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Totentanz
1991
2 pianos
duration 15'
first performance: Tema Blackstone and Hung Kuan Chen
NuClassix Residency Series / Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge / April 16, 1992
SCORE
Bones of All Men
The Emperor
The Empress
The Abbot
The Old Woman
The Lady
The Ploughman
The Child
Bones of All Men—The Dance of Death
RECORDING—first performance:
n.b. this is poor quality transfer from a cassette tape
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PROGRAM NOTE
The Dance of Death was a familiar motif in medieval Europe. Often encountered as a long mural on church walls, it depicted a procession of figures—in the order of their social ranking—being led or summoned by Death, usually represented by a dancing skeleton. The high point of this visual tradition was the publication in 1583 of Hans Holbein’s set of forty-one woodcuts, each one coupled with a scriptural quotation and an admonitory verse, entitled 'Images and illustrated facets of death, as elegantly depicted as they are artfully conceived'. My work takes eight of these woodcuts and verses as the starting point for seven linked character movements framed by two furious Dances of Death. All nine sections are played without a break, the overall shape, however, is tripartite: Totentanz; procession of the dead; Totentanz.