ABSTRACT
The opening of The Beltane Fire is characteristically dark and questing a 9-note melodic phrase, the last three notes a six-semitone transposition of the second three, and underpinned harmonically by a sustained progression from the first note to the fourth. In one sense, certainly, that opera provides a kind of negative image of the ballet scenario, offering a more conventional study of warlike, secular forces oppressing and attempting to destroy those committed to pacifism and spirituality. In The Beltane Fire, what is perceived by the Kirk as a dance of the deadly sins is, from the opposite perspective, a dance of self-fulfilment and social renewal. The dancing only gets under way after the short Introduction which proclaims its preliminary nature by avoiding the kind of stratified textures that emerge in the First General Dance. In Richard Taruskin's view, the final dance 'is presented as anything but horrible – and that is what is horrible.'
