Shall We Dance?

Perhaps the most iconic scene in Strauss’s Salome, the “Dance of the Seven Veils” (or “Salomes Tanz” in German) (Track 1) is infamous not only for its implicit stage action—the titular princess performs a seductive dance for her stepfather (and uncle) Herod—but also for the deliberate cacophony of its orchestral accompaniment. As with his later operatic works like Der Rosenkavalier (1912), Strauss assembled a massive ensemble for Salome comprising approximately 100 instrumentalists—18 woodwinds (including a heckelphone, similar to a bass oboe), 15 brass, nine percussionists, two keyboard players, two harps, and roughly 60 strings.

This instrumentation is used to great effect in the “Dance,” which alternates between frenzied, raucous whiplash and stately, foreboding elegance. It begins with the former in a section marked sehr schnell und heftig (“very fast and violent”), as the tambourine, snare drum, and timpani set a frantic pace under a motif in the oboes whose chromatic embellishments lend an air of the exotic and sensual. This first passage in 2/4 meter gives way to a kind of ironic waltz. The melody in the violas spells out an A half-diminished seventh chord, while guttural glissandi in the cellos suggest something is amuck even within the measured metric confines of the dance.

The leitmotif associated with Salome—first heard in the clarinet at the very outset of the opera—appears in the flute, followed by a shifty, unsteady section that alternates between bars of 5/4, 2/4, and 3/4. In the subsequent section, given an ethereal, almost otherworldly feel through exceedingly high notes in the strings, chromatic flourishes in the woodwinds, and sparse chords in the celesta, percussion instruments break through in sputtering thirty-second notes: first the triangle, then the castanets.

The dance then slows into a modulation from A minor to C-sharp minor, an expressive, almost romantic melody taken up by the strings (bolstered by the horn and trumpet). Accented by the harp accompaniment and soft cymbal crashes, the waltz regains its footing and beings to accelerate again, helped along by tambourine shakes and a chromatic descending line in the English horn. The section concludes, unexpectedly, with a suspension and resolution to a serene A-major chord, a slight reprieve before the primary theme comes crashing back in—as if tempting us with the possibility of calm only to snatch it away again.

The finale is a no-holds-barred demonic romp that fires on all cylinders. The flutes and oboes reprise the first motif from the dance while the violins scurry in rapid, descending chromatic figures. The snare drum enters in insistent triplets, doubled by the violas, and alternating with the castanets and rapid ascending runs on the xylophone. Accented arpeggios blare in the trumpets and clarinets, anticipating Herod’s call to have Salome executed at the opera’s end. And just before the bombastic final cymbal crashes of the dance, Strauss gives us a brief hint of the shimmering leitmotif representing Salome’s infatuation with Jochanaan. As the score reads, “Salome lingers for a moment in a visionary pose by the cistern where Jochanaan is held captive” (“Salome verweilt einen Augenblick in visionärer Haltung an der Cisterne, in der Jochanaan gefangen gelaten wird”). This short motivic interruption reminds us that while the entire dance was performed before Herod, in truth it was done for the prophet.