Songs and Dances of Death

Songs and Dances of Death (Russian: Песни и пляски смерти, Pesni i plyaski smerti) is a
song cycle for voice (usually bass or bass-baritone) and piano by Modest Petrovich
Mussorgsky, written in the mid-1870s, to poems by Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a relative
of the composer.

Each song deals with death in a poetic manner although the depictions are realistic in that they
reflect experiences not uncommon in 19th century Russia: child death, death in youth,
drunken misadventure and war.

The song cycle is considered Mussorgsky's masterpiece in the genre.

Songs and Dances of Death consists of four individual songs, as follows:

1. Lullaby (Колыбельная) (14 April 1875) (in F-sharp minor–A minor)

A mother in a peasant hut cradles her sick child, who grows more feverish. Death
appears, and tries to console the frantic mother and her child. The mother's lines in the
song are marked by agitato markings and sixteenth-note rests indicating her fear and
panic. In contrast, Death's lines are slow and deliberate, marked with lento and
tranquillo markings. Each of Death's interjections ends with a "lullaby" motive
directed to the child. Eventually, the mother accepts her child's fate, and allows Death
to rock the child to eternal sleep.

2. Serenade (Серенада) (11 May 1875) (in E minor–E-flat minor)

The knightly figure of Death sings a serenade outside the window of a dying
adolescent girl, Death acts as both the wooer and the wooed, simultaneously
attempting to "seduce" the dying girl with the beauty of his serenade as he is
grotesquely seduced by the dying girl's sickly pallor.

3. Trepak (Трепак) (17 February 1875) (in D minor)

A drunken peasant stumbles outside into the snow and becomes caught in a blizzard.
The figure of Death invites him to dance a folk-dance called the Trepak. In this song,
Death is first portrayed as a terror, as the fierce blizzard envelops the peasant, then as
a seducer, as she speaks sweet words to the peasant to convince him to lie down in the
snow. In the final section of the song, Death acts as a comforter, singing a lullaby of
summer days as the man freezes to death.

4. The Field Marshal (Полководец) (5 June 1877) (in E-flat minor–D minor)

After a narrative depiction of a bloody battle, The figure of Death appears as an officer
to survey the aftermath, illuminated by the moon. She addresses the dead troops, tells
them that while they were enemies in life, they are comrades in death, and she is their
commanding officer. She assures them that although the living will forget about them,
she will remember them, and will harden the earth above them so that they cannot be
resurrected.