# Fall and Halloween Music



## 8j1010 (Aug 29, 2020)

Hi! Does anyone know of any spooky solo piano music for Halloween, or just any fun Fall pieces in general?


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## ThaNotoriousNIC (Jun 29, 2020)

I don't listen to a whole lot of piano music, but if want a spooky piano piece, one that comes to my mind is the Ghost Variations by Schumann. The circumstances in Schumann's life at the time of composing the variations is a bit unsettling if you look it up.






I personally like the Ghost Variations for some of its beautiful themes. When I first listened to it, I had no idea of the story behind it and the point of Schumann's life it was written during.

For other spooky music that is orchestral/operatic in nature, I think of the following:

Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz
Night at Bald Mountain, Mussorgsky
Danse Macabre, Saint Saens
Bluebeard's Castle, Bartok
Der Fliegende Hollander, Wagner 
Parsifal (Prelude to Act 2), Wagner
Pictures at an Exhibition (The Gnome, The Old Castle, Catacombs, Baba Yaga), Mussorgsky
Tragic Overture, Brahms
Requiem, Mozart

For regular Fall piece, definitely recommend Autumn from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

Although the third volume is subtitled "Music for a summer evening", I think the three _Makrokosmos_ by George Crumb have a very "autumn/halloween" feel. This feel is even stronger in his _American Songbooks_ cycle, which put traditionnal american melodies against a backdrop of sinister and haunted atonal piano and percussions.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Sure do! The Scherzo op. 16, no. 2 by Mendelssohn. If you know The Wizard of Oz this will be quite familiar. It's also hard as heck to play.


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

This is one of those things where the title of the piece is more evocative than the music itself, but I like Bax's _November Woods_ tone poem. For spooky piano music, I like Rachmaninoff's _Isle of the Dead_, Op. 29.


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