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Danse Macabre — midnight waltz melody

Play the swirling, ghostly 3/4 waltz theme from Saint-Saëns’s tone poem Danse Macabre.

Next stepsCamille Saint-Saëns · Main waltz theme in A minor · piano one handPiano · One hand · A minor · 3/4

116 beats per minute. Changing speed stops playback; press Play to start again.

Try it at the keyboard

  1. Give beat 1 of each bar a clear accent to bring out the skeleton waltz character.
  2. Notice the repeated A4s in bars 1–2 before the melody spirals downward in bars 5–8.
  3. Watch for G♯ in bar 4 and bar 8.

About this score

Transposed from G minor to A minor and simplified into an eight-bar right-hand waltz theme.

Composed by Camille Saint-Saëns (1874); simplified piano arrangement by NotePlayMusic. Public domain composition (published 1875). Teaching arrangement by NotePlayMusic.

Source notation · Source score & rights notice