Gratuitous Halloween Musickal Posting (TM)

Having recently got the Llama-ettes all worked up in anticipation, I nipped out to buy a new copy of Camille Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre for playing on and about Halloween.

This piece is described as a "symphonic poem". Generally, I don't much like programatic musick, that is, pieces that are meant to tell some kind of story. I also think it's a mistake to over-use such pieces, as is often done, as an introduction to classical musick novices (especially for kiddies) because it trains them to listen for the wrong thing, i.e., to pay too much attention to mental pictures and not enough to simply listening to the musick for its own sake.

Nonetheless, I've always had a soft spot for Danse Macabre and its depiction of a wild night in the graveyard presided over by Death on the fiddle, in part because I've liked the "spooks" idea ever since I was a kid and in part because I think it's so well put together - short, exciting and to the point. If you are going to use the programatical hook on the young 'uns, this is one of the pieces to do it.