Huw Dixon

Four Pieces for Piano, Opus 4 (2024/25)

No 3: Toccata Ecossaise

The Tocharian Tarantella is an ecstatic dance, performed in the dark by torch light in the open beneath the stars.  You can imagine the dark shapes of the mountains beyond the light and the dark valley below.  It has a quiet and slow middle section, where the dancers rest and their thoughts rise up to the stars above and the valley below. Then the dancing resumes to a joyful ending where the dancers fall exhausted to the floor.

The Tocharian civilisation was the most North Easterly Indo-European civilisation that was in modern day western Chinese province of Xinjiang (subsequently lived in by Turkic and Han Chinese people). The Tocharian civilisation died out some 1500 years ago, but I use it as a vehicle to imagine this dance in the dark evening by torchlight in the mountains under the stars.

The Italian Tarantella is an ecstatic dance thought to have older origins in Dionysian or Bacchanalian origins.