Bacchanale

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A bacchanale is a dramatic musical composition, often depicting a drunken revel or bacchanal.

Well-known examples are the bacchanales in Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila and the Overture and Bacchanale of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. John Cage wrote a Bacchanale for prepared piano. The French composer Jacques Ibert wrote a Bacchanale commissioned by the BBC for the tenth anniversary of the Third Programme in 1956.

In 1939, Salvador Dalí designed the set and wrote the libretto for a ballet entitled Bacchanale, based on Wagner’s Tannhaüser and the myth of Leda and the Swan.


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