The Case of Finding Danse Macabre 


Is this dowsing or what? 

Today, I was driving home from Illinois back to St. Louis after having breakfast there with old friends. As I drove this so familiar road—I traveled it almost daily during 23 of the years I taught at SIU-Edwardsville and lived in St. Louis—I found myself humming Saint-Saëns Dance Macbre. That's the full orchestral piece that portrays skeletons, unearthed from their graves, dancing the night away until run back into the ground by the crowing cock and advancing daylight. I've always loved it. And as my rich fantasy life progressed, I saw myself performing a piano arrangement of this piece for the annual church talent show coming this fall.

I had a hankering to hear an actual recording of the piece. I thought to myself, "I'll bet we have a recording of this work, and I think I know where I will start looking." Years ago, Stephen bought a set of sixty CDs called In Classical Mood. They came once a month for five years. I was kind of annoyed at the time, because each of these CDs presents a broad selection of works and parts of works by various composers, all organized around a single theme, such as Musical Travels or Pastoral Scenes. I've always thought of myself as kind of a purist, and into composers and their works. I tended to buy, for example, The Complete Symphonies of Beethoven. However, over the years, the Classical Moods set has often proved to be useful and entertaining. Problem is, there never was any index sent for this set, no doubt because there were sixty more volumes they were hoping to sell to us.

As thought will ramble, especially mine, its train turned to the extensive project that I had begun a couple of years ago and never finished. I had decided I would make a Filemaker Pro database of this set. If only it could be done, it would be much more useful than even an index, because then we could sort for composer, work number, name of piece, genre, and so forth, whenever we needed to find something. I remembered that I had managed to put just under half of the CDs into this database. "That would be a start," I thought. I could search the database at least for Danse Macabre in these 25 discs. And so, when I got home, I went up to the third floor where my computer is, and did the search. Of course, as my luck would have it—the precise reason why I never waste my money on lottery tickets—the piece was not in the first half of the collection.

But now, I am starkly reminded of how nice it would be to complete this project and find the time to put ALL of these CDs in the database. I noted that I had left off at CD 25. I decided to take the next five CD, 26-30, and see if I couldn't put them on the computer today sometime. Back downstairs, with the small pile of CDs in my hand, I checked their backsides (which does contain an index for that particular CD) for evidence of the Saint Saëns piece. 26, nope, 27, nope, 28 and 29 nope, 30 *** yep! Oh joy. I quickly put the CD into the downstairs player, and since Stephen is not home, I jack volume way up above the level that I am quite sure will annoy our neighbors. I listen to the piece, enraptured, spellbound. Wow, what a piece! What a composer!

And so, you may be wondering what is the point of this piece. On the other hand, you may be saying, with me, "Well, that's just the way this mysterious universe works. If you have your heart set on something, and you follow the flow, the connectedness of things, you will be provided for, and in ways that you hardly or least expect." Oh, and one more thing. I know that probably I will never win the lottery, especially since you need to have the confidence to buy a ticket as a starting point. On the other hand, I DO have this confidence that I am connected with the Universe in this magical way. It is a gift for which I am extremely grateful. The Lottery, I don't need. Faith in the Universe to take care of me, I couldn't live without.

 

Posted: Fri - May 18, 2007 at 12:22 PM          

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