# Terrifying Music



## Huilunsoittaja

Are there certain classical pieces you know that you can't help being frightened of? This isn't the same as hating it. You may actually admire the piece, but you don't (or do!) like listening to it for the sake of its emotion, just as some people go to watch horror movies. It may even be the only reason you like the piece. Would you ever just want to listen to those pieces for the sake of this _particular_ kind of adrenaline?

Name pieces that you find to be like that for you.

I have my own, personally:




I don't know about you all, but I find this piece terrifying. And yet, I'm absolutely fascinated with it. What's ironic is this is suppose to be happy, but I don't have that reaction whatsoever. I actually had a nightmare after hearing this on the radio some years ago, that _diabolical_ clarinet in my head.


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## Couchie

There are some pieces I literally cannot listen to in a darkened room because they are just too terrifying:

Penderecki - Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Reich - Different Trains
Crumb - Black Angels


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## Aramis

I think I'm a bit scared of Tchaikovsky's 6th because it's emotional content gets so serious and makes huge impact on my state of mind, it speaks so directly to my personal feelings that one day I could simply finish listening to it and shot myself with flintlock pistol.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Aramis said:


> I think I'm a bit scared of Tchaikovsky's 6th because it's emotional content gets so serious and makes huge impact on my state of mind, it speaks so directly to my personal feelings that one day I could simply finish listening to it and shot myself with flintlock pistol.


Ohhh, I hope that won't happen. And make sure you don't drink any unboiled water that day either...


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## TxllxT

Les Préludes by Liszt was Adolf Hitler's favourite piece of classical music. At the end of this symphonic poem the orchestra starts to unleash its martial climax and I'm left in terror over the fascist empowering of young people who saw no other future than marching, marching if necessary into the abyss for their _Führer_.


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## Manxfeeder

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I don't know about you all, but I find this piece terrifying.


Hey, I'm not alone! Many sounds from Ravel and Debussy get me uneasy at a primal level, and I don't know why. I think it has something to do with the movies from the '30s and '40s I saw on my black and white TV when I was a kid that had those sounds, and the adult themes over my head combined with strange music I wasn't used to fed into my general kid-fears of the strange world I was about to come into, and it's stayed with me.


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## regressivetransphobe

Pierrot Lunaire is a very eerie work. Keep in mind I heard it before I heard much of the fuss over Schoenberg. It was like nightmare cabaret from some parallel world.


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## Aksel

I agree about Pierrot Lunaire. It's such an unsettling work.
Also, Nuits by Xenakis.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Aksel said:


> I agree about Pierrot Lunaire. It's such an unsettling work.
> Also, Nuits by Xenakis.


   

That was very disturbing. Sounded like wailing of ghosts.


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## Huilunsoittaja

At the really dissonant climax of Variation 6, it sounds like a nightmare made real, a great monster stomping toward you. And then at the last moment, someone starts chopping up the monster with an axe, maybe 2 axes.  Quite violent.

This is the Prokofiev I cringe to. I like it, but only because it's horrific, I don't find it beautiful.


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## Sid James

Agreed about Schoenberg's _Pierrot Lunaire _- it is exactly like nightmare meets cabaret. When I first heard it 15 years ago, I majorly balked. It was so wierd and disturbing. The woman singing sounded like this femme fatale who would cut my [private parts] off at the drop of a hat!!! But this year I saw a live performance of it, which incorporated surtitles and a choreographed dancer with lighting. In that more theatrical way, the work made much more sense. & I won't deny that I listened to both Christine Schafer's and Jane Manning's recordings of the work as "preparation" beforehand, often reading along with the translated texts (yes, I am a full-on nerd!). The poetry by Giraud is so surrealistic & his imagery highly charged & potent, but he actually wrote it in about the 1890's, decades before the heyday of the Surrealist movement which came later in the 1920's with guys like Andre Breton and Paul Eluard.

As for other things I find disturbing, they are the very darkly emotional works like Tchaikovsky's _Pathetique_, as Aramis is saying (much more so than _Pierrot_ or say Penderecki's _Threnody_ because I can kind of detatch myself from these more easily). Sibelius' 4th symphony, Mahler's 9th as well as Bruckner's 9th I'm the same with. They basically depress the **** out of me, although (of course) they are brilliant masterpieces. They just cut too close to the bone for me, so I tend to avoid them like the plague. I like their lighter symphonies much much more (or at least the less dark ones, eg. Mahler's 10th I'm ok with, but due to it's length I rarely listen to it in full in the one sitting).

As for a work that does have these aspects, but which I enjoy, it is Sibelius' _Tapiola._ The part where he depicts a storm in the forest is so vivid and hair-raising, but in a good way. I believe he did the same thing in a part of his music for _The Tempest_, if I remember correctly...


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## itywltmt

No question - Gounod's Marche funèbre d'une marionnette. Once you hear it, you'll know why...






As I child, Hitchcock scared me to sh#$%!


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## Huilunsoittaja

itywltmt said:


> No question - Gounod's Marche funèbre d'une marionnette. Once you hear it, you'll know why...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As I child, Hitchcock scared me to sh#$%!


That reminded me of this:





Sweet dreams!


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## samurai

A truly unforgetable theme to a classic and quite *scary *series, no doubt about it! 
Also that Twilight Zone music used to give me the creeps as a kid; I'd always lower the sound on the tv before the window broke. Great Finds. :tiphat:


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## Meaghan

The first movement of Corigliano's clarinet concerto is _scary_, but I do love it.

Also, the hammer blows in Mahler 6 scared me out of my seat the first time I heard them, even though I knew they were coming.


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## violadude

I have the perfect piece for this! The second movement of Ligeti's violin concerto is so terrifyingly creepy! The thing is, it starts out so beautifully then it gets weirder and weirder. There are horns that sound like sick cats at 2:40. Then about 2:55 a passage for what sounds like god-awful out of tune flutes and ocarinas. It's probably the most eerie thing I have heard in classical music.


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## Air

The most terrifying music I've ever heard was... no, I don't remember the exact name. But I certainly remember the feeling I got, I can never forget it, and thankfully I read the name Cage on the back of the CD before I hurried out of the store like a mouse being chased by a cat.

It was my first encounter with contemporary music ever, or at least that I remember, occurring when I was only in elementary school. My parents and I were browsing the classical section for "Best of" CDs at Barnes and Nobles that day and trying stuff on the cool machines, which at that time, we all thought were so cool because they had just been invented.

I don't know if it was a mislabeling of the CD or the fact that I was just curious and wanted to "try things out" - but somehow I picked up a recording that shocked me so much that I didn't listen to contemporary music or even much classical music in general for the next couple years. The first few notes, I remember, were descending - instruments warped, convoluted - a spiral downward into nothingness. It was demonic, devilish even, for a child like myself - and it's true too that I wasn't able to visit that specific Barnes and Nobles for a good while too (even now, I still feel a strange aversion to it). But this music by Cage, noises that today I would never feel the same sort of reaction too - _did_ have this reaction on me. In one way, it opened my mind up to the possibilities of what classical music can do and broke a ton of cliches in my mind, but on the other hand it also led me to fear contemporary music - not until much later did I return, working my way from Prokofiev to Stravinsky, Stravinsky to Varese and Schoenberg, and finally back to Cage and Xenakis. And all of this, cautiously.

Today, very little music can truly frighten me in the same way 'that piece' did, though a lot of music can still shock and disturb me. The operas of Berg and Ligeti and _Pierrot Lunaire_ (especially with the grotesque film rendition) are good examples of this, as are the dark symphonic works of Penderecki and Gubaidulina and the strange, devilish parts of Stockhausen's _Licht_, but that feeling of true fright has never really re-occurred. In many ways I would like to experience it again, because there is almost nothing as intense and exciting, but I have a feeling that as a part of growing up, it will likely never recur. I would, however, like to find out the name of the piece I listened to so long ago some day and maybe even reacquaint myself with it. I will never forget it, what those few notes felt like to me.


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## Fsharpmajor

I find *Gong*, by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, very unsettling. It's a piece about the activity of the sun:


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## Ukko

Aramis said:


> I think I'm a bit scared of Tchaikovsky's 6th because it's emotional content gets so serious and makes huge impact on my state of mind, it speaks so directly to my personal feelings that one day I could simply finish listening to it and shot myself with flintlock pistol.


Chances are pretty good that in your demoralized state you will forget to put powder in the pan.


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## Serge

Never even heard it (couldn't get past the title, obviously), but *The Phantom of the Opera*. (Sure hope this is _classical_ though.)


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## Meaghan

Serge said:


> Never even heard it (couldn't get past the title, obviously), but *The Phantom of the Opera*. (Sure hope this is _classical_ though.)


It is a very silly musical by the most celebrated composer of (unintentionally) very silly musicals, Andrew Lloyd Webber.


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## Manxfeeder

Karajan's recording of Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, movement 3. The climax is straight out of a horror movie.

Also, the parts of Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antartica with the wind machine and the woman's voices freak me out.


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## tdc

Manxfeeder said:


> Karajan's recording of Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra, movement 3. The climax is straight out of a horror movie.


That is interesting, the things that creep you out are completely different than me...with Ravel, Debussy, and Webern, I get feelings more of intrigue, and hidden mystery, but in a warm kind of comforting way. Almost like I am in a warm lucid dream I can completely control and kind of co-create moment to moment with the music.

Stravinsky's Rite has more of a horror movie feel to me, as well as many works by Penderecki. I also find the start of Mahler's 3rd quite scary sounding. I listened to a couple minutes of Crumb's Black Angels once on youtube, and was definitely finding it very creepy.


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## Manxfeeder

tdc said:


> That is interesting, the things that creep you out are completely different than me...with Ravel, Debussy, and Webern, I get feelings more of intrigue, and hidden mystery, but in a warm kind of comforting way.


Yeah, the freak-out feelings from Ravel and Debussy are irrational. In fact, I hadn't put my finger on why until I typed the post, so it ended up being kind of therapeutic.

As for Webern, I pretty much agree with you except for the way Karajan in particular recorded the third movement of the 6 pieces, which, if you've heard it, you'd probably agree with me; it could be used in the shower scene in Psycho.


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## Aksel

The march from Berg's 3 Pieces for Orchestra.


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## tdc

Manxfeeder said:


> As for Webern, I pretty much agree with you except for the way Karajan in particular recorded the third movement of the 6 pieces, which, if you've heard it, you'd probably agree with me; it could be used in the shower scene in Psycho.


Good points. Its true I haven't heard the Karajan recording. I have the Naxos recording.


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## mmsbls

When I was first starting to experiment with modern music, I heard a chamber piece by Schnittke. I disliked it quite a bit, but I wondered if all his music sounded like that so I decided to listen to other works. I searched the Naxos Music Library and decided to listen to his 4th violin concerto. As I remember, the introduction was quite nice and somewhat relaxing. Then the violin entered. It was the single most unpleasant, horrible musical sound I have ever heard. I told my wife that Schnittke must have done many experiments trying to produce the most vile sound conceivable. 

I have listened a couple more times just to see if I think it's still that bad. It still makes me feel horrible. I've never even heard the rest of the piece.


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## Serge

Meaghan said:


> It is a very silly musical by the most celebrated composer of (unintentionally) very silly musicals, Andrew Lloyd Webber.


Thank you, Meaghan. Shouldn't be as scary as I thought it was then... What a relieve! Perhaps I'll even give it a listen one day. 

In this case let me throw in some usual suspects at least, as these are being played by classical music stations around Halloween time: The Macabre Dance by some Frenchman (Saint-Sans, I think), and The Night on the Bold Mountain by Mussorgsky. Not that I personally am terrified of those (then again, I am not a fifteen-year girl anymore), but I do happen to like them quite a bit.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Does anyone know terrifying works that are not atonal or overtly dissonant? Their emotion may simply be very subtle, but very scary anyway.


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## Sid James

TxllxT said:


> Les Préludes by Liszt was Adolf Hitler's favourite piece of classical music. At the end of this symphonic poem the orchestra starts to unleash its martial climax and I'm left in terror over the fascist empowering of young people who saw no other future than marching, marching if necessary into the abyss for their _Führer_.


Well I was at a lecture in May here by Dr Leslie Howard, pianist and Liszt expert. He mentioned in passing that he thought that Karajan's "goose-stepping" interpretation of that finale of _Les Preludes_ was not the right way to interpret this work. In any case, Karajan's "take" on this work was not to Dr Howard's taste, especially because of the Nazi associations (as you suggest). I just skimmed over the Wikipedia article about this work, & there is much debate on the meaning of this work, some say it's much more than just a musical realisation of French poet Lamartine's _Ode_ which provided the title. In my younger days, my mother said that _Les Preludes_ was a veiled hymn to the Hungarian people with regards to their struggles against the Hapsburg oppressors in the unsuccessfu revolution/war of independence in 1848. But the Wikipedia article doesn't mention this, so I wonder about that, & it actually says that the work started it's gestation in about 1844. I also remember reading elsewhere that this is mainly a work about the forces of nature. Whatever the "meaning," it looks like this work will be an eternal enigma, like many of the great masterpieces.

BTW - I don't remember hearing Karajan's interpretation of _Les Preludes_, although I've heard a number of other recordings of it, I know the work well...


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## Sid James

A few more that I can think of -

*BARTOK* - _Music for Strings Percussion & Celesta_: Extensively used in the soundtrack of Kubrick's horror film "The Shining," this is probably the most spooky thing the man ever penned. Especially the slow movement, which has this crescendo on the percussion, which just oozes dread. It definitely brings to my mind the scene where the interior of the hotel in the film is tranformed into a river of blood. The slow movement of Bartok's contemoporaneous _Divertimento for Strings_ is also a bit like this.

*MOZART* - The scene where the Don is sent to hell by the Commendatore in_ Don Giovanni. _ This was apparently the first time that the emotion of fear had been put down in music.

*BERLIOZ* - The corresponding scene towards the end of _La Damnation de Faust_, where Faust falls down into the pit of hell. Some very wierd sounds coming from the orchestra as Faust & Mephistopheles are riding their horses frantically towards their final destination, and the choir sings a demented hymn to accompany them with high maniacal voices, even screaming.

*JANACEK* - The two string quartets, especially the first named for Tolstoy's tragedy of love, jealousy and death - "The Kreutzer Sonata." This is about the darker, uglier and obsessive aspects of love and passion. Many dissonances here, which were probably shocking at the time (some critics said Janacek had "betrayed" the Czech traditions set down by Dvorak & Smetana), but now almost 100 years later, their melodic and quite romantic qualities also shine through.

*LIGETI* - _Requiem_: Someone above mentioned his violin concerto, which I heard years ago on radio & thought it was noise! Doubtless I have now changed over the years, I love this kind of music. The requiem is less about the dead, it is about how one would imagine being dead, in purgatory for eternity. This was famously used in another Kubrick film "2001: A Space Odyessy." As someone said online, it sounds like a tape player that is playing at the wrong speed, everything seems slowed down to the nth degree, so the intensity comes from this kind of dark nether world perfectly imagined in sound...


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## Huilunsoittaja

Aksel said:


> The march from Berg's 3 Pieces for Orchestra.


That's not a march. Period.


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## Aksel

Huilunsoittaja said:


> That's not a march. Period.


That is what the good Alban called it, and I don't really feel like arguing with him. Also, that would be difficult.


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## tdc

Sid James post made me remember I am actually a little freaked out of the first Movement of Mozart's Requiem in D minor. Though I am listening to it now, and it doesn't really seem nearly as scary as it used to be.


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## Huilunsoittaja

To add to Ravel, I also think _La Valse_ is pretty scary. It's deceptive in that it begins quite normally, but it becomes a nightmare little by little. The Apotheosis of the Waltz as we know it.


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## Serge

I find Stockhausen's Kontakte to be pure horror.


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## violadude

Huilunsoittaja said:


> That's not a march. Period.


hmm actually, I hear a 2 pulse really clearly in that piece.


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## nickgray

/thread


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## superhorn

For sheer terror, there is nothing like the opera "The Fiery Angel" by Prokofiev.
This is without a doubt the weirdest ,creepiest and most disturbing opera of all time. 
It makes your average Stephen King novel or movie look like Mary Poppins. 
Prokofiev's 3rd symphony is based on the music, and it's also a truly intense experience, especially if you know the opera.
The opera takes place in 16th century Cologne and surroundings during the inquisition,
and deals with sorcery,demonology and demonic possession -black magic of the blackest kind !
Renata is a beautiful young woman, but she is an insane religious mystic who is obsessed with finding her imaginary friend from childhood, Madiel, an angel of fire . But Madiel is a DEMON, not an angel ! He told her that she would find him one day in huuman form as Count Heinrich .
She is frequently tormented by horrible demonic visions. She comes across a wandering knight named Ruprecht in an inn where the two are staying.He comforts her during one of her hideous attacks by demonic visions , and falls hopelessly in love with her 
even though she does not love him . 
The two get involved with black magic and demonology,and consult leading necoramancers. Eventualy, things get completely out of hand,and in the last scene,Renata has gone to a monastary to become a nun. But she is still tormented by demons, and the other nuns are terrified by horrible demonic visions of their own !
The grand Inquisitor is called in, and performs an excorcism on her with the other nuns present which goes horribly out of control ,and a scene of indescribable horror and chaos takes place. The other nuns are starting to become possessed by demons ! The inqusitor sentences to be burned at the stake as a sorceress , and the opera comes to a horrifying close ! 
This final scene is so terrifying, you my wet yourself ! Beware !
The two recordings, by Neeme Jarvi on DG, and Valery gergiev are both superb, but may be hard to fnd. There are a number of recordings of the symmphony by Gergiev,Jarvi, Ozawa, and other conductors .


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## Sid James

@ superhorn - concering the ending of Prokofiev's _Fiery Angel_, as one critic I read wrote, it's a bit like _The Sound of Music _(being in a monastery) - "How do you solve a problem like Renata?" Sounds a bit flaccid the way I put it, but you just had to "be there" & read what Andrew Ford wrote on this (kind of???  ).

BTW - I haven't heard the opera, but I do have Abbado's recording of the 3rd Symphony & agreed, it is very intense (for the time, at least). The way you described the opera makes me want to hear it now...


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## SuperTonic

I wish I could find a copy of The Fiery Angel on DVD. The only one I've ever found was on amazon.com, and its not compatible with my DVD player.


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## elgar's ghost

The Wolf's Glen scene in von Weber's Der Freischutz - gothic horror was never better. It's rather scarier if I look at an old 19th print of the scene rather than watching the action 'live' as it makes my imagination run riot. Act III of Verdi's Macbeth where he is warned by the spirit of a boy about things to come (and then freaked out by Banquo's ghost holding a mirror) is also quite chilling and captures the essence of both the dank, mildewy cave of the witches and Macbeth's own paranoia brilliantly but still obviously owes a debt to the absolute phantasmagoria of the von Weber.


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## Norse

This is only a brief moment in a gigantic work, but I wouldn't be surprised if the very opening of the 5th movement from Mahler's 2nd has caused a few heart attacks. It depends on the performance of course, I think the Rattle/Birmingham one brings out the terror nicely.


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## Norse

Huilunsoittaja said:


> At the really dissonant climax of Variation 6, it sounds like a nightmare made real, a great monster stomping toward you. And then at the last moment, someone starts chopping up the monster with an axe, maybe 2 axes.  Quite violent.
> 
> This is the Prokofiev I cringe to. I like it, but only because it's horrific, I don't find it beautiful.


Don't forget about the first variation. Maybe it's not terrifying, but it's just the perfect spooky fairy tale music, dark magic forests with witches' huts etc


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## Meaghan

elgars ghost said:


> The Wolf's Glen scene in von Weber's Der Freischutz - gothic horror was never better.


I found the Wolf's Glen scene kind of unintentionally comical in its attempt to be scary. Weird sound effects. And "funf" is a funny word. Maybe it's just me.


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## Jeremy Marchant

For nightmare music, I recommend Schnittke's_ (K)ein Sommernachtstraum_ [_(Not) a midsummernight's dream_], in which, over a set of variations, an innocent and naive little tune, that had never done anyone any harm, is subjected to a series of increasingly violent and unpleasant assaults. In the end, it turns really nasty and, for me, whilst it only a piece of music, it conjures very real emotions around watching someone being physically attacked.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OaE_Esx8VA


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## Curiosity




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## Huilunsoittaja

What a neat video! It might just help me start to like Beethoven after all.


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## mmsbls

Personally I find the Grosse Fuge not terrifying, but I loved the video. I'm not sure how much it helps people with a strong musical background, but for those like me, it was wonderful.


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## Couchie

I find the Grosse Fuge full of existentialist angst, so quite terrifying indeed.


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## Huilunsoittaja

I almost forgot this one:





I'm in no way endorsing listening to this piece of music. I'm just posting it here to show you all that it exists. 
Listen at your own risk, you're listening to demonic incantations.


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## Manxfeeder

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I'm in no way endorsing listening to this piece of music. I'm just posting it here to show you all that it exists.
> Listen at your own risk, you're listening to demonic incantations.


I don't know about demons, but now there are a bunch of dust bunnies flying around my room.


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## Huilunsoittaja

Manxfeeder said:


> I don't know about demons, but now there are a bunch of dust bunnies flying around my room.


The music must have stirred them to life.


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## kv466

I've always found the Chopin Etude opus 25, no. 12 to have a beautifully terrifying sound although parts of it are regal and magnificent, it has such despair throughout


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## SonjiaWeber

I always thought Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni has a beautiful terrifying dramatic effect on the soul, deep and dark Mozart speaks what he wants through composition....


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## Klavierspieler

Most contemporary Russian composers write lots of extremely dark music that I don't listen to because I find it depressing.


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## FrankieP

I find Penderecki's 'The Devils of Loudun' fairly scary! And also parts of his St Luke Passion - 'Deus Meus' to name one, with the slithering repeated tenor motif. 

Black Angels was the first post-1920ish piece of (classical) music I ever heard - about 5 years ago when i was 12ish. It terrified me at the time, but after returning to it at a later date (last year) and studying the score, I don't find it scary at all!

I find some of the most ironic and grotesque moments in Shostakovich and Prokofiev a bit unnerving - for example the 2nd mov of Shost 5 at one particular point, and there is a lot of fairly creepy music in Prokofiev 7, amongst others.

Also - Mahler 7, Scherzo. Those super-fast glisses... 

great topic, really interesting reading responses! and this is my first post, yay


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## jalex

Mahler symphony 1 first movement - the section of massive chords leading up to and marked 'immer noch etwas zuruckhaltend' always terrifies me. Maybe I'm just very impressionable.


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## clavichorder

Has anyone mentioned Bruckner's late symphonies? I find the adrenaline pumping war sound of the finale to his 8th symphony quite terrifying!





Also, the beginning of the 6th symphony is rather creepy and then its scary how it opens into such vastness





And perhaps the most creepy is the scherzo to his 9th, which makes use of some pretty wild tonalities so perhaps is more in the vain of the dissonant scary music





Bruckner seems to rely on music vastness and "bombasticity" more than pure dissonance.


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## clavichorder

Bruckner's music in general has so much vastness to it, it makes me feel isolated and alone and frightened.


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## jalex

mmsbls said:


> Personally I find the Grosse Fuge not terrifying, but I loved the video. I'm not sure how much it helps people with a strong musical background, but for those like me, it was wonderful.


They are actually really great, they give people with short attention spans who wouldn't usually last 15 minutes of uninterrupted music something to focus on. And I often find some new interesting instrumental line I'd missed before when watching them, it makes the 'nebenstimme' parts easy to follow.


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## dmg




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## sabrina

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I have my own, personally:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know about you all, but I find this piece terrifying. And yet, I'm absolutely fascinated with it. What's ironic is this is suppose to be happy, but I don't have that reaction whatsoever. I actually had a nightmare after hearing this on the radio some years ago, that _diabolical_ clarinet in my head.


OMG! It looked this piece of music was almost trying to kill me. I felt as if my heart will go into fibrillation. I wanted to stop it, but I was also liking it. Weird. I don't have the power to try again.


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## Norse

I find the ending of Daphnis exhilarating. Not really terrifying. At least I haven't heard that in it before. Try the version with a choir, it has some strange wordless 'shouting' on top of it, which probably makes it scarier


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## Huilunsoittaja

Norse said:


> I find the ending of Daphnis exhilarating. Not really terrifying. At least I haven't heard that in it before. Try the version with a choir, it has some strange wordless 'shouting' on top of it, which probably makes it scarier


Yes, the wordless choir makes it very scary. That was the version I heard the night I had a nightmare about that piece.


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## Head_case

I'm told by a 17 year old that the Stefan Wolpe String Quartet I was listening to is terrifying. 

"Turn that zzzhhit off!!! It's freaking me out!" 



It reminds me of some of the experimental trials on classical music on teenagers ... which surmised that classical music is a fabulous pest repellent for those with sensitive underdeveloped hearing


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## itywltmt

Plerase read my blog this week, full of scary favourites:
http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/itywltmt/413-trick-treat.html


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## Itullian

Carmina Burana. something about it uneases my soul. will never listen to it again.
something profane and ? about it. yuck

very seductive music? though.


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## tdc

Off the top of my head I believe the most terrifying work I've listened to would be Penderecki's_ Utrenja._


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## myaskovsky2002

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Are there certain classical pieces you know that you can't help being frightened of? This isn't the same as hating it. You may actually admire the piece, but you don't (or do!) like listening to it for the sake of its emotion, just as some people go to watch horror movies. It may even be the only reason you like the piece. Would you ever just want to listen to those pieces for the sake of this _particular_ kind of adrenaline?
> 
> Name pieces that you find to be like that for you.
> 
> I have my own, personally:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know about you all, but I find this piece terrifying. And yet, I'm absolutely fascinated with it. What's ironic is this is suppose to be happy, but I don't have that reaction whatsoever. I actually had a nightmare after hearing this on the radio some years ago, that _diabolical_ clarinet in my head.


Lovely Daphnis and Chloe..

Martin


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## myaskovsky2002

Bomarzo, by Alberto Ginastera, an Argentinian composer. The book is quite scarry, the opera follows the book very close. Manuel Mujica Láinez wrote the book
==============================
Manuel Mujica Lainez: Bomarzo 
Great novel about the Italian Renaissance, on classical culture, but at the same time is a novel about the psychology of his characters, especially his protagonist, Pier Francesco Orsini, who with his excesses and virtues drags us over this period of Italian history, where power was abble to support everything from corruption to murder, where leaders will do anything to be on top. The Duke of Renaissance, masterfully portrayed by Manuel Mujica Lainez, in his novel Bomarzo, whose personality is dual, he is an art lover, and yet he remains cruel and hateful, but we fell often closer to him than to other characters in the novel and he attracts us as a magnet, he's marked by his physical defect and that will affect him for life. 
The construction of a spectacular garden, full of monstrous figures shows the closed and dark personality of Duke Orsini, it was a visit to this wonderful garden, in the Viterbo region, about 60 km from Rome, which inspired Mujica Lainez this superb historical novel. A great book that and one of the best novels on the Italian Renaissance period.

==================================================

Scarry

Martin


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## myaskovsky2002

Schönberg, op. 40...Divine byt scarry






and the same music (the fiery angel)






Martin


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## pluhagr

Thomas Ades' Violin Concerto is pretty creepy.


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## Rondo

Beethoven's Op. 129. Very terrifying.


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## peeyaj

*Erlkonig.*. It's scary.


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## Lisztian

I find a fair bit of late Liszt to be a bit scary. Well scary isn't the word i'd use...more dark, depressing, pessimistic, but they are also the 'scariest' pieces I can currently think of.

Some examples...
















Oh and also some of the 2nd and 3rd Mephisto Waltzes...Not all of them...but some parts are very creepy. (Indeed, two other late pieces).


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## Crudblud

I don't know, I find Varèse and Xenakis soothing. Penderecki's Threnody, Anaklasis etc. have a tendency to be used as horror soundtracks, personally I find them quite soothing as well, I liken all of them to being wrapped in a safe, warm cocoon. Parts of Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie and St. François d'Assise can bring me out in goosebumps, but it's more like being overwhelmed than being scared, very powerful music that gets at your very soul.

Yeah, I honestly can't think of any music I find scary.


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## LordBlackudder

Anything by Samuel Barber.


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## violadude

LordBlackudder said:


> Anything by Samuel Barber.




Am I seeing this correctly? Did Lordblackudder actually mention a composer _not_ associated with video games??


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## Crudblud

Coming soon: Samuel Barber's complete works re-purposed as the soundtrack to Final Fantasy MCMLXVI


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## Lisztian

violadude said:


> Am I seeing this correctly? Did Lordblackudder actually mention a composer _not_ associated with video games??


My thoughts exactly!


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## LordBlackudder

Heightened senses, fear, tension.


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## An Die Freude

LordBlackudder said:


> Heightened senses, fear, tension.


Then he goes and does that. :lol:


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## Rapide

Penderecki's 2nd string quartet is terrifying.


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## BlazC

Speaking of string quartets...


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## EarthBoundRules

I find this clip from Shostakovich's _10th Symphony_ incredibly scary. The first time I listened to the symphony, I was sort of in a trance and wasn't paying much attention to the music, but when this part came up it left my mouth wide open wondering how it got so horrifying.


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## bassClef

Taking the thread's title literally and not confining myself to classical, I've dipped into Scott Walker's "The Drift" album before but never before listened to the whole thing late at night, loud and in the dark - terrifying!


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## Garlic

This is the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread


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## DeepR

^ Nice, that sounds severely twisted.


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## DeepR

Alexander Nemtin / Scriabin - Preperation For The Final Mystery


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## Forte

Garlic said:


> This is the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread


What the hell does the score to that look like?


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## worov




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## JCarmel

I've always found this music unsettling.....


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## PetrB

I just don't have that set of reactions to any music, but in a way, this is a visit into the interior of a mind of vast and mixed emotions, and it is more than effective as such. I think no one could help but find it 'uncomfortable' though I think it is masterly, and has a real beauty to it.
Berio ~ Visage 




[[Somewhere on TC, Jeremy Marchand has done a brilliant and elegant analysis of its form, wholly reliant on classical premises, and debunking the myth that all new music which doesn't sound like old formalist music is "formless." This piece is anything but.]]

The following, on the other hand, also with the very immediately human element of the voice(s) I find just intense fun, but a younger colleague wrote me and told me it was the most terrifying thing she had ever heard:
Nico Muhly ~ Mothertongue I


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## PetrB

Sid James said:


> Well I was at a lecture in May here by Dr Leslie Howard, pianist and Liszt expert. He mentioned in passing that he thought that Karajan's "goose-stepping" interpretation of that finale of _Les Preludes_ was not the right way to interpret this work. In any case, Karajan's "take" on this work was not to Dr Howard's taste, especially because of the Nazi associations (as you suggest). I just skimmed over the Wikipedia article about this work, & there is much debate on the meaning of this work, some say it's much more than just a musical realisation of French poet Lamartine's _Ode_ which provided the title. In my younger days, my mother said that _Les Preludes_ was a veiled hymn to the Hungarian people with regards to their struggles against the Hapsburg oppressors in the unsuccessfu revolution/war of independence in 1848. But the Wikipedia article doesn't mention this, so I wonder about that, & it actually says that the work started it's gestation in about 1844. I also remember reading elsewhere that this is mainly a work about the forces of nature. Whatever the "meaning," it looks like this work will be an eternal enigma, like many of the great masterpieces.
> 
> BTW - I don't remember hearing Karajan's interpretation of _Les Preludes_, although I've heard a number of other recordings of it, I know the work well...


We will never, it seems, know for certain, but there is as much credibility that Les Preludes was a fait accompli when a friend commented that it _seemed_ somehow to be in ready alignment with Lamartine's Ode, so the piece was presented as a 'representation" or programme following that poem. [[This specifically mentioned in the Wiki article on Les Preludes. ]]

I revel in this of course because a number of works, small and large, have been titled after the fact, in the case of the Les Preludes,, if it is true, Liszt composed the work while completely unaware of Larmartine's Ode.


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## DeepR

Some non classical tracks, not really terrifying, but ominous

Troum & Yen Pox - Mnemonic Induction - Part II





Robert Rich & Lustmord - Stalker - Hidden Refuge


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## DeepR

Scriabin's late piano music can't miss here.






Although apparently Scriabin himself thought the 6th was his most terrifying sonata and he refused to play it in public: "It is one of a few pieces Scriabin never played in public, because he felt it was "nightmarish, murky, unclean and mischievous". He often started shuddering after playing a few measures for other people."


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## Jobis

Most of these pieces make me feel cosy and sleepy, I don't know why.


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## violadude

I found the beginning of Schnittke's 6th symphony to be pretty terrifying the first time I heard it.


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## techniquest

You want terrifying? Here's terrifying...


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## dirtchsmyth

I know it may not conform to most people's idea of classical music, but I find Richard D. James' (AKA Aphex Twin) "Stone in Focus" to be atmospheric and very creepy 



 Definitely minimalist and thrilling to listen to in the dark.


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## Winterreisender

I find Ian Bostridge's Winterreise "Film" a bit creepy, particularly the way he plays it like a slightly demonic choir boy...


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## QuietGuy

Here are two pieces I like very much because of their fright factor:

Grieg: In The Hall of Mountain King from Peer Gynt
Orff: O Fortuna from Carmina Burana.

Both remind me of someone being chased through Hell by the very Devil himself. :devil:


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## Cosmos

Ligeti's Requiem has always unsettled me, though I think I blame 2001: A Space Odyssey for that. The painful moaning that gets louder and louder as we approach the mysterious and terrifying black monolith....*shutters*


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## Alfacharger

Nothing more blood curdling than the last few of minutes of the completed Berg opera, Lulu. (Starts at about 3.50 in the video.)


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## hpowders

Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. Doesn't get more terrifying than that.


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