A CD's worth of dark music

Cafe Society
1

I’m trying to compile a disk of darkness/despair/horror themed music. It will be pretty much for personal use. Mostly looking at classical, and will probably only have two specific vocal pieces; instrumental from other genres might work.

So far I’m looking at:
-Dies Irae from Mozart’s Requiem (Perhaps it should be the first piece? might be interesting to open and close with vocal).
-Second movement from Shostakovich’s String Quartet #8 or its symphonic version.
-In Diesem Wetter from Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (This will be the closing piece).

Another possible piece to stick in there is the Tristram theme from the original Diablo, though I’m not sure how well it would work.

Any thoughts as to what else to throw in are greatly welcome.

2

You’ve got the Shostakovich angle covered, but on a similar-yet-different vein, try Prokofiev, fifth symphony, slow movement (it’s either the second or third).

Nick Cave: The Mercy Seat, The Curse of Millhaven, and plenty more…

Some parts of Bach’s St John Passion are pretty bleak, although I susepct out-of-context they will lose some of their effect.

Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas is heart-breaking, and despite being a staple of Remembrance Sunday hasn’t quite become a cliche.

I guess the obvious suggestion from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique needs to be made, although I’d personally rather eat nails :wink:

3

Bach’s Tocata and Fugue in D Minor? It’s my favorite piece although I am an admitted neophyte.

4

May I ask which part? Never heard it in its entirety.

5

The final two movements

6

I love this piece! When I was a kid in San Diego, there was a place called Organ Power Pizza. It had animated mounted animal heads on the wall that would crack wise (I guess sort of like Chuck E. Cheese’s, though I’ve never been to one), but the big draw was the pipe organ at the end of the dining room. I suppose I was about eight or ten years old, and I’d always request Tocata and Fugue in D Minor. The version I remember liking the most was by Virgil Fox. :slight_smile:

As for the CD, how about Carl Orff’s O Fortuna?

O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis
et inanis,
rota tu volubilis,
status malus,
vana salus
semper dissolubilis,
obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris;
nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris.

Sors salutis
et virtutis
michi nunc contraria,
est affectus
et defectus
semper in angaria.
Hac in hora
sine mora
corde pulsum tangite;
quod per sortem
sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite!

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate - monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me
in health
and virtue,
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the string man,
everyone weep with me!

7

Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion & Celeste (Remember The Shining?)

Trying to find a piece that was used in a theatre Halloween production of The Woman in Black - I know it’s by Arvo Part (ulmauts over the a’s). I think (but am not sure) it’s from Tabula Rasa [Amazon.com is being an unhelpful yutz tonight], but the piece pretty much was strings and a single chime echoing through the piece. Very dark.

I know you wanted to concentrate on classical music, but if you can, pick up Jerry Goldsmith’s original score to The Omen - 12 minute suite excerpted on the (first) Cinema Choral Classics.

Ah, the Kindertotenlieder (aka The Dead Kid Ditties) - definitely the The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald of its day. Guaranteed to suck the life out of any party - great way to get rid of people who stay too long.

screech (I speak italics as a second language) -owl

8

Damn you! I opened this thread just to mention this piece. Plus, now I’m going to have that descending bassline stuck in my head all night.

Other suggestions:

Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden (written while he was dying of syphilis)

Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain (supposedly about witches in congress with Satan)

Richard Wagner’s Siegfried’s Funeral March from Gotterdammerung (of course, the mere thought of sitting through this marathon should be depressing enough)

Also, may I suggest the tomb scene from Verdi’s Aida for the final piece? The lovers who are trapped in a tomb to suffocate to death certainly fits your theme but the music is ethereal and uplifting. An excellent piece to close the CD and cleanse the palate.

9

The third movement, Elegia, of Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra has a pit of despair sound to it, written by the Hungarian composer during the darker days of World War II.

The third movement, The Housatonic At Stockbridge, of Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England has a mysterious swirling on the upper strings while the rest of the orchestra plays a nostalgic, melancholy melody. (Ives was recreating the atmosphere of a fog shrouded walk he took one morning with his wife.)

The title of the seventh movement, *Neptune, the Mystic[/], of Gustav Holst’s The Planets says it well.

Mussorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition has two choice horror-movie selections: Catacombae, sepulchrum romanum (Catacombs, Roman tomb), and Con mortuis in lingua mortua (Among the dead in a dead language). Mussorsky of course also wrote Night on Bald Mountain, and at least two CDs come with both works on them.

10

The last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #6 is arguably the most famous “dispair” music in the Classical realm. Some have labeled it “suicide” music, and assume that Tchaikovsky was forshadowing his soon-to-be death.

Another very tragic movement is the second from Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. The K number escapes me.

11

Hmmmm, guess Nick Cave’s “O’Malley’s Bar” wouldn’t really fit in here. Okay, how about “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” by Krzysztof Penderecki, which is absolutely chilling when the sound of sirens begins to congeal out of the seeming chaos of avant garde violins. Even the composer didn’t know what he had wrought --or give it its present name–until he heard its first performance.

12

Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten by Arvo Pärt is written for string orchestra and bell. It’s part of the collection Tabula Rasa.

Audio clip here.

13

I still have shivers down my spine when I hear his Credo. He’s a powerful and brilliant composer.

14

The Funeral music from the last act of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet: one of the most menacing and yet saddest pieces of classical music ever composed - you might remember it from such movies as Caligula, although hopefully you won’t.

15

Practically anything by Gorecki is heartbreaking.

16

Night on Bald Mountain by Moussorgsky.

Also, the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem might fit.

The Commendatore Scene from act II of Mozart’s Don Giovanni is menacing.

17

As long as it’s not the Rimsky-Korsakov version, which is disturbing for all the wrong reasons :stuck_out_tongue:

18

A non-classical suggestion:

“Sleeping sun” by Nightwish makes me want to drive into the oncoming traffic when I listen to it riding my bike.

Also “Bittersweet” by Apocalyptica is a good choice for this theme, IMHO.

19

Threnody for Souls in Torment by the Robert Fripp String Quintet.

20

How about the slow (3rd) movement of Mahler’s 1st symphony: he takes Frere Jacques and makes it sound dark and brooding.

Then there’s the famous “Funeral March” movement (3rd) of Chopin’s 2nd piano sonata.