Spooky Season

I was listening to Performance Today this afternoon and some of the pieces seemed to have a fall themed feel to them. And it made me wonder just what about a piece makes it seem like it would go well with a scary movie? I know minor keys are sometimes associated with melancholy but is there an identifier that evokes fear?

Also, I googled and found a few websites that had (somewhat different) playlists for Halloween. Enjoy!

1. Playlist: 31 Freaky and Frightening Classical Works to Haunt Your Halloween
2. Spooky, Classical Compositions for a Frightful Halloween
3. Best Classical Music For Halloween: Top 20 Most Terrifying Pieces
4. 12 favorite Halloween classical
5. Six of the best pieces of music for Halloween
6. 13 spooky pieces of Halloween music for children
7. 7 Spooky Classical Pieces For Your Halloween Playlist
8. Five classical music pieces for Halloween

Hard not to put John Williams’s Jaws music at the top of the ‘scary’ list.

Thanks! I had no idea Hallowe'en playlists were a thing. I'm enjoying them :-)

>2 abbottthomas: Oh yes, John Williams' Jaws is a must for scary music! I remember once snorkeling where the continental shelf drops off the coast of north Africa. It was light and sandy and 40 or 50 feet deep on my left side and dark, very dark, and a mile deep on my right side and the music to Jaws started to thrum in my mind. My body hardly touched the water as I fled to shore!

Night on Bald Mountain(?)

I forget the composer's name. Maybe I've even forgotten the title. But it was a night on something. The piece I dreamed the other night was pretty spooky, I can't remember it now, but it kept me awake!

>5 clammer: Modest Mussorgsky and you got the title right. ☺️

Another performance I'll always remember (but my memory ) I sat in the audience during a dress rehearsal for what I can only recall as the Jewish Symphony (apologies if this comes across as distasteful) but it is the work that was at least one time fairly well known that has as its most memorable part the wailing done by those in the orchestra that is intended to voice the lamentation of Holocaust victims ... and I want to say it was a Symphony in e minor, but the composer and any other details escape me. It was back in 1984 that I heard it performed, and it of course dates later than the mid 1940's.

But it sure ran chills down my back. Somebody here must know it. I'm old, just can't remember. Probably not so good a choice, but it is a spooky piece even if you don't know the back story.

Surely the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Górecki?

I know that their "stories" are not Halloween, but I find Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" to be somewhat spooky. It has a tension. Same thing for Camille Saint-Saens' "Dance Macbre." Roussel has "The Spider's Feast," but I'm not sure other than the name, that it is spooky.

I love "Hall of the Mountain King".

I find Jacques Offenbach's "Galop Infernal" from “Orpheus in the Underworld” to be quite spooky in its own way. Of course it's better known as the music for the cancan dance, which is not spooky, but if you put the saucy French dancers out of your mind and watch a performance showing gods and demons prancing about the stage, it takes on a different tone.

I also find parts of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" to evoke a bit of spookiness.

Try Job: A Masque for Dancing by Vaughan Williams. The Vision of Satan from Scene VI The Dance of Job's Comforters is brief but chilling.

>9 Tess_W: Fritz Lang uses it in his movie "M", the killer always whistles it.