Danse Macabre [Saxophone Quartet]

"Danse macabre, Op. 40" was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns. Saint-Saëns composed four symphonic poems throughout his life, and this piece is arguably the most famous among them. It was originally composed as a song with piano accompaniment in 1872, and an orchestral version was created in 1874.
Based on a bizarre poem by French poet Henri Cazalis, the piece depicts the eerie scene of skeletons dancing in a graveyard at night. The composition is in G minor, 3/4 time, and "Mouvement modéré d'une valse" (moderate waltz tempo). It follows the narrative order. A solo violin creates a deathly atmosphere with a dissonant interval of A and E^♭. The melody of the Gregorian chant "Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath) is hinted at as the waltz for the dancing skeletons.
The xylophone melody, which expresses the sound of skeletons' bones clattering in the piece, was also used in a later work, "Fossils" (movement 12) from "The Carnival of the Animals."
This time, an orchestral piece typically performed by a large ensemble will be performed by four saxophonists. For the saxophone quartet arrangement, the goal was to create an arrangement that leverages the unique characteristic of a saxophone quartet, which consists of four different instruments.