, the namesake of a medieval dancing mania known Vitus' Dance Gabriel wrote "Moribund the Burgermeister" about
St. Vitus' Dance, a disease that afflicted its victims with forcible and uncontrollable jerking movements or dancing. He had read about St. Vitus' Dance in a book discussing medieval diseases. The namesake for St. Vitus' Dance,
Saint Vitus, was a medieval
patron saint of actors, dancers, and
epilepsy. Saint Vitus' followers would perform manic dances during his
feast day to cure individuals of the disease. Modern medicine generally identifies St. Vitus' Dance either as a kind of
dancing mania (itself having various possible causes), or as the
autoimmune illness
Sydenham's chorea. During the song, Gabriel employs multiple voices to adopt the roles of various characters, one of which is the titular "Moribund the Burgermeister". A burgermeister refers to a European town official that has similar responsibilities to a
mayor and the word moribund carries a definition relating to declining health. The Burgermeister is represented in the song as a clueless authority figure who blames the source of the Vitus' Dance on external forces he is unable to understand; he eventually suggests in verse three that the mania is "the work of the devil". Gabriel delivered the lines of the Burgermeister in a throaty voice, including the "I will find out" lyric that caps off the second and third chorus. The song's
working title was "I Will Find Out" during the recording sessions of Gabriel's first solo album. Gabriel's lead vocals were amongst the final things added to the song. For the tracking session, Gabriel sang a guide vocal using a technique he dubbed "Gabrielese", where he substituted actual words with syllables as placeholders. The verses of the song consist of descending synthesiser chords and electronically manipulated percussion.
Larry Fast played his parts on a
Polymoog,
Minimoog, and a
Moog modular system. He recorded the synth response line to the "I will find out" lyric as an
overdub. The song's percussion was played by
Jimmy Maelen on a
talking drum. Fast captured the sound of the talking drum with a
contact microphone and fed the signal through an
envelope triggered through his
modular synthesiser rack. Fast mixed the dry signal of the talking drum with the processed drum sound, which was treated with
electronic oscillators, Moog
filters, and
delay to create what he described as a "percussive sound bed." He said that the Moog filters were responsible for the "fluid swirly drum sound". Lyrically, the first verse details the mayhem unfurling in the market square, where the townsfolk are "twistin' and turnin' in a thousand ways". The song then transitions into the chorus, which features fuller instrumentation of drums, bass, electric guitars, and synthesisers. Each of the choruses are straddled with a different set of lyrics that follow the same melodic motif. ==Critical reception==