DEATH AS A FIDDLER:

THE STUDY OF A CONVENTION IN EUROPEAN ART,

LITERATURE AND MUSIC *

by Riva Srescin

»Freund Hein spielt aul“ - Death strikes up to play. What instrument does he
play? The violin, of course. When Gustav Mahler inscribed the above caption
on the Scherzo movement of his Fourth Symphony (1900} and wrote a special
seordatura part for solo violin as a programmatic clement, he was influenced
by the popular notion that Death comes as a fiddler.! This gruesome friend“
had already appeared, playing the violin for a midnight bone dance, in
Camille Saint-Saéns’s Danse Macabre (1875) and was to be again associated
with the violin in Igor Stravinsky's L’Hisloire du Soldat (1918). Why was
Death a fiddler? Was he always a fiddler? Is he still a fiddler? These are some
of the issues I would like to address here, issues which are of significance not
only to music, but to art and literature as well.

A striking example of the conviction among nineteenth-century artists that

Death comes with a fiddle in hand is Alfred Rethel’s woodcut ,Tod als Wirger®
[Death as Strangler] (1850). [See Figure 1.) Death is depicted here as a skeleton
in monk’s garb, playing two bones like a fiddle and bow. He had come in
disguise to a masked ball: various dancers in commedia dell’ arte costume lie
dying on the floor around him while the musicians sneak away in terror at
the back. Another example is the self-portrait by the Swiss idealist Arnold
Backlin: ,Sclhsthildnis mit ficdemdem Tod" [Self-Portrait with Fiddling Death]
(1872). (See Figure 2.) The painter tilts his head as though straining to hear
something behind him: at his left shoulder is the grinning figure of Death
playing the violin.

The same type of imagery appears in Romantic literature: a particularly

vivid example is found in Nikolaus Lenau’s epic poem Faust (1836). In the
scene of the village wedding, ,Der Tanz,“ Death's agent Mephistopheles grabs
a violin and, through the power of his diabolical playing, helps Faust to
seduce the girl of his choice. The devil’s mastery of difficult technique -
double and triple stops according to Lenau’s account - indicates that this
was his instrument par excellence. The demonic violinist appears again as

* Twish to dedicate this article to the great Viennese violinist Eduard Melkus, who
inspired
my interest in this topic.

) Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn years, Berkeley and Los Angeles
1975,
303, n. 116: ,,Freund Hein spielt auf‘, according to Paul Bekker, Gustav Mahlers
Sinfonien,
Berlin 1921, 155, was originally inscribed hy Mahler on the MS of this movement |
the
Scherzo)". See also Bruno Walter, Briefe 1894-1962, Frankfurt 1969, 52.

271
,der schwarze Geiger“ or black fiddler in Gottfried Keller’s Romeo und Julia
auf dem Dorfe of 1856. The young lovers fall under the violinist’s magical
spell, marry in defiance of their fathers’ wishes, and deliberately drown
themselves while floating on a raft —- a Liebestod. At one point in their illegal
wedding ceremony, they dance feverishly under the influence of the fiddler’s
diabolical playing.

The association of Death with dancing, as in several of the preceeding

examples, suggests that the most logical place to look for the origin of the
motive ,Death as a fiddler“ is in the medicval Dance of Death convention.
This custom, also known as Danse Macabre or Totentanz, arose in the
fourteenth century, in the wake of the devastating epidemics of bubonic
plague. It usually involved a dramatic, pictorial or literary portrayal of a
number of skeleton-like figures leading a procession of living beings to a
charnel house (House of the Dead). These skeletons were thought to be the
Dead, having come to collect the Living. The message imparted was that no
one, pope or beggar, man or woman, old person or child, escaped from the call
of Death. The religious authorities encouraged this practice because it helped
to reinforce their teachings of leading a moral life, of being prepared for Death
at all times.”

Since this was a Dance of Death, musical instruments play an important

part. Let us consider the treatment of instruments in some of the earliest
surviving pictorial representations of the Totcntanz. Figure 3 is from the
Liibecker Totentanz, painted c.1466 (revised in 1588) on the walls of the
Marienkirche Chapel of the Dead in Litbeck. Leading the procession is the
skeletal figure of Death playing on a flute.* Following him are dancing skel-
etons and persons from all walks of life, twenty-four pairs in all. The highest
ranking of these, the pope and the emperor, arc the first in line. Figure 4
shows another mid-fifteenth-century Dance of Death ~— the Klein-Basler
fresco at Klingenthal, Switzerland. Here skeletons lead the various estates to
a charnel house filled with skulls. The musical instruments heralding this
dance are pipes, shawm and drum.* Individual scenes from the Dance of
Death were also widely disseminated in the form of woodcuts. A famous
example is the Heidelberger or Knoblochtzer Totentanz of 1485. The text of
the title page reads:

2 The literature on this subject is immense: a recent, comprehensive discussion of

the topic,
with invaluable iconographic evidence, is Reinhold Hammerstein’s Tanz und Musik des
Todes: Die mittelalterlichen Totentdinze und ihr Nachleben, Berne and Munich 1980.

3 In the original 1466 version, removed to Reval in 1588 upon restoration of the
cycle, the
leading figure plays the bagpipes. Sec Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes, fig.
31, and
pp. 154-156 for a discussion of the complicated history of this Totentanz.

4 See the identification of instruments in Kathi Meyer-Bacr, Music of the spheres

and the
dance of death: Studies in musical iconology, Princeton 1970, 302, fig. 16]

272
Wol an wol an ir herren und knecht Come ye sires and servers

Springet her by von allem geslecht Rush here from all estates
Wie iunck wie alt wie schonc ader kru Young and old, pretty or ugly
Ir mufict alle in di® dantz hu& All must come to this house of dance *

In the scene accompanying this text, skeleton-musicians play for the dance.
(See Figure 5.) The instruments are all loud winds: shawms or buisincs and a
slide trumpet. Another woodcut, designed by Michael Wohlgemuth and
printed in Hartmann Schedel’s Weltchronik of 1493, depicts a rather merry
dance beside an open grave, perhaps caricaturing the popular belief in the
midnight bone dances. (See Figure 6.} Accompanying the fun is Death as a
shawm-player.

An examination of numerous other Totentanz representations from the

fifteenth century reveals that wind instruments — often shawms, bagpipes, or
a pipe and drum combination — prevail.© These were the instruments most
often used to accompany medieval processions and dances.’ Figure 7 shows
a fifteenth-century peasant dance from Poitou, accompanied by a musician
playing the bagpipes while Figure 8 shows Death playing the same instrument
— bagpipes - in a Totentanz depiction in La Chaise Dieu (1460). It appears,
therefore, that the image of Death as a fiddler had not yet become fixed in the
popular imagination, and I can only conclude that the oft-repeated statement
by early scholars of the Totentanz, that Death ,in the Middle Ages had a
distinct preference for the violin“* must be false. More often than not he was
depicted as a wind player — a piper ~ and this is confirmed by the well-known
legend (dated 1284] of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The piper who lures the
town’s children away, never to return again, is usually interpreted as Death.°

5 Original text from Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes, fig. 138. English
translation

from Meyer-Baer, Music of the spheres, 301.

See the illustrations in Stephan Cosacchi, Makabertanz: Der Totentanz in Kunst,

Poesie

und Brauchtum des Mittelalters, Mcisenheim am Glan 1965, Hellmut Rosenfeld, Der

mittelalterliche Totentanz: Entstehung, Entwicklung, Bedeutung, 3rd rev. ed.,

Colagne 1974,

and Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes.

’ For a thorough discussion of the carly history of the pipe-drum combination, in

parti-
cular its association with the dance (and Totentanz], sec Dagmar Hoffmann-
Axthelm, ,Zu
Ikonographie und Bedeutungsgeschichte von Flite und Tromme! in Mittelalter und
Renais-
sance’, BJbHM 7 {1983} 84-118.

* Léonard P. Kurtz, The dance of death and the macabre spirit in European
literature, New
York 1934; Geneva 1975, 221. See also Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and
Literature, Chicago and London 1931, 256, and Stephan Cossachi, ,Musikinstrumente
im
mittelalterlichen Totentanz*, Die Musikforschung 8 (1955} 11.
” In the most recent literature on the Totentanz, in particular in Hammerstein,
Tanz und
Musik des Todes, 41, it is clearly established that the ,Fistula“ (the generic word
for pipe}
is the instrument on which the medieval figure of the Todesspielmann — Death as
musi-
cian — plays.

273
The visual image of Death as a piper is reinforced by the verses of text
which accompanied the Totentanz pictures. For example, the Wiirzburger
Totentanz, the oldest German Dance of Death poem (c. 1350}, begins with a
preacher's sermon in which Death is typified as follows:

Mit siner hellischen pfifen schreien With his hellish pipc’s sound
bringt cr iuch al an cinen reien. he brings you all to a round.

When Death addresses his first victim, the pope, he taunts:

Her babst, merkt Gf der pfifen dén: Sir Pope, watch out for the pipe’s tune:
ir sult darnach springen schon! You will be jumping to it soon!

When the choir leader’s turn is up, the complaint is:

Ich han als ein kérherre fri I have as a choir director free
gesungen manic lieplich melodi. sung many a lovely melody.

Des tédes pfif stat dem nit glich, The pipe of Death compares unlikely,
sie hat 86 sére erschrecket mich. it has so very much frightened me."

Later verses, like those accompanying the fifteenth-century Grof-Bascler

Totentanz, repeat Death’s claim that all ,{muf] tantzen nach miner pfifen
ton“ (must dance after my pipe).'’ Death is also a piper in several English
folksongs inspired by the Dance of Death. The ballad ,Can you dance the
shaking of the sheets“ (c. 1560) concludes with Death speaking these lines:

Be ready, therefore, - watch and pray,

That when my minstrel pipe doth play,
You may to heaven dance the way.’

The alternate title of this song was ,Dance after my pipe,“ and to dance after
Death’s pipe ,seems to have been a proverbial expression.“

Let us now consider the most famous of all Dance of Death representations:
Hans Holbein‘’s series of woodcuts designed in Base] c. 1526 and first
published as Les Simulacres # Historiées Faces de La Mort in Lyons in 1538.
Quite a number of the scenes feature musical instruments. Figure 9, showing
Death calling on the Duchess, contains a fiddle-like instrument, and this
scene has sometimes been cited as evidence that Death was a fiddler in the
Renaissance.’ But, if we look at more of the musical scenes we find that the

10 Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz, 309, 310, 314. The English

translation is my
own. See also the discussion in Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes, 29ff.

'’ Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Tolentanz, 333.

2 Henri Stegemeier, The dance of death in folk-song, Chicaga 1939, 103.

13° William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 2 vols., London 1859, I, 84.
See al-
so the similar German expressions discussed in Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des
Todes,
51-52.

‘4 Sharon Latchaw Hirsh, ,Arnold Bécklin: Death talks to the painter“, Arts
Magazine 55
(198)] 86.
274
instruments depicted are of great variety and seem to be associated with
features of the intended victim rather than with the character of Death. For
example, Death plays the xylophone in the scene with the Old Woman
(Figure 10}, perhaps because this instrument sounds like rattling old bones. In
the Soldier’s scene (Figure 11) an appropriate military instrument — the side
drum — is sounded by a skeleton in the background, while in the scene with
the Fool (Figure 12), who stupidly swings a bladder, Death blows the lowly
bagpipes. In the opening scene to this hierarchical presentation of victims,
we see the old charnel house with skeletons making music for the Dance
(Figure 13), As in the earlier representations, wind (and percussion} instruments
dominate. Thus my conclusion can only be that the notion of Death preferring
the fiddle did not originate with Holbein. In the following two centuries the
Dance of Death depictions were rather sterile imitations of Holbein and, as
in the case of Abraham a Sancta Clara’s Todten-Capelle of 1710 — the moral
warnings of a conservative cleric -, Death was still viewed as a piper, in this
case a flutist.!*

A brief view of the violin’s history may help to clarify matters. Bowed
fiddle-type instruments, with names like rebec, giga, lira, fidula and vielle,
were found in Europe from the eleventh century on. These were often used by
the wandering minstrels to accompany their songs and dances, and especially
to provide background music for banquets in castles. The tone was thin and
nasal ~ perhaps not loud enough to compete with the shrill pipes and shawms
favoured for outdoor processions, and hence not as suitable as the instrument
of Death. The fiddle-like instrument in Holbein’s scene with the Duchess, for
example, was used to accompany a bedroom encounter. There is also a wood
relief from 1548 which depicts Death playing the fiddle to a sleeping child,
before snatching it from its cradle.'* The soft tones of the fiddle undoubtedly
made this the preferred instrument for a child’s lullaby.

The violin as we know it — with four strings tuned in fifths, characteristic

outline, bulging back, scroll, f-holes, and overhand bow grip — did not emerge
until c, 1550, Once developed by the master craftsmen of northern Italy, the
new instrument spread rapidly throughout Europe and by 1600 had virtually
replaced all the earlier rebec and fiddle models. The instrument had become
so popular that in 1619 Michael Praetorius could write in his famous book on
instruments: ,Und demnach dieselbige jedermanniglichen bekandt ist dar-
von (ausser diesem, da wenn sie mit Messings- und Stalenen Sditen bezogen
werden, ein stillen und fast lieblichen Resonanz mehr, als die andern, von

'S See Abraham a Sancta Clara, Die Totenkapelle: Ein Totentanz in Wort und Bild,
Wirzburg
1710, M. Gladbach 1921, titlepage, where an eclegantly-dressed couple is dancing to
the
accompaniment of a skeleton playing the flute. The corresponding German text reads:
,,Sie
sind so sehr vermessen, weil Sie dess Tods vergessen.” [They are so arrogant
because they
have forgotten Death.]

* Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz, 19.

275
sich geben) etwas mehr anzudeuten und zu schreiben unnétig“. (De Organo-
graphia, Teil I, Cap. XXII) (And since everyone knows about the violin
family, it is unnecessary to indicate or write anything further about it).!? The
violin’s tone was now quite powerful, and its ability to produce strong
rhythmic impulses made it eminently suitable for dance music. A valuable
early description of the violin, from Jambe de Fer’s Epitome Musical of 1556,
points out this aspect of its social function:

Nous appelons violes c’elles desquelles les gentilz hommes, marchantz, & autres
gens de
vertuz passent Icur temps....L’autre sorte s’appelle violon & ¢’est celuy duquel
lon use en
dancerie communement, & a bonne cause: car i} est plus facile d’accorder.... Il est
aussi plus
facile a porter, qu’est chose fort necessaire, mesme en conduisant quelques noces,
mommeric,

We cail viols those with which gentleman merchants and other virtuous people pass
their
time... The other type is called violin; it is commonly used for dancing, and with
good
reason, for it is much easier to tunc.... It is also easier to carry, a very
necessary thing while
leading wedding processions or mummeries.'*

Thus it appears that the violin sound was now powerful enough to lead
processions and dances.

The earliest surviving repertoire for the violin is dance music, and the instru-
ment became fixed in the popular mind as the dance instrument. One of the
first paintings in England to show the new violin family — Joris Hocfnagel’s
,A Féte at Bermondsey“ (c. 1570) - contains two violinist-violist duos, providing
the music for a village dance. (See the detail from this painting in Figure 14.)
The social history of violin players reveals that they were usually profession-
als — those forced to make their living by performing — and not gentleman
amateurs, as in the case of viols. The general opinion was that a common
,Bier Fiedler“ or dance-hall violinist was a low-class scoundrel. Jonathan
Swift, in ,A Letter to Stella“ (July 25, 1711) writes: ,He was a fiddler, and
consequently a rogue.“?

This attitude was in large measure due to the religious view of dancing.
Both Catholic and Protestant moral theologians considered public dancing a
dangerous occasion of sin - an activity that might lead to adultery. Hence, the
populace was constantly warned, in sermons and tracts, of the evils of
dancing. One treatise, by John Northbrooke c. 1577, describes dancing as
,vaine, foolish, fleshly, filthie, and divelishe.“*® In fact, dancing was thought

Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum, 1619, as quoted in David D. Boyden, The

history
of violin playing, London 1965, 1.

8 Philibert Jambe de Fer, Epitome Musical, Lyons 1556, 62-64, in Francois

Lesure, ,L’Epitome
Musical de Philibert Jambe de Fer {1556]“, Annales Musicologiques 6 (1958-1963)
341-386.
See also Boyden, Violin playing, 32.

© Burton Stevenson, Stevenson's book of quotations classical and modern, 9th ed.,
London
1958, 1370.

20 John Northbrooke, A Treatise against dicing, dancing, plays, and interludes,

from the
earliest edition c. 1577, London 1843, 146.

276
to have been devised by the devil.?! Since epidemics were always a serious
threat, dances, with so many people in close contact, no doubt led to the
spread of disease and death. The violin, having replaced the pipe as the
instrument of the dance, thus became the favoured instrument of Death.

It may be helpful to clarify the distinction between Death and the Devil,
since they tend to be synonomous as far as the violin is concerned. According
to the Bible, it was through Satan (or the Devil], in the guise of a snake, that
sin came into the world, and the wages of sin is Death. Death is a state of
being — the end of flesh. The skeletal figure of Death, as in the Totentanz
representations, was the artistic attempt to give the idea of physical Death a
visual personification, The Devil, on the other hand, was the agent of Death.
He came to earth in many forms — often in the nineteenth century, as a
sinister man in a dark cape - to barter for men’s souls for hell, that is, eternal,
spiritual death. The character of Death - in his skeletal form — seems more
prevalent in art works, while the Devil is more often featured in literary
works. In any case, they both played the violin.”

In European folklore, there are many fairy tales or myths about the devil’s
prowess on the violin, usually in conjunction with dancing. For example, at
the witches’ sabbath, according to one folk-tale, the devil plays the fiddle -
a bone ~ while all the witches dance around him.*? Other tales tell of trading
one’s soul to the devil in order to learn to play the violin or to obtain a magic
violin. Such a violin usually causes uncontrollable dancing. One tale goes as
follows: Once upon a time at a wedding dance, jokes were told about the
Dead. When the musicians stopped playing at midnight, the music continued
on, but now with frightful dissonances. Up above, in a fir tree, crouched the
Devil, playing on the violin. This awakened the Dead, who rose out of their
graves and began a whirling bone dance.™* Here we have the devil playing for
the Dance of the Dead. The same kinds of tales, however, are told about the
pipe. For example, there were pipes which could summon the devil or compel
the people to dance. Also, there was the tale of a pipe (also of a violin),
fashioned from the bone of a murdered victim, which when played revealed
the identity of the murderer.** Since it is difficult to date these tales —- most
were collected in the early nineteenth century — it may be that the ones with

1 See the many quotations with the message ,,.Where dance is, there is also the
devil“ in
Hammerstein, Diabolus in Musica, Berne and Munich 1974, 45-49, See also the
discussion
in Dagmar Hoffmann-Axthelm, ,Instruamentensymbolik und Auffithrungspraxis: Zum Ver-
haltnis von Symbolik und Realitat in der mittelalterlichen Musikanschauung“, BJbHM
4 (1980)
34.

» See the discussion of the synonomous aspect of Death and the Devil in Christian
theology
in Hammerstein, Tenz und Musik des Todes, 23.

% Hoffmann-Krayer and Hans Bachtold-Staubli, eds., Handworterbuch des deutschen

Aber-
glaubens, 10 vols., Berlin and Leipzig 1927-1942, TI, 465,

4 Ibid., 467.

25 Thid., 469; VI, 1594,

277
the pipe are the older versions, and that the violin was substituted later as it
gradually replaced the pipe. As is to be expected, evidence of the closer
association of Death with the violin is well documented in art and literature
from about 1550 onwards. An early example of Death in his new role of
fiddler is found in Pieter Bruegel’s apocalyptic vision Triumph of Death“
(c. 1562). (Sce Figure 15.) In the lower right-hand corner of this painting a pair
of music-making lovers is interrupted by a grinning skeleton playing a viola
da braccio (the immediate forerunner of the violin}.* A similar scene is de-
picted in a late sixteenth-century engraving attributed to the Dutch artist
Hendrik Goltzius. (See Figure 16.] Notice the hour-glass and the moral mes-
sage of the text:

Wy syn in vruecht dickmael ghescten We arc often sitting in joy

de dont veel naerder den wy weten. Death is much closer than we know.””

Figures 17 and 18 compare Hans Holbein’s original version of Death and the
Pedlar {c. 1526) with the version ,.La Mort et le Marchant“ by F. Langlois dit
Ciartres (1588-1647), of about a century later. In keeping with the now
popular convention of Death as a fiddler, Ciartres, a merchant as well as an
artist, has substituted a viola da braccio for Holbein’s tromba marina.** As far
as literature is concerned, no less a figure than William Shakespeare includes
the line ,Heigh, heigh! the devil rides upon a fiddlestick“ in his play King
Henry IV, Part I, dated 1597-1598.”

As mentioned carlier, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced

mainly sterile, old-fashioned versions of the Totentanz genre.*° This is seen
in the Ciartres copy of Holbein and in the following Dance of Death text
from Ulm, c. 1650, where fiddlers now play for the dance and the bagpipe is
associated with vagrants:

Wolauf mit mir auf diesem Plan!

Ein Tanz will ich euch stellen an,

Darbei miifét ihr mir All’ erscheinen,
Ihr thut gleich lachen oder weinen.

Der Vortanz mir allein gebuhrt,

Der Tod an euch zum Meister wird,

Liest cuch cine kurze Lection:
MEMENTO MORI, gedenk oft dran!...
Macht auf, ihr Geiger, cinen Tanz!

26 John Henry van der Meer, Musikinstrumente: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart,
Munich
1983, fig. 109,

27 Georg Kinsky, A history of music in pictures, London 1930, 93, fig. 4. The
translation is my
own.

2 AP. de Mirimonde, L’lconographie musicale sous les rois bourbons: La musique dans
les
arls plastiques (XVII - XVIII siécles), Paris 1975, 113, fig. 85.

2 Act 2, sc. 4, 1. 534.

39 See Gert Buchheit, Der Totentanz: Seine Entstehung und Entwicklung, Berlin 1926,
205,
and Aldred Scott Warthin, The Physician of the Dance of Death, New York, 1931,
57ff.

278
Dem Kaiser bind ich da ein’ Kranz.

Ewr Majestat w6ll einher prangen,

Man wird ein Galliard anfangen. ...

Jetzt bin ich worden cin Sackpfeifer

Und ruf zusammen all Landlaufer,

Bot, Kramer, Schiller, Sternsinger;

Ein neues Jahr ich ihn’ wollt abg’winnen.*!

The progressive feature of this text is the mention of ,Memento Mori," for
this reflects the theme of the innumerable Vanitas paintings of the Baroque
era — the new genre which replaced the old Totentanz representations.” The
Goltzius engraving seen in Figure 16 is an carly example of this genre, the
purpose of which was to remind the viewer of the fleeting nature of life and
the futility of earthly pursuits. The carly Vanitics, which included human
figures, subsequently developed into still-lifes with well-defined stock im-
ages: a skull, hour-glass, mirror, burnt-out candles, and dead flowers to
symbolize the passage of time; books, dice, playing cards, and musical
instruments to show meaningless (and sensual) pastimes. More often than
not, the instrument depicted was a violin, which, combined as it usually was
with the skull, could only help to reinforce the popular association of Death
with the fiddle. The Vanity shown in Figure 19, a mid-seventeenth-century
painting by Simon Renard de Saint-André, is typical of the genre in that it
,brings together all the classical attributes: the extinguished candle, the
hour-glass, the watch, the roses in full bloom (an evocation to love} — the
crown of laurel placed on a skull — symbols still obvious today. “* It must also
be symbolic that the musical instrument featured here - the type of violin
known as a kit“ — was that used by dancing-masters.

The notion that Death [or the devil} now played the violin is most evident
in the kinds of anecdotes told about great violinists. One of the earliest of
these concerns the German violinist Thomas Baltzar {c. 1630-1663) who
came to England about 1655, served as Charles II's private violinist, and was
buried in Westminster Abbey. In a diary entry by Anthony Wood, dated
July 24th, 1658, we read: ,/Baltzar] came to one of the weckly meetings at

3 Ludwig Erk, Deutscher Liederhort, 3 vols., Leipzig 1893, H, 795-799. The English
transla-
tion, taken from the preface of the work for organ by Gerhard Krapf
entitled ,Totentanz“,
Nashville and New York 1972, reads: ,Come with me to a dance that I shall arrange
for you,
and which you all must join — be it with merriment or with weeping. Mine is the
lead-dance,
even as Death is master of all; it begins with a brief lesson: Memento Mori, forget
this not.
You fiddlers, strike up a tune, while I fashion the cmperor’s laurel: May it please
Your
Majesty to strut about, presently a galliard will be intoned. Now I have become a
bagpiper
collecting all vagrants and taking them in my ranks; come with me, then, to the
danse
macabre.”
2 See A.P. de Mirimonde, ,.Les Vanités & personnages et a instruments de musique“,
Gazette
des Beaux-Arts 92. {1978) 115-130, 94 (1979} G1-68. Sce also Pieter Fischer, Music
in
paintings of the low countries in the 16th and 17th centuries, Amsterdam 1975, 45-
72.

* Frangois Lesure, Music and art in saciety, London 1968, pl. 77.

279
Mr. Ellis’s house, and he played to the wonder of all the auditory; and
exercising his fingers and instrument several waycs to the utmost of his
power, Wilson thereupon the public Professor (the greatest judge of musick
there ever was} did after his humoursome way, stoop downe to Baltzar’s feet
to see whether he had a huff (hoof) on, that is to say, to sce whether he was
a devil or not, because he acted beyond the parts of Man. “#4

Probably the most famous anecdote concerns the legend of Giuseppe

Tartini’s dream. This dream took place in 1713, according to the account
given by the astronomer J.J. de Lalande, and runs as follows:

One night I dreamt that I had made a bargain with the devil for my soul. Everything
went at
my command; my novel servant anticipated every one of my wishes. Then the idea
suggested
itself to hand him my violin to see what he would do with it. Great was my
astonish-
ment when I heard him play, with consummate skill, a sonata of such exquisite
beauty as
surpassed the boldest flights of my imagination. I felt enraptured, transported,
enchanted; my
breath failed me, and —-] awoke. Seizing my violin I tried to reproduce the sounds
I had heard.
But in vain. The piece I then composed, ,, The Devil’s Sonata“, although the best I
ever wrote,
how far was it below the onc I had heard in my dream!**

The work thus created circulated in manuscript during the eightcenth

century and was later published as ,Le Trille du Diable“ (Devil’s Trill Sonata)
in J.B, Cartier’s L’Art du Violon of 1798. The Tartini legend was very popular
in the Romantic era and inspired numerous artistic works including a ballet
by Cesare Pugni for the Paris Opera of 1849 and even an opera.* Figure 20
shows a dramatic painting of Tartini’s ,Dream“ by James Marshall (1838-
1902), an artist who worked primarily in Dresden and Leipzig. Here a winged
devil plays the violin while Tartini lies entranced on a bed in his priest’s cell.
The Devil’s Trill Sonata has remained as a masterpiece of virtuosity in the
violin repertoire. The difficult double trill which Tartini supposedly heard
the devil play at the foot of his bed appears in Example 1.

4 Jeffrey Pulver, A biographical dictionary of old English music, London 1927, 22.
35 Grove’s dictionary of music and musicians, 5th ed., London 1954, VIII, 313.

280
In the nineteenth century it was the phenomenon of Niccold Paganini
which more than anything else reinforced the popular notion that Death or
his alter-ego, the devil, played the violin. The enormous success of Paganini’s
violin concerts across Europe in the 1830's can only be compared with the
mass hysteria of present-day rock concerts. Paganini fever seized all classes
of society and rumours abounded: the most popular was that he had sold his
soul to the devil in order to become the best violinist ever.

Figure 21 shows a little-known sketch, a caricature after a Paganini concert

in Vienna, by the deaf artist-musician J.P. Lyser (1803-1870}.*’ Paganini
dances as he plays within a circle laden with satanic emblems, including the
Double Triangle or Sign of Solomon, magic sword, snake, (and various
imaginary symbols), On the right is a round-dance of skeletons led by a
violinist and on the left, in the midst of various nightmarish creatures, is a
scene depicting ,Death and the Maiden.“ The great poet Heinrich Heine, in
speaking of another portrait - a Paganini profile — by Lyser, writes as follows:

Ich glaube es ist nur einem einzigen Menschen gelungen, die wahre Physiognomic
Paganinis
aufs Papier zu bringen; es ist ein tauber Maler, namens Lyser, der, in seiner
geistreichen
Tollheit, mit wenigen Ereidestrichen den Kopf Paganinis so gut getroffen hat, da
man ob der
Wahrheit der Zeichnung zugleich lacht und erschrickt. ,Der Teufel hat mir die Hand
ge-
fiihre“, sagte mir der taube Maler, geheimnisvoll kichernd ...

I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini’s true physiognomy on
to
paper~a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has, with a
few strokes
of chalk, so well hit Paganini’s head that one is at the same time amused and
terrified at the
truth of the drawing. ,The Devil guided my hand,“ the deaf painter said to me,
chuckling
mysteriously .. 48

(Was Lyser thinking of the sketch in Figure 217)

Heine was profoundly moved by Paganini's appearance in Hamburg in 1833

and he recorded his vivid impressions in the Florentinische Nachte —a series
of tales told to a dying woman —- of 1836. His description of Paganini is ,among
the finest things Heine ever wrote ... an essay in mind-reading translated in-
to visual imagery which would be the height of virtuosity were it not for the
depth of creative emotion which inspired it.“*° A few excerpts from Heine's
account reveal how much of his inspiration was derived from the idea of
Paganini as an agent of the devil. First, a glimpse of a death-like Paganini
caught on the streets of Hamburg:

%6 The opera , II trillo del diavolo* by Stanislao Falchi was presented in Rome,
January 29, 1899.
For other works inspired by the ,Devil’s Trill® see Marc Pincherle, Tartiniana,
Padua 1972,
17-18.

4” Lyser is best known for his sketches of Beethoven walking on the stects of
Vienna (first
published in 1833).
38 Heinrich Heine, Reisebilder. Erzahlende Prosa. Aufsitze, Werke Bd. 2, hg. von W.
Preisen-
danz, Frankfurt/M. 1968, 574, Prose and Poetry, ed. Erncat Rhys, London and New
York
1934, 271.

39 E. M. Butler, Heinrich Heine: A Biography, London 1956; Westport 1970, 137.

281
In der Tat, es war Paganini selber, den ich alsbald zu Gesicht bekam. Er trug einen
dunkelgrauen Oberrock, der ihm bis zu den Fifen reichte, wodurch seine Gestalt sehr
hoch
zu sein schien. Das lange schwarze Haar fiel in verzerrten Locken auf seine
Schultern herab
und bildete wie cinen dunklen Rahmen um das blasse, leichenartige Gesicht, worauf
Kummer, Genie und Hille ihre unverwiistlichen Zeichen eingegraben hatten.

It was indeed Paganini himself, whom I then saw for the first time. He wore a dark
grey
overcoat, which reached to his feet, and made his figure seem very tall. His long
black hair
fell in neglected curls on his shoulders, and formed a dark frame round the pale,
cadaverous
face, on which sorrow, genius, and hell had engraved their indestructible lines.

Then an account of Paganini taking bows at the start of the concert, with the
mixed images of sick death and the wily cunning of the devil:

Ist dieser bittende Blick der eines Todkranken, oder lauert dahinter der Spott
eines schlauen
Geizhalses? Ist das ein Lebender der im Verscheiden begriffen ist und der das
Publikum in der
Kunstarena, wie ein sterbender Fechter, mit seinen Zuckungen ergétzen soll? Oder
ist es ein
Toter, der aus dem Grabe gestiegen, ein Vampir mit der Violine, der uns, wo nicht
das Blut
aus dem Herzen, doch auf jeden Fall das Geld aus der Tasche saugt?

Is that the entreating gaze of one sick unto death, or is there lurking behind it
the mockery
of a crafty miser? Is that a man brought into the arena at the moment of death,
like a dying
gladiator, to delight the public with his convulsions? Or is it one risen from the
dead, a
vampire with a violin, who, if not the blood out of our hearts, at any rate sucks
the gold out
of our pockets?

Later, during the performance, Heine is entranced by supernatural visions,

influenced no doubt by tales of the magic qualities of the devil’s violin:

Jenen [Paganini] konnte ich kaum wiedererkennen in der braunen Minchstracht, die
ihn
mehr versteckte als bekleidete. Das verwilderte Antlitz halb verhillt von der
Kapuze, einen
Strick um die Hitfte, barfiifig, cine einsam trotzige Gestalt, stand Paganini auf
einem
felsigen Vorsprung am Mcerc und spiclte Violinc. ... Manchmal, wenn er den nackten
Arm
aus dem langen Ménchsarme] lang mager hervorstreckend, mit dem Fiedelbogen in den
Liften fegte: dann erschien er erst recht wie ein Hexenmeister, der mit dem
Zauberstab den
Elementen gebietet, und es heulte dann wie wahnsinnig in der Meerestiefe und die
entsetzten
Blutwellen sprangen dann so gewaltig in die Hohe, dafi sie fast die bleiche
Himmelsdecke
und die schwarzcen Sterne dort mit ihrem roten Schaume bespritzten.
I could scarcely recognize him in the monk’s brown dress, which concealed rather
than
clothed him. With savage countenance half hid by the cowl, waist gire with a cord,
and bare
feet, Paganini stood, a solitary defiant figure, on a rocky prominence by the sea,
and played
his violin.... Often, when he stretched his long thin arm from the broad monk’s
sleeve, and
swept the air with his bow, he seemed like some sorcerer who commands the elements
with
his magic wand; and then there was a wild wailing from the depth of the sea, and
the horrible
waves of blood sprang up....*°

Heine’s neighbour at the concert brought him to with the remark:

»lWas ist das berithmte Spiel auf der G-Saite“.

(That is the famous performance on the G string).

40 Heine, Werke, Bd. 2, 575-576, 577, 580-581. Prose and Poetry, 172, 274, 276-277.

282,
This was Paganini’s specialty - a trick to astound his listeners. The upper
strings would snap one after another and the audience was then treated with
the performance of an entire piece on the remaining string - the G string.
Paganini wrote several compositions for this purpose, including the Napoleon
Sonata, the Sonata Marie Luisa, the Moses Variations, and the Military So-
nata. Such a display of virtuosity seemed to be supernatural — aided by the
devil - and in fact people claimed to have seen the devil at Paganini’s elbow
during his performances.?!

Paganini’s influence on the Romantic psyche should not be underestimated:

for example, his legendary virtuosity on the G string probably influenced
Boécklin’s Self Portrait with Fiddling Death.“ (See Figure 2.) Why else would
Death be playing on only one string ~ the G string? The significance of this
reference to Paganini was lost to the art historian Max Schneider, who had
difficulty accounting for what he thought was an E string.”

The Paganini legend may have influenced Rethel too. (This German artist,
considered the greatest successor to Diirer and Holbein, ended his days in a
mental asylum.) Rethel’s ,,Death as Strangler“ (1850) was inspired by Hein-
rich Heine’s 1832 account of a sudden, tragic attack of cholera during the
recent Paris Carnival. (See Figure 1.) The dark-faced female figure sitting
rigidly with a scourge in her hand is a personification of Cholera. The cowled
figure of Death resembles Heine’s vision of Paganini in monk’s attire: ,with
savage countenance half hid by the cowl, waist girt with a cord ... he
stretched his long thin arm from the broad monk’s sleeve.“

Surely it is no coincidence that Rethel’s Fiddling Death was playing at a

ball. The old association between dancing and Death, hence the violin and
Death, had become a convention by the nineteenth century. The Romantic
era in general witnessed an increased artistic preoccupation with death. This
was caused by a new awareness of the horrors of war (French Revolution,
Revolution of 1848) and by rampant diseases (cholera, syphilis, tuberculosis)
which attacked those in the prime of life. All this led to a rebirth of the old
Dance of Death genie. Figure 22 shows a woodcut illustrating the theme
yTanzen“ (Dancing) in Carl Merkel’s Todtentanz series from 1850. The
accompanying text reads:

Der Busen kocht Breasts beat

und die Locken fliegen, and locks are at leisure,

Sie tanzen in’s Grab They dance to death
und nennen‘s Vergniigen. and call it pleasure.¥

The young couples dance to Death’s tune — played on the violin.

“1 John Sugden, Niccolo Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil's Fiddier?, Tunbridge

Wells
1980, 41.

2 Max Schneider, Arnold Bocklin: Ein Maler aus dem Geiste der Musik, Basle 1943,
34-36,

3 Carl Merkel, Bilder des Todes oder Todtentanz fiir alle Stdnde, Leipzig
1850, ,,.Tanzen’. The
translation is my own.

283
Another Dance of Death series, eight poems published in 1857 under the title
Todtentanze by the Munich draughtsman, poet and musician Franz Graf von
Pocci, begins with the lines:

Hei! lustig Fideln, scharfer Hall, Hey! merry fiddles, piercing clang,
Wie ténst du durch die Welt! How does your tone resound!
Furwahr es ist ein arger Schall, In truth it is a wicked bang,

Der keinem wohl gefallt; No pleasure to be found;

Denn Alt und Jung wie Arm und Reich, For old and young as poor and rich,
Noch keinem ward’s geschenkt, Indeed not a one stays,

Und Alle fallen seinem Streich, And all will fall under his twitch,
Wenn er dic Fidel schwenkt. When he the fiddle plays.”

Figure 23 shows Death fiddling for a dance as the illustration for the letter
,H“ heading the third poem in this series. This particular poem relates the
folk tale about how Death with his fiddle interrupted a peasant dance and
forced the couples to dance themselves to death.

Pocci’s friend Ludwig Richter drew an interesting illustration for the letter
»E“ at the beginning of a fairy tale in Johann Musdus’s Volksmdrchen der
Deutschen (German Fairy Tales} of 1842. (See Figure 24.) The picture illus-
trates the beginning of the story — a rich merchant dying at the dinner table.
Below is a little figure of Death, dancing and playing the fiddle in the
,Spielmann“ — travelling musician — tradition, with the caption ,Heute roth,
morgen todt": Today red; tomorrow dead.“

Fairy tales and their illustrations were very popular in the Romantic era,
and they helped to reinforce the image of Death as a fiddler, especially on
children. Richard Wagner writes in his autobiography:

Schon als kleinstes Kind fiel der Klang dieser Quinten [auf der Violine] mit dem
Gespen-
sterhaften, welches mich von jeher aufregte, genau zusammen.... Da ich nun auch das
bekannte Bild sah, auf welchem ein Totengerippe cinem sterbenden Greise auf der
Violine
vorspielte, so pragte sich das Geisterhafte gerade dieser Klange der Phantasie des
Kindes mit
besonderer Starke cin.

When I was still almost a baby [the striking of fifths on the violin] was closely
associated in
my mind with ghosts and spirits... And when I saw the well-known picture in which a
skeleton plays on his violin to an old man on his deathbed, the ghostly character
of those very
notes impresscd itself with particular force upon my childish imagination.

Gustav Mahler too was influenced by childhood memories of fairy tales and
their illustrations, and it is not surprising that the fiddling Death concept
appears as ,Freund Hein“ in his Fourth Symphony. {,,Freund Hein“ was the
popular cozy term for Death.) The scordatura tuning of the strings a whole

“4 Pranz Pocci, Todtentdnze, Stuttgart and Munich 1857, 7. The translation is my

own.

48 Richard Wagner, Mein Leben, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin, Munich 1976, 36-37. I have
not
been able to locate the illustration referred to here. See also Richard Wagner, My
life, 2. vols.,
New York 1911, I, 35.

284
tone higher and the direction to sound ,like a fiddle [Fiedel]“ suggests a
Dance of Death as imagined by medieval German woodcutters.** This is a
view of history coloured by the Romantic imagination, since Death in the
medieval era was a piper.

The fantastical tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann often feature crazy fiddlers and
mysterious violins with supernatural properties, as in the story Rat Krespel
Here, the ancient violin takes on the tone qualities of Antonia’s voice when
she is forbidden to sing, and upon her death the sound-post splits into pieces.
Jacques Offenbach’s opera Hoffmanns Erzéhlungen (1881), which combines
aspects of several Hoffmann stories, makes use of a diabolical fiddler. In Act
IV of the opera, the sinister Dr. Miracle, in luring Antonia to sing, seizes a
violin, plays a frenzied accompaniment, and causes her to sing herself to
death. As she falls to the ground, the evil Miracle - the devil in disguise -
vanishes into the earth with a wild laugh.

The theme of ,Death and the Maiden,“ seen here in the opera and already
mentioned in connection with Lyser’s Paganini caricature, recurs frequently
throughout the nineteenth century. It is probably best known from Franz
Schubert’s song setting ,Der Tod und das Madchen,“ which he wrote in the
key of D minor. This was known as the demonic key‘’ - associated with
supernatural elements as in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Beethoven's Geistertrio
[Ghost Trio] — and it is significant that Schubert featured a set of variations
on this song melody in a string quartet (known as ,Death and the Maiden"),
likewise in the key of D minor. The last movement of this work has been
described as a frenzied dance. The image of a ghostly fiddler enticing a young
maiden to dance herself to an early death is succinctly captured in the follow-
ing pocm from Heinrich Heine’s ,Heimkehr“ series of 1823-1824:

Dic Jungfrau schlaft in der Kammer, The maiden sleeps in her chamber,

Der Mend schaut zitternd hinein; The moonlight trembles there;

Da drauben singt es und klingt cs, Outside, singing and ringing,

Wie Walzermelodein. A waltz tune floats on the air.

ich will mal schaun aus dem Fenster, Ul] take a look through the window:
Wer drunten stért meine Ruh.“ Who breaks my rest with this stir?“

Da steht ein Totengerippe, A skeleton stands in the moonlight

Und fiedelt und singt dazu: And fiddles and sings to her:

»Hast einst mir den Tanz versprochen, »A dance you promised to give me,

Und hast gebrochen dein Wort, You broke your word instead;

Und heut ist Ball auf dem Kirchhof, Tonight there’s a ball in the churchyard, ,
Komm mit, wir tanzen dort.“ Come with me and dance with the dead!
Die Jungfrau ergreift es gewaltig, Enchantment draws the maiden

46 HLS. Redlich, Bruckner and Mahler, rev. ed., London 1963, 194,

” Fora discussion of the ,ghost“ character of D minor sec David P.

Schroeder, ,,Berg’s Wozzeck
and Strindberg’s musical models“, The Opera Journal 21 (1988} 5. See also my book,
A
History of key characteristics in the eighteenth and early nineleenth centuries,
Ann Arbor
1983, 243.

285
4

Es lockt sie hervor aus dem Haus; Spellbound past the door;

Sie folgt dem Gerippe, das singend She follows, the skeleton paces
Und fiedelnd schreitet voraus. Singing and fiddling before.

Es fiedelt und tanzelt und hiipfet, Tt fiddles and skips and dances
Und klappert mit scinem Gebein, And rattles its bones in tune;
Und nickt und nickt mit dem Schddel Its skull is weaving and bobbing
Unheimlich im Mondenschein. In the baleful light of the moon.”*

The idea of a fiddling death or devil also gripped the imagination of British

and French poets. For example, Robert Burns’s poem ,The De’il’s awa wi’ th’
Exciseman* (1792) begins with the lines: The deil cam fiddlin thro’ the town,
And danc’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman.” And Robert Browning, in the long poem
of 1873, ,Red Cotton Night-Cap Country,“ includes the lines:

The Devil, that old stager, at his trick

Of general utility, who leads
Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!*°

Charles Baudelaire was influenced by tales of the devil’s prowess on the

violin, and describes Satan as follows in his prose poem ,Les Tentations“ of
1863:

Dans sa main droite il tenait une autre fiole dont le contenu était d‘un rouge
lumineux, et
qui portait pour étiquette ces mots bizarres: ,Buvez, ceci est mon sang, un parfait
cordial";
dans la gauche, un violon qui lui servait sans doute 4 chanter ses plaisirs ct ses
douleurs, et
4 répandre la contagion de sa folie dans les nuits de sabbat.

He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and inscribed
with a
legend in these singular wards: , DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE‘;
and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his pleasures
and pains,
and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly upon the nights of the Sabbath?!

Henry Cazalis {pseudonym Jean Lahor) was inspired by folk tales of midnight
bone dances, led by Death playing on the fiddle, to write the following verses:

Zig et Zig et Zig, la Mort en cadence

Frappant une tombe avec son talon,
La Mort 4 minuit joue un air de danse

Zig et Zig ct Zig, sur son violon.

Le vent d’hiver souffle, et la nuit est sombre;

Des gémissements sortent des tilleuls;

Les squelettes blancs vont a travers ]‘ombre,

Heinrich Heine, Sdmtliche Werke, Munich 1969, 1, 140. English translation in The
complete
poems of Heinrich Heine, trans. Hal Draper, Boston 1982, 85-86.

Robert Burns, The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley, 3 vals.,
Oxford
1968, II, 655.

Robert Browning, The poems, vol. 2, ed. John Pettigrew, New York 1981, 109.

Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complétes: Petits poems en prose, Paris 1926, I, 66.
See also
Charles Baudelaire, Baudelaire: His prose and poetry, ed. T.R.Smith, New York 1925,
131-132.

286
Courant ct sautant sous leurs grands linceuls.
Zig et Zig et Zig, chacun se trémousse,

On entend claquer les os des danscurs.

Mais psit! tout a coup on quitte la ronde,

On se pousse, on fuit, le coq a chanté

Zip, zip, zip, Death in cadence

Knocking on a tomb with his heel,

Death at midnight plays a dance tune

Zip, zip, zip, on his violin.

The winter wind blows and the night is dark,

Moans come out from among the linden trees;
The white skeletons go past through the gloom,
Running and jumping in their large shrouds.
Zip, zip, zip, each one is shaking,

The bones of the dancers are cracking.

But hist! All of a sudden they stop the round,

They push each other, they flee — the cock has crowed.”

This poem led Saint-Saéns to create one of his most popular works, the Danse
Macabre of 1875, which in turn inspired Franz Liszt to produce one of his
masterpieces of piano transcription, the Danse Macabre of 1876. In Saint-
Saéns’s tone poem, the solo violin has its top string tuned down a semitone
to create the tritone A - Eb, or diabolus in musica, — thus a different kind of
scordatura tuning to that used by Mahler but with a similar programmatic
effect.

The dark feelings of resignation and decline — even deadly foreboding — at

the end of the nineteenth century meant that artists continued to be inspired
by the theme of death. That the image of a fiddling Death was firmly fixed as
an artistic convention is evident in many of the paintings of the enigmatic
Belgian artist James Ensor. For example, in his painting Skeletons Trying to
Warm Themselves at a Stove“ (1889), a violin is prominently displayed next
to the chief skeleton, who wears a black top hat (and represents Death).
Figure 25 shows Ensor’s ,Masks Confronting Death“ (1897), which also in-
cludes a violin: the scroll only is visible in the lower left-hand corner. The
masks symbolized for Ensor the grotesque, fantastic, absurd world of carnival
balls, and he must have associated the dancing of these balls with the violin
and with Death.

Another end-of-the-era work was Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s first play, Der
Thor und der Tod (The Fool and Death) of 1900. Here, the spoiled and selfish
nobleman Claudio, the fool, has treated people badly and filled his life with
empty things. Suddenly he hears mysterious music — and there, at the door,
stands Death, a fiddle-bow in his hand and a violin hanging from his belt.
Claudio protests that he is not ready to die, that he has not yet experienced

52 Arthur Hervey, Saint-Saéns, New York 1922, Westport 1970, 89-90, The translation
is
my own.
287
real life. But, to the violin call of Death there appear one after another his
mother, his wife and his friends-those who had offered him life, a life which
he had rejected. At the end, Claudio is resigned to accept his fate of death.™

In the twentieth century, the massive devastation and loss of life during.
World War l impelled an upsurge of artistic interest in the old Dance of Death
theme. This medieval art form was thus flexible enough to meet the current
need. Figure 26 shows an illustration which appeared in the Hungarian
publication Borszem Janko in 1915. Entitled ,Der Krieg als Tanz in den Tod“
[The War as a Dance of Death], it depicts soldiers from different countries,
dancing to Death's fiddling. The accompanying text reads: ,, Tanzt, Kinder, tanzt,
tanzt bis zum Umfallen, ich werde nicht miide!“ (Dance, children, dance; dance
till you fall dead; I shall not get tired!}>*> A drawing from the same year, 1915,
by the Dutch artist Albert Hahn, is entitled ,Het nieuwe Offensief — Dooden-
dans“ [The New Offensive — Dance of Death]. It features a large violinist-
Death fiddling away in the foreground, while in the distance soldiers drop
dead amid exploding bombs and hovering ravens. Another Dutch drawing,
Leo Jordan’s ,Doodendans™ [Dance of Death], also from 1915, contains a large
fiddling Death, dressed in formal tails like a dance-band leader, astride a
burning globe of Earth. Under his feet are worm-like hordes of soldiers
wriggling to Death’s tune.®6 Figure 27 shows Franz Maserecl’s striking
woodcut .Mobilmachung* [Mobilization] from 1919. This Flemish artist and
noted pacifist depicts fiddling Death leading a crowd of enthusiastic victims
for one last dance. Another wartime image, of Death fiddling beside a
howitzer, appears as the title picture in a series of silhouettes from 1923,
»Gestalten des Todes: Ein Totentanz des Weltkricges“ [Figures of Death: A
Dance of Death from the World War] by the German artist Melchior
Grossek (Figure 28]. Grossek dedicated this series to his two brothers who
were killed in the war. A second image in the same series was inspired by the
old Pied Piper of Hamelin legend: Death wears a medieval hat and plays a
pipe (Figure 29).

It should be noted here that, as in the last figure, Death is still at times
depicted as a piper. However, the artist usually makes it clear that this is
the medieval image of Death. Figure 30, ,Licbespaar-Selbstmordes* from ,,Ein
Totentanz‘ (1922) by Walter Draesner shows a pair of lovers in a joint suicide.
As they hang together from a tree-branch, Death sits in the tree, piping a
tune. The form of his cap and shoes identify him as a medieval piper. It is

°° See Theodor Kiefer, J. Ensor, Recklinghausen 1976, fig. 32.

See the discussion of Hofmannsthal’s play in Kurtz, The Dance of Death, 271-272.

§ Istvan Kozdky, Geschichte der Totentdnze, 3 vols. (Budapest 1936-1944], IU, 264-
265. The
work by Kozaky [Cosacchil is the most extensive (from its origins to the twentieth
century]
to date on the Dance of Death theme.

6 See the illustrations in Totentanz: Kontinuitdt und Wandel eines Bildthemas vom
Mittelalter
bis heute, Mannheim 1987, 169, figs. 204 and 203.

288
—

significant that the Death in modern dress in Renate Geisberg’s ,Das bése
Lied“ [The Evil Song] from her ,,Totentanz“ of 1927 plays the violin. [See
Figure 31,) Death, of course, appears with many non-musical attributes as
well: the spear, bow and arrow, scythe (as in the Grim Reaper image}, hour-
glass (since he represents time running out) and, as in Figure 29, ravens.

The rise of Fascism and the horrors of World War II provided the impetus
for further artistic representations of fiddling Death. For example, Lyonel
Feininger’s cubist painting ,,The Red Fiddler“ (1934) features a Hoffmannesque
devil playing the violin.*” This work has been interpreted as Feininger’s
reaction to Hitler: a demon seducing the masses with beautiful music; thus,
a foreshadowing of ,Germany’s inevitable Danse Macabre.** Kurt Schumacher’s
cubist wood relief , Totentanz* (1929, c. 1940] also depicts this modern Dance
of Death, with a skeleton and his violin leading the people, represented by
various stations of life as in the old medieval illustrations, to their gruacsome
end.® Figure 32 shows Felix Nussbaum’s last work, ,,Die Gerippe spielen zum
Tanz“ [The Skeletons Play for the Dance], painted while in hiding, in 1944.
Here a dance-band of skeletons, led by a violinist, plays on the destroyed
remains of civilization. Both Schumacher and Nussbaum were killed by the
Nazis. ,

Other twentieth-century artists continued to be inspired by the fertile im-

age of fiddling Death-when not driven by the immediate condition of war,
then certainly by the inevitability of human death. Karl Hofer’s ,Der Geiger“
iThe Violinist] of about 1948 illustrates in a modern artistic vision the arche-
typical skeleton Death with his violin.®' (See Figure 33.) Alfred Kubin, the
Austrian master of the macabre, was greatly affected by the untimely death
of his young mother, which may have been the impetus for his ink lithograph
on the ,,Tod und das Madchen“ theme. (See Figure 34.) In Walter Ritzenhofen’s
»Clown und Tod: gemeinsame Melodie“ {1978}, Death draws the bow across
a fiddle-type instrument fingered by the clown, thus making a joint melody
as in the title. (See Figure 35.) The theme here may be similar to Hugo von
Hoffmannsthal’s in that we are all fools, forced to follow Death’s tune.

In twentieth-century music there arc several works which are based on the
old convention of demonic fiddlers. Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat
(1918) is built on the story of a soldier who sells his violin, symbolizing his
soul, to the devil in exchange for worldly wealth. This tale, though taken
from a collection of Russian folklore, was so international in its theme that

5’ See Walter Wiera, The Four Ages of Music, trans, M.D. Herter Norton, New York
1965,
fig. 2c.

** Ernst Scheyer, Lyonel Feininger: Caricature © Fantasy, Detroit 1964, 149,

* See Totentanz: Kontinuitdt, 238, fig. 11.

“© See the discussion of Nussbaum and Schumacher in Totentanz: Kontinuitdét, 238,

240.

st This work was displayed in West Berlin in 1981 in the special exhibit at the
Galerie Pels-
Leusden entitled ,Der Kinstler und der Tod.*

289
it was ideally suited to Stravinsky’s project of a travelling theatre in
Switzerland.
Of more recent vintage is the 1970 composition for electric string quartet —
Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land — by Georg Crumb.
Crumb explains that this work was conceived as a kind of parable in our
troubled contemporary world. Black angel symbolizes fallen angel, that is
the Devil, Death. Among the images portrayed are ,Devil-music,“ featuring
solo violin, and ,Danse Macabre,“ with quotations from the Saint-Saéns work
of the same name, including the violin’s tuning to a tritone. An example can
even be found from the American pop music scene: Charlie Daniels’s hit
country and western single ,The Devil Went Down to Georgia“ (1979). It
includes the lines:

The devil went down to Georgia;

He was lookin’ for a soul to steal. . . .

When he came across this young man,

Sawin’ on a fiddle and playin’ it hot,

And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump,

And said, ,.Boy, let me tell you what.

I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m a fiddle player, too.“®

The devil's fiddle playing in this work uses virtuoso violinistic technique
— a sort of twentieth-century pop version of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill. Old
traditions die hard, and it appears that the devil is still fiddling away in the
present century.

Considering that Death originally became associated with the violin in

connection with the dance, it is a sign of the strength of this convention that,
even though various changes on the dance scene might suggest that the violin
be replaced by a saxophone, electric guitar, or even a synthesizer, the image
of a fiddling Death continues to thrive in the twentieth century. The final
two illustrations show how this image is impressed upon the popular
imagination through the form of the print media. Klaus Béhle’s ,Libanesischer
Totentanz* [Lebanese Dance of Death], which appeared in Die Welt in 1985,
features a grinning Khomeini disguised as Death playing his violin, gloating
over the warring factions in Lebanon. (See Figure 36.) Figure 37 shows how
the German magazine Der Spiegel used Alfred Rethel’s 1850 image of fiddling
Death to illustrate its 1985 cover story on AIDS. Since there appears to be no
end to war and disease, there will continue to be a need for a graphic
visualization of Death. With no sign of a demise, the image of Death as a
fiddler lives on, firmly fixed in the popular imagination.

6 George Crumb, Black angels (Images 1) for electric string quartet (Thirteen
images from the
dark land), New York 1970, preface.

68 Hat Band Music (BMI) jacket notes for Charlie Daniels Band, Million Mile
Reflections (Epic
35751).

290
Fig. 1:

Alfred Rethel (1816-1859), ,Tod als Warger“ (c. 1850). (After Wolfgang Stammler,
Der
Totentanz: Entstehung und Deutung, Munich 1948, p. 41)

29]
Fig. 2: Arnold Bécklin (1827-1901), ,Selbstbildnis mit fiedelndem Tod* (1872). West
Berlin,
Staatliche Museen Preufischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie. (Photo: Jorg P.
Anders)

292
Fig. 3:

Liibecker Totentanz, St. Marien (1466, revised 1588). (After Gert Buchheit, Der
Totentanz: Seine Entstehung und Entwicklung, Berlin 1926, p. 19)

Fig. 4:

Klein-Basler Totentanz (mid-15th century). (After Kathi Meyer-Baer, Music of the

spheres and the dance of Death: Studies in musical iconology, Princeton 1970,
p. 302, fig. 161)

293
a ae
SSA
. (After Meyer-Baer,

,imago mortis”™

Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik, Nuremberg 1493,

Music of the spheres, p.4, fig. 2)

Fig. 6:

295
Fig. 7: Landlicher Tanz aus Poitou (15th century), (After Hellmut Rosenfeld, Der
mittel-
alterliche Totentanz: Entstehung, Entwicklung, Bedeutung, 3rd rev. ed., Cologne
1974, fig. 19)

Fig. 8: Totentanz in La Chaise Dieu (1460). (After Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche

Totentanz,
fig. 20)

296
Saree ae i

ee a ne a ee: ve rs ——— =

acres et histariées faces de la mort, Lyons 1538,

Hans Holbein (1497-1543),Les simul

Fig. 9:

eath,

After Francis Douce, Holbein’s dance of d

).

gned c. 1526

~The Duchess“ (desi

London 1890, fig. 36)

297
Fig.
298

10: Hans Holbein

~The Old W

om

an”

. (After Douce,

fig. 25

y ))

Nu

whi

Wig
‘gla
f! eS weal

YUE vena
\

yy hy)
q
a

MN mer ak

\ \ ‘ oe

B \ ==
\).
Fig. 11: Hans Holbein, ,The Soldier*

. (After Douce, fig. 40)

Bs
sean

LW

. (After Douce, fig. 43)

»The Idiot Fool“

Hans Holbein,

Fig. 12:
300
SS SO B
TTI ALLL LLL LLL LLL
—<—— = a. eee”

TITETINE APRA

phan [Ss

POSSESS

Es
PO ait ae

AY)))

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2

Mi

Fig. 13: Hans Holbein, ,A Cemetery“. {After Douce, fig. 5)

301
Fig. 14: Joris Hoefnagel (1542-1600), Detail of musicians in ,A Féte at Bermondsey“
(c. 1570).
Hatfield House (The Marquess of Salisbury). (After Mary Remnant, English bowed
instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor times, Oxford 1986, fig. 153)

302
Fig. 15: Pieter Brueghel (1528-1569), Detail of music-making lovers in ,The Triumph
of
Death“ (c, 1562). Madrid, Prado. (After John Henry van der Meer, Musikinstrumente:
Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Munich 1983, fig. 109)

303
a4 lacks ait fall: pegs veoh “ey fv i mart acluisl ghifite
afm oes peas Prams piers ay a pe veel natrder dan uy ieton

pee

Fig. 16: Attributed to Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617), ,Couple playing, with Death
behind“.
(After Georg Kinsky, A history of music in pictures, London 1930, p. 93, fig. 4)

304
Fig. 17: Hans Holbein, ,The Pedlar*

. (After Douce, fig. 37)

305

Cale Nai
\Ii AO
hon Mi ae Le MuRHINT. =

we coffe ton dni): Hep. cat vol ee Bt de grace parton, arrdfte ta Chelere.i
Due tu fente i: tht de mou d awd afferes: he tints pawure 4 Marchint pray fu rigise
“Wey

Ta “as affex, ve) Cu, il ‘oft Fonyss qin tn mere», Fermeic quencore Vat tcanips ie
vine on celle terre
Mon up? tneuttable hl pew Be peepar Ci : htm ny in receunas lof Tende demon Care

Fig. 18: F. Langlois dit Ciartres (1588-1647), ,La Mort et le Marchant“. Paris,
Bibliotheque
Nationale Estampes. (After A. P. de Mirimonde, L’iconographie musicale sous les
rois
bourbons,Paris 1975, fig. 85)

306
Fig. 19: Simon Renard de Saint-André (c. 1613-1677), ,Vanité“. Strasbourg, Musée
des Beaux
Arts. (Photo: Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg)

307
Fig. 20: James Marshall (1838-1902), ,,Tartinis Traum oder Die
Teufelstrillersonate*.Munich,
Schack-Galerie. (After Eduard Melkus, Hohe Schule der Violine, Archiv recording
2533 086)

Fig. 21: Johann Peter Lyser (1803-1870), ,Karikatur auf die Wiener Konzerte”
(18282). (After
Julius Kapp, Paganini: Eine Biographie mit 60 Bildern, Berlin 1922, p. 9)

308
Fig. 22: Carl Gottlieb Merkel (1817-1897), Bilder des Todes oder Todtentanz fiir
alle Stande,
Leipzig 1850, ,Tanzen*.

309
Fig. 23: Franz Graf von Pocci (1807-1876), Todtentdnze,
Stuttgart 1857, Initial ,H“ illustration for ,Heisa,
lustig Musikanten“, p. 17

raed wane
Kad we a Cw ae
! @)
/ i
. iv
it ins
: fal DIL
|
‘ 7 ft 1
AIN .
‘a ii : : ; Eee (
Z ud “
ae far \\. Whe a
uh ee \ aN ws J eG AY i,
j 5 ar a © - AY heat
ih we \ies er i FARE Felli’
ia , oy P i
F 407 Se, mM
ARS ye We 7 .
i y ag ; Sed fe

( ETOUH|L | Wea moraenio| 7

yy

ae i

Fig. 24: Ludwig Richter (1803-1884), Initial ,E“ illustration for ,Stumme Liebe“
(1842). (After
Johann Musiaus, Volksmdrchen der Deutschen, Jena 1912, vol. 1, p. 161)

310
Fig. 25: James Ensor (1860-1949), ,Masks Confronting Death“ (1897). Li¢ge, Musée
des Beaux-
Arts. (After Jacques Janssens, James Ensor, New York, 1978, p. 84)

311
Fig. 26: Hungarian Caricature in Borszem Janko, 1915, (After Eduard Fuchs, Der
Weltkrieg in
der Karikatur, Munich 1916, p. 81)

312
Fig. 27: Franz Masereel (1889-1972), ,Mobilmachung* (1919). (After Stammler, Der
Totentanz,
p. 38}

313
Fig. 28: Melchior Grossek (1889-1967], Gestalten des Todes: Ein Totentanz des
Weltkriegs,
1923, ,Das Bild des Todes*. (After Istvan Kozaky, Geschichte der Totentdnze: Der
Totentanz von heute, Budapest 1941, pl. 79, no. 1)

Fig. 29: Melchior Grossek, Gestalten des Todes, ,Der Ausmarsch“. (After Kozaky, Der
Totentanz
von heute, pl. 79, no. 2)

314
ANY,
\
NS
Nv
~~

uM Wee
¥

Xa
ww

Fig. 30: Walter Draesner (born 1891], Ein Totentanz, 1922, No. 3, Im Tode vereint”.
Darmstadt,
Private collection. (After Totentanz: Kontinuitét und Wandel eines Bildthemas vom
Mittelalter bis heute, Mannheim 1987, p. 129, fig. 132)

315
Fig. 31: Renate Geisberg-Wichmann (born 1898), Totentanz, 1927, No. 6, ,Das bése
Lied".
Universitat Diisseldorf, Totentanzsammlung ,Mensch und Tod“. (After Totentanz:
Kontinuitat, p. 129, fig. 133)

316
Fig. 32: Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944), ,Die Gerippe spielen zum Tanz“ (1944). (After
Totentanz:
Kontinuitdt, p. 240, fig. 19)

317
-
‘

Fig. 33: Karl Hofer (1878-1955), ,.Der Geiger“ (c. 1948). (After Der Kiinstler und
der Tod, Berlin
1981, fig. 43)

318
At ae
hie

Fig. 34: Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), ,Tod und das Madchen* (1920’s?). Author's
private collection

319
320

artist)

Fig. 35: Walter Ritzenhofen (b. 1920), ,Clown und Tod: gemeinsame Melodie“ (1978).
(Photo:
Fig. 36: Klaus Bohle, ,Libanesischer Totentanz“, Die Welt, 11.6.1985. (After
Totentanz:
Kontinuitdt, p. 263, fig. 23)

321
NEUE
SPIEGEL-

Fig. 37: Die gro®en Seuchen", Der Spiegel, No. 39, 23.9.1985. (After Totentanz:
Kontinuitdt,
p. 264, fig. 27)

322