Can-Can (Orpheus in the Underworld)

About this arrangement

Offenbach’s Galop from Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), the tune every can-can dancer kicks to. It is fast and nearly all quavers (eighth notes), so it is for a hand that already knows its way round C position. Offenbach’s galop is in G; here it is in C major, so the right hand runs between middle C and the C above: bar 4 leaps from middle C straight to the high C and then runs down the whole scale, B A G F E D. The left hand keeps the dance going with a bass note and a chord on every beat, swapping between C and G7, and the eight bars are played twice.

Practice tip: Start slowly, much slower than you want to, and get bar 4’s scale even before you speed up. The long notes at the start of bars 1 and 5 are a rest for the hand: hold them for the full two beats.

A short history

The tune comes from Jacques Offenbach’s comic operetta Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), first staged at his own small theatre, the Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris, in October 1858. In the final scene the gods, bored stiff in heaven, come down to the underworld and throw a party; the number is the “Galop infernal”, and it brought the house down.

The galop was a fast ballroom dance of the time. The piece only became “the can-can” later, when Parisian dance halls such as the Moulin Rouge took it up in the 1890s for the high-kicking chorus dance, and it has been the sound of the can-can ever since.

Camille Saint-Saëns had fun with it in The Carnival of the Animals (1886): his “Tortoises” play Offenbach’s galop at a solemn crawl.

Quick facts

Tune

Jacques Offenbach, 1858

Key

C major

Time signature

4/4

Length

8 bars, played twice

Tempo

Lively, crotchet = 120

Difficulty

Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 111 of 201)

Type

Classical

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers