While Liszt himself composed an original work titled "Totentanz (Dance of Death)", this work is an arrangement for piano solo of the symphonic poem "Danse macabre" by the French composer, Camille Saint-Saëns, made in 1876.

It is generally well-known that throughout his life, Liszt arranged famous melodies from contemporary composers' operas, songs, and orchestral works for piano, but the nature of these arrangements differs significantly between his period as an active virtuoso pianist and his later period. This work belongs to the latter period, and its character differs somewhat from the excessively virtuosic arrangements of the former period, which could be described as "by Liszt, for Liszt, of Liszt." In other words, extreme deformations of themes or fundamental alterations of structure are largely absent. Therefore, we shall provide a brief explanation of Saint-Saëns' original work here.

Originally composed in 1872 as a song setting of Henri Cazalis' poem "Danse macabre," it was later orchestrated as a symphonic poem. The premiere of the symphonic poem "Danse macabre" took place on January 24, 1875, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, performed by the Orchestre Colonne conducted by Édouard Colonne.

The solo violin part employs an unusual tuning (scordatura) of G-D-A-E♭, differing from the standard G-D-A-E, allowing for the performance of a diminished fifth (A-E♭) on open strings. The diminished fifth is an enharmonic equivalent of the augmented fourth, and Saint-Saëns' intention to use this augmented fourth interval is clear. The augmented fourth is historically known in music as the "tritone" (the devil's interval), and it was intentionally used in a piece symbolizing "death."