Many moons ago, when I was just a wee little Professor, I had a record album called something like "Music for Halloween.” It featured the first four pieces in the list below.
Inspired by that experience, I have added other spooky classical numbers (a total of 13!) for your Halloween listening pleasure. I have given you:
a brief word (or two) on each, and
links to both YouTube and Spotify (times given are for the YouTube version)
There's also a full playlist on Spotify and YouTube so you can listen to them non-stop (except for the danged ads).
Enjoy!
Don’t miss the full playlist on Spotify or YouTube!
1. The Sorcerer's Apprentice (10:57) – Paul Dukas
Based on a poem by Goethe, itself based on an ancient story of a wizard's student who tries his hand at magic, with disastrous results. It was featured in Disney's Fantasia, with Mickey Mouse as the hapless title character.
(1897; French) (YouTube) (Spotify)
2. Night on Bald Mountain (9:40) – Modest Mussorgsky
First premiered after the composer's death, in a revision by his friend Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. It depicts a legend of a Witches' Sabbath on St. John's Eve (June 23-24, near the summer solstice), occurring on said mountain. This was also included in Fantasia, in a sequence filled with monstrous creatures and flying skeletons.
(1886; Russian) (YouTube) (Spotify)
3. Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks (14:59) – Richard Strauss
Based on folk tales about a prankster pestering a German village. The authorities catch him and sentence him to death for blasphemy (he had poked fun at the clergy). Just after he is hanged, his theme is repeated again--suggesting you can't keep a good trickster down!
(1894-95; German) (YouTube) (Spotify)
4. Danse Macabre (7:09) – Camille Saint Saëns
An old French legend says that Death reappears every year to play his fiddle on Halloween; he leads the dead out of their graves to dance until the rooster crows at dawn. They then return again to their graves to wait for next Halloween.
(1875; French) (YouTube) (Spotify)
5. Toccata and Fugue in D minor (8:32) – Johann Sebastian Bach
Not only was this piece in Fantasia: it opened the show! (I was tempted to put it at the start of my own list for that very reason, but I wanted my "four originals" to come first; so it's the first one after those.) Most of us are more familiar with the "Toccata," just over a minute long; the rest is the intricate "Fugue," which ends with a crazy "Coda."
(18th century; German) (YouTube) (Spotify)
6. In the Hall of the Mountain King (from Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1) (2:42) – Edvard Grieg
This is part of larger body of music written for performance with Henrik Ibsen's play, Peer Gynt, itself loosely based on a Norwegian fairy tale about a folk hero named Per Gynt. This song occurs as the title character faces a troll king on his throne.
(1875; Norwegian) (YouTube) (Spotify)
7. Montagues and Capulets (also called Dance of the Knights, from Romeo and Juliet) (4:47) – Sergei Prokofiev
The song underscores a confrontation between the two families in a ballet based on one of Shakespeare's best known plays.
(1935; Russian) (YouTube) (Spotify)
8. Funeral March of a Marionette (4:24) – Charles Gounod
A marionette has died in a duel. The song portrays his funeral procession, in the middle of which the mourners stop for refreshments. Folks my age may remember it as the theme song from the creepy TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (GOOD EE-VUH-NEEENG…)
(1872 for piano; orchestrated in 1879; French) (YouTube) (Spotify)
9. Aquarium (from Carnival of the Animals) (2:12) – Camille Saint-Saëns
M. Saint-Saëns wished to be thought a "serious composer," and so forbade public performance of the Carnival until after his death. The first such performance, then, was in 1922. Ironically, along with Danse Macabre (#4 on this list), it is one of his best-remembered works.
This evocation of a dimly lit aquarium is the 7th (of 14) movements; it probably wasn't meant to be scary, but somehow its Danny-Elfman-like tinkling creeps out some listeners. I see sharks.
(1886, privately, 1922 publicly; French) (YouTube) (Spotify)
10. Also Sprach Zarathustra (1:39) – Richard Strauss
Casual listeners may not realize that this tone poem runs approximately 35 minutes. What many of us think of as "the entire work" is just the opening fanfare, properly titled "Sunrise" by the composer. I suspect we have been bamboozled by its truncated use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Strauss's piece was inspired by the philosophical novel called in English Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written a decade earlier by Friedrich Nietzsche. The work alleged itself to be the words of Zoroaster (Zarathustra), and played with such themes as Schopenhauer's "will to power"; the idea of the highly-evolved "superman"; the cosmological principle of "eternal recurrence"; and criticism of religion, popularizing the idea that "God is dead."
(1896; German) (YouTube) (Spotify)
11. "O Fortuna" (from Carmina Burana) (5:21) – Carl Orff
The entire cantata (itself part of a larger work, the Trionfi) is based on 24 poems from the 254 poems and dramatic texts found in a medieval manuscript called Carmina Burana. "O Fortuna" is properly called "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" ("Fortune, Empress of the World") , and serves as both the opening and closing movement of the work. Carmina Burana has been used in numerous films (one source alleges its use in "hundreds of films and television commercials"!).
(1935-1936; German) (YouTube) (Spotify)
12. Fossils (from Carnival of the Animals) (1:22) – Camille Saint-Saëns
See #9 above for a note on The Carnival of the Animals.
Fossils, like the same composer's Danse Macabre (#4 above, some of the themes of which are quoted here), evokes dancing skeletons, this time through heavy use of the xylophone. It's the 12th of the Carnival's 14 movements.
(1886, privately, 1922 publicly; French) (YouTube) (Spotify)
13. The Hut on Fowl's Legs (also called Baba-Yagá; from Pictures at an Exhibition) (3:27) – Modest Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky's Pictures was a musical response to an actual exhibition of images by his late friend Viktor Hartmann. This was the 9th of ten movements (with a "Promenade" inserted between some, to indicate, perhaps, strolling between pictures). It refers to Baba Yaga, a witch in Slavic folklore, who lived (as you may guess) in a hut that stands on chicken legs. (Note that this track cuts off as in the full recording it returns to the tenth piece, commonly called "The Great Gate of Kiev." I kind of like the feeling of suspense this causes!)
(1874; Russian) (YouTube) (Spotify)
There you have it! Crank up the old Victrola and blast these on the night of the 31st. I'm sure the kiddies and (the neighbors!) will thank you!
Remember, you can listen to the full playlist on Spotify or YouTube!
Left to right, top to bottom:
Paul Dukas - Modest Mussorgsky - Richard Strauss
Camille Saint Saëns - J.S. Bach - Edvard Grieg
Sergei Prokofiev - Charles Gounod - Carl Orff