Listening Extra – Hallowe’en

Spooky music for Halloween!

On a serious note (G#), think about how do these composers in their various pieces create a spooky / mysterious / threatening / terrifying atmosphere?

Is it similar to the way Purcell does in Music for a While when raising the dead, or perhaps the different moods/aspects of the “heroic” character* in the first movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique?

(*the quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting here)

1 – Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique – March to the Scaffold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=598i8b3HGrw

2 – Marschner – Der Vampyr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ASfgt7ORv4

3 – Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71fZhMXlGT4

4 – Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique – Witches’ Sabbath!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2aHglwKH_I

5 – Bartok – Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta (as used in The Shining)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGJcsTtJ188

6 – Liszt – Totentanz (Dance of the Dead)