Spooky, Classical Compositions for a Frightful Halloween

by Edvard Grieg

Written to follow the spookiest of journeys through a tunnel of trolls, gnomes and goblins...this piece is best known for making Disney's magnificient magical film, The Magician's Apprentice famous. Kids always love this and most adults will find they know it by heart.

by Camille Saint Saens

This dark dance will give even the littlest listeners a little case of the spooks as "Death" or the violinist as we know him, evokes the dead to rise from their graves and dance in this sinister scene.

by Aaron Copeland

 Frightfully inspired by a viewing of the film Nosferatu in 1925, Copland wrote this bewitching ballet as a retelling of the Dracula story. Although it is almost mysteriously rarely performed, the music alone is enough to make anyone jump out of his seat to turn on the nearest light switch!

by Paul Dukas

Children still love this Mickey Mouse mystery movie...and the music will haunt you, once you've seen it. A notable close second in the Disney dances is "Spook Dance" or the "Skeleton Dance" which some of you may remember was composed by Walt Disney's friend, Carl Stalling (who was aptly also an organist—could there be a more haunted instrument?) for his silly symphonies series.

by Modest Mussorgsky

Originally a tone poem called "St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain", this frightfully famous work was made even more famous when it was revised by Rimsky-Korsakov. Modern audiences still know it as part of the soundtrack from Disney's Fantasia.

By Hector Berlioz

Berlioz was incredibly creative in using unusual orchestral effects to create the scene of a gathering of witches—violins use the backs of their bows to create bubbling cauldron sounds, the sound of a funeral bell and outbursts of lugubrious laughter.

by J. S. Bach

Bach, whose major repertoire is for the organ, certainly knew how to use music to mystify and occasionally terrify. Listeners may immediately recognize this particular piece, since it's been used in many classic horror films including The Black Cat, Dr. Jekyll, and Mr. Hyde, and even in Doctor Who.

by Sergei Rachmaninov

An isolated oboe and creepy clarinets suggest the sounds of Charon's rudders as he crosses the river Styx in the solemn opening phrases of Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem. With hints of light and suggestive spirits sounding in the background, listeners should prepare to be transcendentally transported to the underworld in this prescient piece.

by Béla Bartók

Bartók based this Sonatina on the folk tunes he had collected from all over Romania, the homeland of vampiric legend, Transylvania.

by Franz Liszt "Totentanz" (Death Dance)

Fascinated by all things involving death and the afterlife, Liszt wrote his most famous "Mephisto Walz", the lesser known "Pensées des Morts" and even less played the " La Lugubre Gondola" all as flirtations with death and the spirit world...but it is "Totentanz" with it's menacing fascade and lyrically haunted thrill of the doom-filled game which has never left the psyche of audiences everywhere.

by Gustav Mahler

Often called just the "Resurrection", this symphony is best known for the "Death Shriek". Mahler spent more than a few years fixated on death and in this case, focused on sharing his feelings of pure terror and pain of death with his captured audience. Not for the light of heart and maybe not for during the kid's costume party...but not to include this as a spooky specter would be a sin.

by Stravinsky

Although this was not originally written as a horror piece, but as a more disconcerting performance regarding early Russian tribal life..no listener can go undisturbed by the ritual sacrifice and the hunt for blood.

by Giuseppe Verdi

If you think you don't know this piece, you will remember that you do... the minute you hear it. Dies Irae translated from latin, literally means "the Last Judgement" and listeners will feel the pull of the call to death, the turmoil, the cries, the rath and ire of the end of days...as a mystical challenge circles all shades into this all hallow's eve requiem.

by Carl Orff

Carmina Burana never fails to frighten all ages, even without meaning to... From the start at "O Fortuna" all of "Carmina Burana" is passionately full of intense, pulsing choral work, which erupts into a full-on orchestral blaze. At points the chorale may appear to be singing as an angry mob or a hypnotized hoarde driving the audience to a very determined destination of doom. Tried not to get too scared...there's always a ghost of a chance it's all in the music.