Available Closer Entrance Song: Liszt’s Totentanz

Detail from Francesco Traini’s Triumph of Death, an inspiration for Totentanz.

While there are surely a number of factors to consider when assessing the degree to which a musical work might serve as an effective closer entrance song, the most important of these (i.e. these factors) is surely the degree to which the music in question gives an opposing team’s batters the sense that some manner of gross physical discomfort is about to be visited upon their respective persons.

It has recently come to the attention of this author that the opening minute-plus of composer Franz Liszt’s Totentanz — or, in English, Dance of the Dead — ably fulfills this most important of criteria.*

Note: the author is aware that Liszt’s piece is not technically a “song.” I’m merely using the term colloquially.

Liszt, who himself was known to visit hospitals and asylums as a recreational activity, never formally described the piece as “the soundtrack to an impromptu and forcible colorectal exam performed by the Devil himself” — although one assumes, while listening to the work, that this was his intention.

Here’s the beginning of Franz Liszt’s Totentanz, as performed by Michael Ponti and the Berliner Symphoniker:

[audio:http://www.fangraphs.com/not/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Liszt-Totentanz.mp3|titles=Totentanz]