Matthew Raley

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The "Death and the Maiden" Tarantella

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW57vTzNCGg] Here is last movement of Franz Schubert's String Quartet in d minor, D 810. The movement is very fast (marked "Presto"), and is a tarantella, a frenzied dance to ward off the poison of a tarantula bite.

The four-movement quartet did not acquire its macabre title, "Death and the Maiden," because of this tarantella movement, but because of the slow second movement. It uses a song of the same name also composed by Schubert.