A bacchanale is a dramatic musical composition, often depicting a drunken revel or bacchanal.

Well-known examples are the bacchanales in Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...

's Samson et Dalila and the Overture and Bacchanale of Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser (opera)

Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...

. John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 wrote a Bacchanale for prepared piano. The French composer Jacques Ibert

Jacques Ibert

Jacques François Antoine Ibert was a French composer. Having studied music from an early age, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and won its top prize, the Prix de Rome at his first attempt, despite studies interrupted by his service in World War I.Ibert pursued a successful composing career,...

 wrote a Bacchanale commissioned by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 for the tenth anniversary of the Third Programme in 1956.

In 1939, Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

 designed the set and wrote the libretto for a ballet entitled Bacchanale, based on Wagner's Tannhäuser and the myth of Leda and the Swan

Leda and the Swan

Leda and the Swan is a motif from Greek mythology in which Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. In...

.

"Bacchanale" (1954) was written by composer Toshiro Mayuzumi

Toshiro Mayuzumi

Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...

, for 5 saxophone (soprano, 2 alto, tenor, baritone) timpani, percussion (4), piano, celesta, harp, strings. Duration 11'. Published by C.F. Peters. (P06328)