ingmar bergman ended the seventh seal on a dance of death: death leading the living over the hills. this follows that dance over six centuries, from a pilgrims’ song of 1399 and the hymn the film opens on to scott walker, johnny cash, a church organ in gothenburg and rachmaninoff’s last dance.
a playlist for short 023, death’s chess game
the final dance
the hour
10 tracks, in the order they play
each block is a track, drawn as long as it plays57:43
the hymn and the film
0:00 – 11:270:00
dies irae
01 · gregorian chant
the hymn of judgment day that the seventh seal opens on.
6:316:31
the seventh seal
02 · scott walker
a 1969 song that tells the film’s story: “anybody seen a knight pass this way? i saw him playing chess with death yesterday.”
4:56into the church
11:27 – 22:4311:27
the song of the sibyl
03 · dead can dance
an old catalan song of the last judgment, by a band named dead can dance.
3:4615:13
totentanz
04 · hugo distler
written in lübeck in 1934, inspired by the dance of death in st mary’s church there, destroyed eight years later.
2:0517:18
epitaph of theodor
05 · anna von hausswolff
the pipe organ of annedal church in gothenburg, on a record made after her grandfather died.
5:25the dance
22:43 – 34:2522:43
ad mortem festinamus
06 · llibre vermell de montserrat
“we hasten towards death”: a dance for pilgrims at montserrat. the manuscript of 1399 draws a skeleton in a coffin beside it.
7:1529:58
the man comes around
07 · johnny cash
it opens on the first seal of revelation and ends on death on a pale horse; bergman’s film takes its title from the seventh seal.
4:27the last dance
34:25 – 53:1634:25
valse triste
08 · sibelius
from his music for the play kuolema, death: a dying woman dances, and death comes to the door.
5:3339:58
symphonic dances: iii
09 · rachmaninoff
his last work, finished in 1940; the dies irae comes back in it.
13:18the end credits
53:16 – 57:4353:16
death is not the end
10 · nick cave & the bad seeds
seven singers take a verse each, one after another, the way the dance passes from rank to rank.
4:27