# Music with the most ominous introductions



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

What pieces do you know have unusually ominous introductions? They creep out at you, and forebode great danger and strife to come. They make you cringe and bite your nails for that moment when all hell will break lose...

For example, in the SYMPHONY repertoire:

Rimsky-Korsakov, the beginning of the Antar Symphony:





Cesar Franck, the beginning of the Symphony in D:





Both of these make me cringe and go wide-eyed as I listen. It's like evil is right around the corner...


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

The Brahms Symphony No. 1 opening always makes me feel like someone is having a heart attack.






I guess that's not creepy exactly, but it is certainly ominous.

Here's a piece that is fairly ominous throughout. Vitezslav Novák's _De Profundis_. Don't listen in the dark alone.


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## schuberkovich (Apr 7, 2013)

Shostakovich 10th
Schubert Unfinished


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Shostakovich's 5th too.


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## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music has always sounded very dark and ominous to me.


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## Perotin (May 29, 2012)

Prelude to 3rd act of Tristan und Isolde:


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## jtbell (Oct 4, 2012)

The Sibelius Fourth!


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## Andolink (Oct 29, 2012)

How about Death warming up his fiddle at the beginning of Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre. That's always creeped me out since I first head it in grade school music class at about the age of 8.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Olivier Messiaen's _Turangalîla-Symphonie_ is many things, ominous is one of them, particularly in the first movement. Antoni Wit's recording on Naxos is *still* not on YT, but that's the one you should look out for!


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Honegger's 5th symphony.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

matthijs vermeulen, his second symphony


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

*Sibelius* 4 and 7
Mahler 7
Beethoven 4
Everything Ligeti wrote from 1960 to 1970 and a couple of later pieces....


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

One that's good for a chuckle (in the end) is Beethoven's Kakadu Variations for piano trio. A dark, somber, and dramatic slow introduction in an unrelieved minor, quite extended, finally breaking into -- the silliest little tune you could imagine, the "real" subject for the variations.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Weston said:


> The Brahms Symphony No. 1 opening always makes me feel like someone is having a heart attack.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


One of those "Life flashes before your eyes" moments in classical music.  Yeah, I'd put in a sort of "loud ominous" category, because hell has already broke loose from the get go.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

An example from the piano literature:






The tension just grows and grows, nail-biting indeed! 

Anyhow, even though no one brought it up yet, but I would expect it later, Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata has a very ominous introduction too.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

schuberkovich said:


> Shostakovich 10th
> *Schubert Unfinished*


Schubert Yes!!! Particularly when the music moves to the development, with the same foreboding cello melody that begins the piece, and then each instrument group builds onto it, until that horrid climax of terror!  heart-gripping!


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## Orpheus (Jul 15, 2012)

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Tapiola yet. It doesn't so much HAVE an ominous introduction; it IS an ominous introduction. Whatever follows, be it the harsh, ironic death-rattle of applause or the brooding uneasy silence of an unquiet rural grave, is a space for the listener to apprehend the existential awfulness and despair of this mortal existence. Myself, I think it was very considerate of Sibelius to allow the listener to supply their own conclusion like this, rather than putting us through any more of it.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

The introduction of Haydn's 101st Symphony is not only very dramatic, but it sounds almost Brahms-like!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

To me, the most ominous introductions are the beginnings of _Don Giovanni_ and _Tristan und Isolde_.

For those demanding more obscurity, a lot of Wojciech Kilar's music is ominous all the way through.


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## Feathers (Feb 18, 2013)

The beginning of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta:




Man, the tension.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Mozart's c-minor serenade.
And some recordings of finlandia that sound like the soundtrack to '50s horror films.


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## jeanmarc (Dec 23, 2012)

Some obvious ones that come to mind: Beethoven and Bruckner Ninths, Mahler's 1st. Mahler's first was particularly ominous in performance I heard once.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

TCHAIKOVSKY symphony #5 andante-moderato con anima,the walking speed hear sounds depressing to me.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

The introduction to Pettersson's _Symphony No. 7_ always seems to creep me out.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Feathers said:


> The beginning of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yup, this was the very first thing that came to mind. Also the intro to his Concerto for Orchestra.

Incidentally, the third movement from his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta was used to absolutely spine chilling effect in the film "The Shining." Little psychic kid pedals his tricycle through the corridors of an empty hotel, and sees dead girls and mutilated people and rivers of blood, to the accompaniment of Bartok. Shivers!

I see someone has already mentioned Beethoven's fourth symphony. When I was a kid I was so completely in awe of that dark, brooding introduction that it bordered on fear, and I actually seldom listened to the work, despite the generally happy tone of the rest of it.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

1. Carl Nielsen's Symphony No.5

2. Moments in Mozart's Don Giovanni foreshadowing Don's ultimate demise


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

The definition of ominous introduction:






Ligeti, Volumina for organ.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

*Mahler - Symphony No.5*, the music goes from big bright fanfare way down to the depths of a funeral march with ominous hushed tam-tam in just the first minute.
*Poulenc - Concerto for Organ, Timpani & Strings* - though maybe it's just scary in a 'mad scientist' sort of way. Imagine Vincent Price.
*Gerhard - The Plague*. Eeeek!


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## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

The first three minutes or so of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty is out of character with what follows, so i guess you could call it ominous.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Strauss' Alpine Symphony. The very first seconds are cold and dark


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Verdi's Macbeth - a perfect way to confirm that much evil is about to unfold.

Berlioz's Grande symphonie funebre et triomphale - perhaps obviously so as it starts with a funeral march.

Shostakovich's Viola Sonata - it's the aural equivalent of opening the ward door and seeing the composer in bed dying.


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

Perotin said:


> Prelude to 3rd act of Tristan und Isolde


I always saw it as a lament on destroyed love. Nice way of looking at it, though


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

How about _all_ of Sibelius!


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