This week’s episode of Big Bang Theory makes me want to have my own Destroy the World playlist for those days when I just want to …well… you know.
The Imperial March is the obvious beginning to such a list, but I am having trouble coming up with additional tracks.
Any and all suggestions welcome!
There’s always The Ride of the Valkyries, I suppose.
But this song always makes me think of such things.
The Wendy Carlos version of Purcell’s Funeral Of Queen Mary from A Clockwork Orange, title credits and opening.
Here’s a SFW version, but the sound is poor, especially in the bass range.
The full opening is here, but NSFW since it has the plastic lady furniture in the Moloko Milk Bar.
The soundtrack version is nearly 4 minutes long.
You can’t go wrong with funeral dirges.
well, if you’re going to have the Imperial March from the Empire Strikes Back, then you have to have Mars from Gustav Holst’s The Planets suite, the piece which undoubtedly inspired the Imperial March. It’s just as threatening and impending, and its title is mars, fer cryin’ out loud.
I also think that you need Judas Iscariot from Rick Wakeman’s Criminal Record. If i ever put together a score for the silent version of The Phantom of the Opera, I’d include this, because it Sounds like the work of a psychotic organist. Sadly, Wakeman himself didn’t when he scored TPotO.
Bernard Hermann’s score from The Day the Earth Stood Still would be great, too. It’s from a film about aliens with the ability to destroy the world, it’s appropriately brooding, and it has that great Theremin music in it!
If you want creapy warrior music, cant beat this from the old LOTR’s from 1978 or so before the newer version with real people, this is animated. Anyway the one about the Orcs at Helm’s Deep. Its on YOUTUBE. Orcs chanting at Helm’s Deep (Bakshi)
Sorry but I didn’t think of this one, it is also on Youtube. The album is called “Two steps from Hell” and the song is called “Hole in the Sun” this is all music, no vocals, done mostly on string instruments. But even the Archangle track would be good too, and the one called “Strength of 1000 men”
Thanks for the suggestions everyone!
Love the Day the Earth Stood Still. Saw this on tv when I was very small, and theremin music has always meant spooky science fiction to me ever since.
I f you’re going organ music, add in Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-minor, and/or Bach Passacaglia and Fugue in C-minor. Phatom of the Opera in destructive mode! (1962 movie version, Hammer Films.)
The end of the world (“Immolation of the Gods”) from Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung”
The storm from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”
“March to the Scaffold” from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique
Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”
It doesn’t fit in with the classical tone of the other pieces, but (maybe at the end) you need R.E.M.'s It’s the End of the World as we Know it (and I feel fine)
And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to include Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
You must have Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.
Or, combining two posts so far, you could have the the recurring chorus from the 2000s Fellowship of the Rings, which is Orffian in a drums-and-ominous-singing way.
Or pretty much anything from the Conan soundtrack. If you have to be eschatological, then pick something that is accompanied by lots of violence when it’s on film (i.e. most of it :))
How about “21st Century Schizoid Man” or “The Battle of Glass Tears” by King Crimson, or “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” by Pink Floyd (from about 3:00 on anyway)?