# Scary Bach/Baroque Music?



## bachcab (Jul 13, 2017)

Does anyone know or have information from journals or other factual sources if Bach or his peers thought that the Baroque music he/they composed in minor keys sounded scary to them/others at the time?

For example, the average person today would most likely associate toccata and fugue in d minor with halloween or a haunted mansion or just scary stuff in general. Was this the impression bach was trying to create when he wrote this and his other "scary" sounding pieces? 

Did Baroque composers have the same kind of scary music mentality back then, or did our modern society just create this association overtime?

Any concrete references would be great. 

Thanks


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I hate to rain on your parade but there is some doubt that Bach actually wrote the Toccata & Fugue in D minor.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Yes, minor keys were associated with a range of negative emotions in the 18th century, including anxiety, uncertainty and sorrow. See page 202 of the book "Musicology and Difference" for some specific quotations from 18th-century music theorists:

https://books.google.com/books?id=X...TAB#v=onepage&q=minor schwarze gredel&f=false


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

hpowders said:


> I hate to rain on your parade but there is some doubt that Bach actually wrote the Toccata & Fugue in D minor.


Well if he didn't write the most badass baroque piece of all time, then

LIFE IS A LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

I have head a few very odd, darker baroque works. Time to look through my findings..


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Biber's Passacaglia in G Minor is one of my favorite gothic-style Baroque works. Dark and yet uplifting at the same time!


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

Bettina said:


> Biber's Passacaglia in G Minor is one of my favorite gothic-style Baroque works. Dark and yet uplifting at the same time!


  

*That* was one of the ones that I was thinking of :lol:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Listen to the Bach Organ Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

If you are an atheist, it will correct you by scaring you religious.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

It says A. Scarlatti, but authorship on this surprisingly dark concerto is unknown. A gem in my opinion. You don't hear the harmonic things in this piece very often in mainstream baroque music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I'm not sure but I think years ago I listened a strange baroque piece about surgery. I can't remember what it was...


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

norman bates said:


> I'm not sure but I think years ago I listened a strange baroque piece about surgery. I can't remember what it was...


Marin Marais - Le Tableau de l'Operation de la Taille (The Bladder-Stone Operation) :lol:


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Klassik said:


> Marin Marais - Le Tableau de l'Operation de la Taille (The Bladder-Stone Operation) :lol:


exactly, thank you!


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I hate to rain on your parade but there is some doubt that Bach actually wrote the Toccata & Fugue in D minor.


It's a "scary piece". I read about the doubtful authorship. Interesting.

But the Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue in D Minor BWV903 is a scary piece (definitely by Bach).


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## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

The one people have read about in happy-go-lucky magazine polls but haven't actually searched out themselves:






<3


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

norman bates said:


> I'm not sure but I think years ago I listened a strange baroque piece about surgery. I can't remember what it was...


That is the best way to deal with it, forgetting it.


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## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

[warning: cheesy, over-dramatic, purple-versed description below]
Weckmann's Magnificat II toni.






I heard it played on the organ in the Leiden Pieterskerk. I was almost in tears and had a lump in my throat in the 1st verse; it was like both heaven and hell had opened up and threatened to swallow and destroy me. Those dissonances are so horrible, so gut-wrenching!
If I was 7 and walked into a church and heard this, I would have converted immediately.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

hpowders said:


> Listen to the Bach Organ Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.
> 
> If you are an atheist, it will correct you by scaring you religious.


I had that moment in a cathedral in Poland which had the biggest organ in Europe. They played the famous Toccata and Fugue and I began to feel the fear of God enter into me. Then I looked up at the organ and it had these strange cheap little angel figures on it which were mechanized to swing little trumpets while the music played, reminiscent of a Monty Python animation... and that just slapped the atheism right back into me.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

To answer the question:

Baroque music feels very austere to us now... Bach is of his time in that his organ music is influenced by the angst and solemnity of the Reformation (he was massively influenced by Luther's Bible translation). It's slightly more alien and 'scary' now as we've been conditioned by a few hundred years of music after it that isn't so god-fearing and severe.

That may have sounded utterly pretentious but I think it's a fairly valid diagnosis.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

The first thing that comes to mind when one mentions "scary Baroque" is Rebel's _Les élémens_.


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