraternité...“, part of Jean Lahor’s (a pseudonym of Henri Cazalis) “l’Illusion“. An English translation of the poem follows: Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence, Striking a tomb with his heel, Death at midnight play