How about a vocal from another genre? I’ve found something called A Conversation with Death.
Ooh, can’t believe I’ve forgetten to mention Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy. 
This is vocal, but for sheer despair I can’t think of anything worse than Menotti’s opera “The Consul”.
Grandmother’s lullaby to the infant. Sweet music with just hints of creepiness, and the lyrics mention death a few times: “Sleep my child, sleep for me, my sleep is death”.
And the nightmare sequence which immediately follows.
Magda’s aria, To This We’ve Come (lyrics). It does end on a triumphant note, but in the opera the triumph is not realized.
At last, my chance to shine. Anyway…
•Saturn: Bringer of Old Age from Holst’s The Planets.
•The main title to The Last Valley (can be found on John Barry’s “Zulu” soundtrack album. The link has a sample. Try it out. How can something that uses lyrics from Tears of the Fatherland not be considered “dark”?)
•There’s Un Bel Di Vedremo from Madama Butterfly; and Vesti La Giubba from I, pagliacci, but those are more like “songs for utter despair.” (At least, that’s what my iTunes playlist that has 'em is.)
•Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances
•Liszt’s Totentanz.
•They might be a little too trendy for your tastes, but some select works by Evanescence could do the trick.
•A number of tracks from the soundtrack to the documentary Trinity and Beyond.
•Dead Can Dance?
•Definately Mozart’s Lacrimosa.
•Select tracks from the Black Hawk Down and The Last Samurai soundtracks.
•Nick Cave’s Death is Not the End, the lyrics of which you can read in two different ways.
•The “Godzilla” theme; a few tracks from the soundtrack to Godzilla: 1985; and the “Requiem for Godzilla” from Godzilla vs. Destroyah.
•Song of the Volga Boatmen. (“Yo-ho-HEEE-hoooo…”)
•Women of Ireland from Barry Lyndon.
Adagio in D Minor for Strings and Organ, by Albinoni I think. They used it in Gallipoli.
Adagio for Strings by Barber _ the overused music you hear in Platoon
Air on G-String by Bach (Not as smutty as it sounds).
Mahler’s 1st symphony came to mind, but I see that’s been mentioned above. Libera Me from Faure’s Requiem has a plaintive solo baritone and an uneasy bass line, should you want another vocal piece. Or Satie’s Gnossienne No2. Like most Satie, it has some unexpected melodic twists that make it uneasy listening. This one has an instruction to the pianist to play “without pride”, and such an elegant melody played without hope or delight gives me chills each time.
There’s always the ol’ reliable standby, familiarly known as “that creepy music from The Alfred Hitchcock Show.” Otherwise known as “Funeral March of a Marionette” by Gounod.
A lot of Nick Cave’s stuff would be suitable (though not classical at all).
Anything from “Murder Ballads”.
“Trosper” by Bill Frisell (on a CD accompanying a creepy little picture book of the same name by cartoonist Jim Woodring; the CD is intended to accompany viewing the book, but stands on its own).
Just about anything from Midnight Syndicate–especially the stuff from “Born of the Night”–would probably fit your requirements nicely.
Just want to suggest Prokofiev’s Aleksandr Nevsky Suite, especially Battle on the Ice.
Might I suggest Glenn Danzig’s experimental album, Black Aria. It’s pretty good, dark, and entirely in the classical vein and devoid of vocals.
Another song by Glenn’s group, Danzig, that really creeps me out all alone in a dark room is Sadistikal from the album Danzig IV.
[/Classical]
I don’t know if it’s really fair to classify Radiohead as “dark” but when I first heard them, they seemed dark to me. Google “Chris O’Riley” to find some piano-only arrangements which actually sound somewhat classical.
[Classical]
You said you would include only two specific vocal pieces, so would this disqualify the “Queen of the Night” Aria (properly known as “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” from Act II, number 14) from Mozart’s The Magic Flute? More details here.
I love the Queen’s laugh. So . . . evil.
Her Majesty sings:
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tot und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro
Todesschmerzen,
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.
Verstoßen sei auf ewig,
Verlassen sei auf ewig,
Zertrümmert sei’n auf ewig
Alle Bande der Natur
Wenn nicht durch dich
Sarastro wird erblassen!
Hört, Rachegötter,
Hört der Mutter Schwur!
Translated as:
Hell’s revenge cooks in my heart,
Death and despair flame about me!
If Sarastro does not through you feel
The pain of death,
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.
Disowned may you be forever,
Abandoned may you be forever,
Destroyed be forever
All the bonds of nature,
If not through you
Sarastro becomes pale! (as death)
Hear, Gods of Revenge,
Hear a mother’s oath!
(Lyrics and translation from this webpage.)
WRS/Þû - Tot und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
LOL.
Nick Cave was the first person i thought of when i read the thread title.
I don’t have any classical suggestions, but in the popular music category i would nominate Gary Jules’s cover of Mad World.
Górecki’s Symphony No 3 is a masterpiece of despair, being, as it were, a protest against the Soviet oppression of Poland. Very dark, very haunting, with just a touch of hope at the end. I visualize the piece as a portrait of a devestated city, with one brave flower poking its head out of the rubble.
Very good point. Mussorgsky turned over his original score for Saint John’s Night on Bald Mountain to his composer friends, who thought it much too…well, wild. Rimsky-Korsakov tamed it down a bit, and his arrangement is the version you usually find. It’s tough to locate a recording of Mussorgsky’s original version, but they do exist. I have one somewhere. Stakowski’s arrangement used in Disney’s Fantasia is quite good, though the bridge he added to link the piece with Schubert’s Ave Maria will ruin the dark tone.
Can’t quite agree on this one. The Polovtsian Dances (which, incidentally, is my all-time favorite piece of music), is not dark in tone. The lyrics are divided into two sections – the women of the Polovtsi camp singing fondly of their homeland, and the entire chorus praising their glorious leader, Khan Khonchak. And while the latter sections do get rather enthusiastic, it’s a portrayal of a wild victory celebration. If you do want something dark from the same opera, Prince Igor, track down a copy of Igor’s aria Ni sna ni otdycha izmuchennoj duse!.
My own additions to the list:
Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. A Haloween classic.
The Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem. It’s about what you’d expect when Italy’s greatest opera composer sets the Mass of Death to music. I’ve heard it used a lot on TV, especially (Og forbid) in commercials, so you’ll probably recognize it when you hear it.
Denn Alles Fleisch from Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. “For mortal flesh is as the grass / and all the comeliness of man / is as the grass’s flower.” Nice and foreboding in a German Protestant way, but the glory and trumpets ending does put a damper on the wonderful sense of doom and futility.
Painted Emblems of a Race and When the Night Wind Howls from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore. Dark melodramatic music from an unexpected source.
My apologies—I was referring to an excerpt from the Polovtsian Dances that I have on an old CD (Classical Thunder III, for the record), which seems “dark” enough—if only when heard without the context of the rest of the work.
2 mentions of Moussorgsky and nobody mentions “Baba Yaga”? The witch who lived in a house on chicken’s legs and flew around in a cauldron abducting children? That one’s creepy. I also found that suite’s “Gnomus” (The Gnome) to be fairly creepy as well. Not horrific, but creepy.
I’ll second the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem - one the the most hauntingly beautiful pieces ever written, and I’ll offer a couple pseudo-classical suggestions:
Soundtrack to The Shining - especially the Wendy Carlos pieces, very creepy stuff. But good luck finding it.
And someone mentioned Dead Can Dance. They did a song called “The Protagonist” on the “Lonely Is An Eyesore” 4AD complilation. Very powerful.