Leisner, D :: Dances in the Madhouse

Dances in the Madhouse

Leisner, D

David Leisner's Dances in the Madhouse, for violin or flute/piccolo and guitar.

'Dances in the Madhouse, which dates from 1982-early in Leisner's career and before his ordeal with focal dystonia began, is his best-known work and has enjoyed widespread success (including appearances on multiple recordings). Leisner scored Dances for a duo of guitar and flute (for which a violin can substitute); the work has also been performed in his orchestral arrangement. Rather than physical malady, here Leisner turns a creative gaze toward psychological disturbance. His inspiration was a lithograph by the American realist painter George Bellows (1882-1925): Dance in a Madhouse, from 1917, which is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The composition shows four groups of inmates of an asylum dancing (three couples and one woman dancing alone), with another group seated as the 'audience.' Leisner designed the piece as a sequence of dances for each of the four dancing groups. He begins with Bellows's image of the solitary woman 'dancing a stylish dance, alone,' as Leisner characterizes it, for the opening 'Tango Solitaire.' 'Waltz for the Old Folks' accompanies what the composer describes as the 'happy couple who seem to be perfectly comfortable with their insanity,' while 'a forlorn, despairing couple of women', sitting on the sidelines, prompted 'Ballad for the Lonely' (and what a different kind of loneliness this is, in comparison with the opening dance). The suite concludes with the irresistibly energetic 'Samba!' - the dance Leisner imagined for the third, middle-aged couple. Cocooned by the guitar's percussive special effects and the flute's seductively lilting melody, they give themselves over to 'a wild, dizzy dance' (featuring a correspondingly bold and dynamic compositional design in the lithograph).'

- Thomas May; The Kennedy Center

Contents

• Tango Solitaire
• Waltz for the Old Folks
• Ballad for the Lonely
• Samba!