Bacchanale

A bacchanale is an orgiastic musical composition, often depicting a drunken revel or bacchanal. Examples include the bacchanales in Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah, the Venusberg scene in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, Danse générale (Bacchanale) from Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, and Grande bacchanale des saisons in Alexander Glazunov's The Seasons. John Cage wrote a Bacchanale in 1940, his first work for prepared piano. The French composer Jacques Ibert was commissioned by the BBC for the tenth anniversary of the Third Programme in 1956, for which he wrote a bacchanale.