We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Dancing Plague. 2021

by Paul Dolden

supported by
fibr and dea
fibr and dea thumbnail
billynewman
billynewman thumbnail
Lee Ashcroft
Lee Ashcroft thumbnail
jon_leidecker
jon_leidecker thumbnail
Vincent
Vincent thumbnail
Brendan Byrnes
Brendan Byrnes thumbnail
/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $2 CAD  or more

     

about

Dancing Plague. 2021. 11’09.

Dancing Plagueon The Golden Dolden Box Set, available under my merchandise section.
I decided to release this work to the general public, because as I write, we are still dealing with the pandemic. This work I started composing in 2020, just before the pandemic toke over our lives. One could joke, that it proves I am still avant-garde! Given our lives during Covid, I do not want to be avant-garde anymore!

This is not a work about isolation, or another narcissistic artist missing being the center of attention in a concert hall performance. I have been isolated in my studio for forty years avoiding the concert hall as much as possible!

Instead the work is a joyful sound of celebration for our post pandemic world. It is a good example of what I discuss in The Golden Dolden Box Set, as an example of the “historical imagination” works. In these recent works a historical story or myth inspires my musical imagination.

Here are the official program notes:

A dancing mania, also known as the Dancing Plague, was a social phenomenon that occurred in Europe starting after the Black Death in 1350, and lasting for at least one hundred years. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. Often musicians accompanied dancers, due to a belief that music would treat the mania, but this often encouraged others to join in. The dancers roamed the countryside often wearing “strange colorful attire” and many paraded around naked and made obscene gestures with many having sex. Others acted like animals by jumping, hopping and leaping about. They hardly stopped and some danced until they broke their bones. Many screamed, laughed or cried but most just went into a state of ecstasy and eventually became overwhelmed in exhaustion.

The work is included in the "Golden Dolden Box Set" available under the "merchandise" tab. This box set includes all my music, scores, essays, and educational talks from 1984 to 2021.

credits

released February 3, 2022

license

tags

about

Paul Dolden image

Paul Dolden Val Morin, Québec

For 40 years I have been mixing hundreds of recorded musical parts , with each track being recorded one at a time. I write the score before I go in my studio. Works are solo studio compositions or commissions for live soloist(s) and tape. I develop my own tuning systems and use multiple tempos at the same time. The first 20 years I produced dissonant dense textures. Since 2000 more melodic. ... more

contact / help

Contact Paul Dolden

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Report this track or account

If you like Paul Dolden, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Beans joins the show to discuss his album release, "ZWAARD".

listen now