# Nightmarish Music



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Name some pieces you consider a bit frightening, either because they're insane, furious/passionate, or just plane terrifying.

My picks (see if you agree):
Key: O.O = scared eyes, a particularly scary piece

1. Grieg: Piano Concerto, 1st O.O and 3rd mvmts
2. Dvorak: Cello Concerto, 3rd movement O.O
3. Ravel: Miroirs- Alborada del Gracioso
4. Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe- Danse Generale O.O
5. Ravel: La Valse
6. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2- I
7. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3- I
8. Rimsky-Korsakov: Sheherazade- IV
9. Dvorak: 9th Symphony Finale
10. Stravinsky: Firebird- Dance of the Infernal King O.O
11. Stravinsky: Rite of Spring- Dance of the Young Girls, and Sacrificial Dance O.O
12. Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet- Juliet's Funeral
13. Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain
14. Orff: Carmina Burana: O Fortuna
15. Verdi: Requiem- Dies Irae
16. Ives: The Unanswered Question O.O


----------



## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

I like what you're starting here, but I'm going to try come up with examples that are explicitly evocative of bad dreams, not just spooky or suggestive.

For a literal nightmare, you can't beat Berlioz's _Symphonie Fantastique_ 5th Movement.

For an even MORE literal nightmare, plus some of the most chilling orchestral effects ever set, check out Strauss' _Elektra_, specifically Klytemnestra's famous nightmare aria.

In the same vein, Schoenberg's _Erwartung_ hovers somewhere between musical narrative, nightmare, and hallucination. A hard, but very rewarding, listen.

Some other musical bad dreams:

Rautavaara: Manhattan Trilogy Mvt 2 "Nightmares"
Penderecki: Dream of Jacob (supposed to be a pleasant waking experience, but it don't sound that way)
Berg: All of Wozzeck, but esp. Act 1 Sc 2, Act 3 Sc 2 & 4
Wagner: Fairly sure Sieglinde has a nightmare somewhere in Act 2 of Walkure.
Bartok: Certainly capable of some night-terrors, though Concerto for Orchestra Mvt 3 might be the best place to look at first.

If you're interested in getting into some film music examples, I'm sure we can expand this list greatly


----------



## JAKE WYB (May 28, 2009)

*Schnittke - Faust Cantata* - horrible and frightening - gives you nightmares

Bartok - Slow movement of divertimento - very disturbing, lots of other moments in music for strings, miraculous mandarin, Duke bluebeards castle, though I _wouldnt_ personally say concerto for orchestra is nightmarish in any place


----------



## JAKE WYB (May 28, 2009)

I remember once i did actually have a bad dream whilst going to sleep listening to *Nielsens 4th symphony - the slow movement *- I was asleep enough to dream but shallow enough to be aware of the music and it still has a chilling feel for me when i listen to it


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Prokofiev's weird and creepy opera "The Fiery Angel" may well be the most disturbingly
nightmarish music I have ever heard. 
It's the terrifying story of Renata, a disturbed young woman in 16th century Germany who 
is obsessed with finding an angel of fire who had been her childhood companion,and Ruprecht,a wandering knight who falls desperately in love with her but whos elove is not returned. 
Together,they get involved with the blackest of black magic,sorcery,and demonology, and in the horrifying final scene, Renata ,who has gone to a nunnery,goes through an exorcism which 
could very well cause you to wet your pants in terror!
Prokofiev's music is almost unbearably intense and harrowing. 
The Gergiev/Philips CD and DVD may be hard to find now, but seek them out-if you dare !


----------



## mueske (Jan 14, 2009)

Funny, you mention Ravel, but forgot the most obvious piece! 

"Gaspard de la nuit" - Third movement: Scarbo (Maurice Ravel)
Symphony no. 6 - Fourth movement: Allegro (Beethoven)


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I can completely understand the nightmarishness of the _Rite of Spring_ or of _Night on a Bare Mountain_, but I cannot hear it at all in works like Dvorak's Cello Concerto or Grieg's Piano Concerto, which you even put a O.O next to  I agree that they're 'furious/passtionate', but it might be more interesting if the net wasn't spread so widely to include the 'passionate' (which is most music!) with the truly 'frightening'. As a kind of compromise, I would suggest the first movement to Brahms's Piano Concerto (but really only the opening...)


----------



## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

> Name some pieces you consider a bit frightening, either because they're insane, furious/passionate, or just plane terrifying.


Any kind of aeroplane music is plane terrifying 

Listening to Wagner is a nightmare.


----------



## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

.....and let's not forget - the soundtrack to Norman Bates "Psycho"


----------



## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Penderecki


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Maybe Shostakovich. There is not much music that scares me, but his works can be so brutally depressing that sometimes it can sound like nightmare. I once listened to couple of his pieces one after another and I felt like everything around was gray, clouded with gloomy haze and in a minute I will be dead.


----------



## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

The severe harshness of Shostakovich's works is something I find extremely beautiful. I can see why others might find him depressing. After all, the communist party did. Anything that wasn't written in C Major was depressing for them. But that's not the point. Actually, coming to think of it, this is a rather beautiful description of je ne sais quoi too:



> I felt like everything around was gray, clouded with gloomy haze and in a minute I will be dead.


The human condition is polarised into two dimensions; one of truth, the other of beauty. Yours - the description of humanity too, albeit tongue in cheek. Shostakovich's evocation of his own condition; takes on a post-modern form of art - one which brings music closer to truth, than beauty. This act ~ of bringing music closer to existential truth, than caressing it in the direction of beauty... is beautiful in itself


----------



## Josef Anton Bruckner (Mar 22, 2010)

Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta-I

Penderecki: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Falstaft said:


> I like what you're starting here, but I'm going to try come up with examples that are explicitly evocative of bad dreams, not just spooky or suggestive.


Anything written by Schoenberg.


----------



## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

Head_case said:


> Any kind of aeroplane music is plane terrifying
> 
> *Listening to Wagner is a nightmare*.


I love his music, but when the singers come in, i turn it off.


----------



## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Head_case said:


> The severe harshness of Shostakovich's works is something I find extremely beautiful.


I agree 100% with that. Anyway, how about *Gong* by Poul Ruders:
*




*


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I suppose some obvious ones that we have missed would be something like Liszt's _Totentanz_ and Saint-Saens _Danse Macabre etc_.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Head_case said:


> The severe harshness of Shostakovich's works is something I find extremely beautiful. I can see why others might find him depressing.


True, I am attracted to some harshness, especially if it resolves into something really sublime. But I would say he is a bit nightmarish because he gets depressing at the same time he's dissonant, and that's what I don't like most. Honestly, Shostakovich was probably really depressed.


----------



## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

_(K)ein Sommernachtstraum_ [_(Not) a midsummer night's dream_] by Schnittke is extremely unsettling, as a charming little _faux _Viennese tune is systematically abused and violated by a large symphony orchestra.

_Gorgon _for orchestra, by Christopher Rouse, would like to be terrifying, but is somewhat tame, though the final section, _Medusa_, is a scream.

Birtwistle's _Panic _is supposed to be just that, isn't it?

And Penderecki's _Dies irae oratorio in memory of those murdered at Auschwitz_ for soloists, chorus and orchestra is as harrowing as the _Hiroshima _threnody - more so, I would say, because of the presence of the human voice.


----------



## Tarantella (Apr 22, 2010)

Polednice said:


> I suppose some obvious ones that we have missed would be something like Liszt's _Totentanz_ and Saint-Saens _Danse Macabre etc_.


I guess every Dance macabre is nightmarish but actually Saint-Saëns' sounds pretty naïf to me. The second song in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14, now that's a creepy one!


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> And Penderecki's Dies irae oratorio in memory of those murdered at Auschwitz for soloists, chorus and orchestra is as harrowing as the Hiroshima threnody - more so, I would say, because of the presence of the human voice.


Not sure if it's good idea to mention pieces written in honour of victims of two vile genocides in thread about "scary" music in rather basic meaning of this word. Those pieces should evoke awareness of the these horrors and their reality, not entertain one with "omg, this sudden _fff_ scared me, cool piece!".


----------



## KaerbEmEvig (Dec 15, 2009)

Don't stone me to death for posting non-classical, please:


----------



## Air (Jul 19, 2008)

KaerbEmEvig said:


> Don't stone me to death for posting non-classical, please:


_Nah, if it's Symphony X, you can live. They're just too cool (and plus they're Bach fans) _

How about "Nein... nein... NEIN... NEINNNNNN!!!!" followed by loud, crunching chord (from Berg's great opera, _Lulu_)?

A lot of Bartok's "Night Music" is good for hallucinations, like the two slow movements from _Music for strings, percussion, and celesta._

John Cage was the first experience I had with "Nightmarish Music". When I was a young, I accidentally tried one of his CDs when rummaging a Classical Music Store. I think it (forgot the name of the work) is the scariest music I've ever heard to date. I was traumatized for several years. (I didn't return to that store, for one thing)

Lots of music by contemporary Australian (and living) composer Brett Dean is pretty unsettling - one of my favorites being his _Carlo_, music for strings, sampler and tape (1997).

Penderecki is pretty scary. His music is very fit for darker (often horror) films - the most recent example being _Shutter Island_. Robbie Robertson picked a selection of "the most outrageous and beautiful" modern classical music for Scorsese.



Polednice said:


> I suppose some obvious ones that we have missed would be something like Liszt's _Totentanz_...


Yes, and who can forget Michelangeli here? Far and away my favorite performance of Totentanz.






Unfortunately, it's a rare recording, and not too many people know about it.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Air said:


> ...Lots of music by contemporary Australian (and living) composer Brett Dean is pretty unsettling - one of my favorites being his _Carlo_, music for strings, sampler and tape (1997)...
> 
> Penderecki is pretty scary...


Yes, there is definitely a kind of post-Bergian darkness about much of what I've heard of Brett Dean's music. I haven't heard _Carlo_, but I'd add his_ Eclipse _for string Quartet, written during the times of the Tampa crisis of 2001 (when then Prime Minister John Howard refused to let a merchant marine ship which had rescued several refugees on the high seas into Australian waters. It was one of the few times that an Australian leader had actually contravened international law). In any case, that music reflects the emotional turbulence that must have been felt by the refugees, it is very dark, and there is no resolution in sight. Other pieces by him that I have heard are _Beggars & Angels _(1999), his first orchestral work, and _Testament_ (more recent) for chamber orchestra, which I had the good fortune to see performed live last year here in Sydney (a piece about Beethoven's deafness).

I agree that Penderecki can also be very dark, and as a matter of fact, I've never heard him compose music which is otherwise. Even his more recent neo-romantic pieces are dark, even if they lack the dissonance of his earlier 'texture music' works.

Another work that I'd add is Messiaen's _Quartet for the End of Time_. Now if that won't scare the hell out of you, probably nothing will. It's a dark piece generally, but perhaps it's not totally of this world, for much of the work (apart from the very grounded 'Interlude'), the listener is kind of left floating in another paralell universe...


----------



## JAKE WYB (May 28, 2009)

I dont think pieces like danse macabre would be regardded as particularly scary if they werent given a title to suggest so - its a pretty genteel lilting affiar with a timp rumble and a couple of violin tritones thrown in for novelty

Shostakovich - Symphony 8 has to be the most distressing of his works as far as nightmarish visions are concerned with the subdued bleak sounscape of the first movement being disrupted by the huge screams from the orchestra - very disturbing


----------



## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

Here's a big 'duh' answer: Penderecki - _Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima_


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

This is how I feel about Mahlers 2nd!

There are a few moments during the 1st and last movements (and maybe one in the 3rd) that grip me and force my muscles to tense and my breathe quickens and I begin to shiver and it feels like the grip of death. No Exaggeration.


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

emiellucifuge said:


> This is how I feel about Mahlers 2nd!
> 
> There are a few moments during the 1st and last movements (and maybe one in the 3rd) that grip me and force my muscles to tense and my breathe quickens and I begin to shiver and it feels like the grip of death. No Exaggeration.


Yeah, something like "OH NO, SO THE GOD EXISTS! OH GOD, SAVE US!"


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Prokofiev's 3rd symphony, which is based on the music from The Fiery Angel, is also a truly nightmarish work. To appreciate it best, you should be familiar with the opera,or at least the weird plot.


----------



## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> True, I am attracted to some harshness, especially if it resolves into something really sublime. But I would say he is a bit nightmarish because he gets depressing at the same time he's dissonant, and that's what I don't like most. Honestly, Shostakovich was probably really depressed.


I can see that, although the expression of pure emotion without art, is sentimentality. If this is all Shostakovich did, as a depressed composer, then his work would be indeed sentimental (hardly!)

This isn't something I'm familiar with anyone ever levying on Shostakovich's reputation (I know his works mostly through the chamber oeuvre and concertos only). In contrast to this kind of emotional 'outpouring' in 'von Deutscher Baukunst', Goethe writes:

"do not let the effeminate doctrine of the modern beauty monger make you too tender to enjoy significant roughness, lest in the end your enfeebled feeling should be able to endure nothing but unmeaning smoothness"

When I discovered Shostakovich in my teens, I always wondered whether Shostakovich was versed in the writings of Goethe; his insights into a transcendent form of beauty beyond his contemporaries is precisely that: sublime - a sublimation of instinctual forces (anger; disappointment and other vicissitudes). The "unmeaning smoothness" which Goethe writes about, could describe a lot of music which we are all liable to rattle off from our shelves. However Shostakovich - not so much depressed (on no - the emo composer thread returns! ) - more than the Rousseau inflected romantic ideal (outpouring of emotions as a form of art) or the Munch like expressionists (a distillation), but interpretative and transpersonal: utterly transformative in his art. I guess in respect of the latter, it can seem frightening for a listener to discover this man's inner humanity: not his demons. Demons are lesser angels; and angels themselves, are lower than man. It is music...about man's condition, which itself is nightmarish - either in its Kafka-esque form; or its Camusian absurdity, or Sartrean nothingness. Ramble ramble.

Anyhoooo. Gorecki's string quartet no. II prefiguring the battle sirens of world war II is nightmarish in terms of its emotionally exhaustive dimensions - terrifying and violent, yet satisfying in wrestling with the human condition.


----------



## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Aramis said:


> Not sure if it's good idea to mention pieces written in honour of victims of two vile genocides in thread about "scary" music in rather basic meaning of this word. Those pieces should evoke awareness of the these horrors and their reality, not entertain one with "omg, this sudden _fff_ scared me, cool piece!".


Interesting: you're saying the intent of the composer in writing a piece of music "should" (your word) define the listener's emotional response to it.

You're saying that the listener's moral stance on the non-musical content of a piece should determine their approach to the musical content. (Try not to laugh at the trombone _glissando _in the Poulenc _Stabat mater_.)

What if a listener heard the Hiroshima piece on the radio, not knowing what it was? "Should" they nevertheless divine its subtext and adopt a suitably reverential demeanour when listening?

What if, for a particular listener, the music doesn't evoke "awareness of the these horrors and their reality"? Perhaps they don't like highly dissonant music. Are they thereby let off from having to adopt the correct response?


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> What if a listener heard the Hiroshima piece on the radio, not knowing what it was? "Should" they nevertheless divine its subtext and adopt a suitably reverential demeanour when listening?


Yes, if composer did compose the piece well and really described the subject putting meaning to every note. No, if the composer wrote just some random noise with no depth and meaning that would make illusion of being the music about the Hiroshima war crime.


----------



## Falstaft (Mar 27, 2010)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> Interesting: you're saying the intent of the composer in writing a piece of music "should" (your word) define the listener's emotional response to it.





Aramis said:


> Yes, if composer did compose the piece well and really described the subject putting meaning to every note. No, if the composer wrote just some random noise with no depth and meaning that would make illusion of being the music about the Hiroshima war crime.


I suppose it's relevant to this piece in particular that the title "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" was an afterthought. Penderecki originally intended it to be a standalone, non-programmatic piece of music. He only disclosed this interesting fact in 1989, long after its original composition (1960). Wikipedia claims he heard the piece in performance for the first time and was convinced by the astringency of the sounds to give it its current title. Taruskin offers a less charitable reason -- the only way he could get it published was to give it a provocative, political title.

Although it's just one case, I think this is a vivid example of what Jeremy is getting at -- that the "content" of music, even that which appears to bear the most apparently serious and ingrained subject matter, is and will always be fluid.


----------



## Guest (May 1, 2010)

Aramis said:


> Yes, if composer did compose the piece well and really described the subject putting meaning to every note. No, if the composer wrote just some random noise with no depth and meaning that would make illusion of being the music about the *Hiroshima war crime*.




I'll avoid the long, drawn out debate on that little throw-away statement of yours, but that is a very interesting way to describe the Hiroshima bombing.


----------



## mueske (Jan 14, 2009)

DrMike said:


> I'll avoid the long, drawn out debate on that little throw-away statement of yours, but that is a very interesting way to describe the Hiroshima bombing.




What word would you use?


----------



## TWhite (Feb 23, 2010)

Well, I'm not a BIG Bartok fan, but I will say that the first and third movements of his "Music For Strings, Percussion and Celeste" have some pretty nifty 'nigthmarish' qualities. And certainly sections of his opera "Bluebeard's Castle" (my favorite Bartok) can chill me to the bone.

Rachmaninov's "Isle of the Dead" certainly has its more 'nightmarish' moments, and not always in the climaxes--the stillness of the opening measures is extremely tense for me.

And Ravel's "La Valse" certainly conjures up a pretty nightmarish scenario as it disintegrates. That's some pretty VICIOUS stuff!

And Berg's terrific opera "Wozzeck" for me is a nightmare from beginning to end. Absolutely unrelenting!

Tom


----------



## Guest (May 1, 2010)

mueske said:


> What word would you use?


No, unlike those who have inserted such comments into this discussion, I will not derail this. I'd be happy to discuss it by PM.

In keeping with the thread topic, I'm sure that a piece meant to invoke images of Hiroshima would be nightmarish.


----------



## Ian Elliott (Nov 15, 2010)

Martinu's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, and his Double Concerto for Orchestra.


----------

