a playlist for short 023, death’s chess game
10 tracks · 58 min
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.
open in spotify ↗watch the short ↗dies iraegregorian chant
the hymn of judgment day that the seventh seal opens on.
the seventh sealscott 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.”
the song of the sibyldead can dance
an old catalan song of the last judgment, by a band named dead can dance.
totentanzhugo distler
written in lübeck in 1934, inspired by the dance of death in st mary’s church there, destroyed eight years later.
epitaph of theodoranna von hausswolff
the pipe organ of annedal church in gothenburg, on a record made after her grandfather died.
ad mortem festinamusllibre 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.
the man comes aroundjohnny 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.
valse tristesibelius
from his music for the play kuolema, death: a dying woman dances, and death comes to the door.
symphonic dances: iiirachmaninoff
his last work, finished in 1940; the dies irae comes back in it.
death is not the endnick cave & the bad seeds
seven singers take a verse each, one after another, the way the dance passes from rank to rank.
