# suggestions for "spooky" classical music... ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 7, 2001, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917 "2001-10-07T12:45:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![everton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecb155/32.png) [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/21 "2001-10-08T00:58:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yosemitebabe \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by everton \* > > or _Carmina Burana_ by Carl Orff – it was used in _The Omen_ > > Where? I haven’t seen the film in a while, but I thought all of the score was by Jerry Goldsmith. (Great score, BTW, and if you are interested in soundtracks, an _excellent_ choice for “spooky” music.) \*\* It appears all the way through, **yosemitebabe** – the most distinctive part is that choral stuff, like when Damien is riding his tricycle along the landing and knocks his mother over the bannister rail to her death. [Here’s](http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/orff-cb/carmlyr.html) a link to the lyrics of what the choir are singing. Go to the part called _Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi_. Ironically, the piece is best-known over here (I’m in Britain) as the Old Spice music 'cos it was used as the background for a series over aftershave lotion ads, which weren’t spooky. I agree it’s great music. ---
**Author:** ![screech-owl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@screech-owl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/screech-owl)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/22 "2001-10-08T00:58:59Z")
[The Omen](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000014RT/qid=1002501924/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_7_2/103-3991330-8659826) soundtrack - especially _Ave Satani_ [Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000262K7/qid=1002502122/sr=2-3/ref=sr_2_7_3/103-3991330-8659826) by Arvo Part - quiet but oppressive ---
**Author:** ![Fouccalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df788c/32.png) [@Fouccalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fouccalt)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/23 "2001-10-08T01:25:09Z")
definately Tocatta and Fugue in D minor by bach Carmina Burana is good choice Flight of the Baba Yaga-Mussorgsky Mahler’s 5th symphony definately gives off spooky vibes if u lesten to the music Stravinsky’s rite of spring is another good one. ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/24 "2001-10-08T01:25:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by everton \* > It appears all the way through, **yosemitebabe** – the most distinctive part is that choral stuff, like when Damien is riding his tricycle along the landing and knocks his mother over the bannister rail to her death. I’ll have to watch the film again. It’s been so long. I know the Goldsmith score by heart (being a big Goldsmith fan) and I just don’t recall any other music being used in the film. His creepy choral music was quite evocative, and used throughout the film with great effectiveness. (But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a bit of Orff music spliced in there somewhere!) ---
**Author:** ![blur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dbc845/32.png) [@blur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blur)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/25 "2001-10-08T01:26:23Z")
Not sure if it classifies as actaul classical music, but Glen Danzig’s Black Aria sounds like it fits what you are looking for. Don’t let Danzig’s name fool you, it is very dramatic. ---
**Author:** ![Dijon\_Warlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9a28c/32.png) [@Dijon\_Warlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dijon_Warlock)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/26 "2001-10-08T02:34:09Z")
Well, I was going to recommend György Ligeti’s work, but **Zweistein** quite properly beat me to it. Listen to this guy’s music, and then just to make yourself feel better, keep in mind that he was born in ["]Transylvania]([http://us.imdb.com/BornWhere?Dicios�nmartin,+Transylvania,+Romania.+](http://us.imdb.com/BornWhere?Dicios%E2nmartin,+Transylvania,+Romania.+)[now+T%EErnaveni). Yikes! ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Blue\_Green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Green)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/27 "2001-10-08T02:45:34Z")
The theme music to the Alfred Hitchcock Hour on PBS is this one above “Gounod: Funeral march of a Marionette” ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/28 "2001-10-08T02:51:23Z")
Bela Bartok [Music for Strings, Percussion and Celestia](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000057MT/qid=1002508937/sr=1-85/ref=sr_1_2_85/104-3000221-8229500) This was used in the Shining. This was used as the theme song to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” [Funeral March of a Marionette](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000057MT/qid=1002508937/sr=1-85/ref=sr_1_2_85/104-3000221-8229500) ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/29 "2001-10-08T02:58:26Z")
I fixed the second link This one goes to [Funeral March of a Marionette.](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000057M4/qid=1002509721/sr=1-105/ref=sr_1_2_105/104-3000221-8229500). ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2001, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/30 "2001-10-08T15:45:05Z")
Bela Bartok’s short opera _Bluebeard’s Castle_ (1911) Bela Bartok’s ballet _The Miraculous Mandarin_ (1918) Alban Berg’s operas _Wozzeck_ (1921) and _Lulu_ (1935) Benjamin Britter’s _Nocturne_ for tenor and small orchestra (1958) George Crumb’s _Night Music I_ (1963) Peter Maxwell Davies’ _Eight Songs for a Mad King_ (1969) Charles Ives’ _The Unanswered Question_ (1908) The three central movements of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 (1905) Sergei Prokofiev’s cantata _We Are Seven_ (1917) and Violin Sonata No. 1 (1938) Sergei Rachmaninoff’s tone poem \*The Isle of the Dead \*(1909) Arnold Schoenberg’s _Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Score_ (1930) Alexander Scriabin’s _Prometheus_ (1910) and late piano sonatas (1911-13) Dmitri Shostakovitch’s Symphony No. 14 (1969) and String Quartets Nos. 8, 13, and 15 (1962, 1970, 1974) Edgard Varese’s _Arcana_ (1927) Iannis Xenakis’s _Bohor I_ (1962) ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2001, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/31 "2001-10-09T01:04:29Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally Posted by Ukulele Ike_ > Edgard Varese’s _Arcana_ (1927) Anything by Varèse can be creepy at times. Especially _Arcana_ and _Ionisation_. ---
**Author:** ![Earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/90db22/32.png) [@Earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earthling)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2001, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/32 "2001-10-09T01:32:56Z")
[Black Angels](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000005J0D/qid=1002590902/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_3_7/002-9708170-8288831), from the Kronos Quartet. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2001, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/33 "2001-10-10T07:34:53Z")
Liszt’s _Totentanz_ (Dance of Death) for piano and orchestra. It’s a set of variations on the Gregorian chant _Dies Irae_. A great performance of this is by the Chicago Symphony conducted by Reiner with Bryon Janis on piano. If your hair isn’t standing on end by the close of this piece, there’s something wrong with you. Also see [my post in another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1074234#post1074234), as well as other posts there. ---
**Author:** ![Theobroma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@Theobroma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theobroma)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2001, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/34 "2001-10-10T10:20:35Z")
Try the last movement of Gustav Holst’s “Planets.” I heard it live, with a ghostly choir offstage, and it creeped me out of existence, even from the affordable seats. [_ **shiver** _] ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2001, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/35 "2001-10-10T14:36:13Z")
Oooooh, wait, I got another one… **Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony in E minor.** Written in 1947-48, programmers thought of it as the composer’s reaction to the threat of global annihilation. The opening Allegro is cacaphonous and filled with swirling disorder; the bleak Moderato contains a short motif of three repeated notes and includes "one of the most terrifying crescendos heard since Boris Godunov… “Yet it was the final movement, the Epilogue, which gave rise to the most intensive comment and speculation. In contrasts to the frightening crescendos and savage tuttis of the preceding parts, the finale was composed in an unbroken pianissimo from first to last, but such a strange, desolate and unearthly pianissimo as had never been heard before…a prophetic vision of a lifeless planet, with aimless clouds drifting across a panorama of silent desolation and tortured phantoms…” Vaughan Williams dismissed this whole interpretation, but what does HE know? It’s still excruciatingly spooky. (Quotes from the notes by Edward Johnson to the RCA Victor recording, with Andre Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, 1968) ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2001, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917/36 "2001-10-10T19:57:42Z")
How about Gustav Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War” from “The Planets”? Or Prokofiev’s “Scythian Suite”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-spooky-classical-music/85917.md?page=1)