October 30, 2009
Since the Southern California weather around Halloween is often not nearly Halloweeny enough for this east-coast transplant (though it’s been slightly more fall-like in the past few days) I thought I would create my own moodiness for the holiday. First, I took the liberty of researching a bit about the ancient origins of the holiday and its various spooky/harvesty traditions. Did you know that the supposed reason people originally wore freaky costumes was to disguise themselves as harmful spirits and thus avoid harm from the actual harmful spirits in the area? You learn something new every day.
From what I found online, Halloween’s origins go back to what was sometimes regarded as the Celtic New Year – the ancient festival “Samhain” (not pronounced remotely the way it looks). There’s also links to Festivals of the Dead – held by lots of cultures all over the world in honor of the deceased members of the community. They generally occurred after the harvest in August, or one of the “er” months. “Samhain” means “summer’s end” in Old Irish (which seems especially appropriate in Southern California, where Halloween really is about the time that summer ends each year). The Celts divided the year into a “lighter half” and a “darker half” (cool, huh?) and Samhain was a celebration of the end of the lighter half and beginning of the darker half.
How perfect is that? “The darker half.” So lusciously ominous. It begs to be the title of a story, or an album. But instead of write that, I decided to compile a list of “dark” music for you to enjoy this Halloweenie-Harvestini (the politically-correct, multi-cultural holiday we celebrate here in the LACO office). So without further ado, here is Jessie’s list of 13 pieces of music to stir the senses and give you the chills (since the weather doesn’t seem to want to do so). Some are quite obvious choices for the occasion, some much less so:
1. Danny Elfman – The Nightmare Before Christmas (soundtrack): this brilliant soundtrack accompanying the just-as-brilliant movie shows off Elfman’s gift for melody and lyrics, from the quiet gloominess of “Jack’s Lament” (“and since I am dead, I can take off my head to recite Shakespearean quotations”) to the hilarious grotesqueness of “What’s This?” (“There are children throwing snowballs here, Instead of throwing heads, They’re busy building toys, And absolutely no one’s dead”)
2. Berlioz – “Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath” from Symphonie Fantastique: Can you get more Halloweeny than Berlioz’s portrayal of an opium-induced dream where ghouls ride their broomsticks to a demonic orgy – that includes the Dies Irae tune echoing over and over in different orchestrations? No? I didn’t think so.
3. George Crumb – Vox Balaenae: which translates to “Voice of the Whale” is kind of the oceanic equivalent of Messiaen’s birdcalls – but more creepy, I think, because somehow living in water makes you more mysterious. Also, in live performance, performers are directed to wear black visor masks, and blue lighting submerges the audience underwater. Creepy creepy.
4. Charlemagne Palestine – Schlingen-Blängen: a 70-minute drone of a cluster of notes, this solo organ piece is meant to be heard on a great, loud organ in a huge, reverberant space like the church where I heard it last March. It’s a little bit painful – and it’s supposed to be. Painfully loud tone clusters on an organ? Sounds dark and spooky to me.
5. Siouxsie & the Banshees – Peepshow: this 1988 album (where it all began for me as an angsty early teenager) from post-punk, avant-pop rocker Siouxsie Sioux and her Banshees is consistently creepy and gothic-sounding. Check out the tracks “Carousel” (totally fun-house-clown-sinister), and the brilliant single, “Peek-A-Boo” – a daring rhythmic and sonic venture.
6. Camille Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre: the dance of death, as it is called, is a medieval allegory on the universality of death. It depicts skeletons dancing around jamming on instruments. Saint-Saens’ version is an orchestral tone poem, based on an art song for voice and piano that he wrote earlier. He switched out voice for violin, an appropriately scratchy and haunting sound for death. The work is filled with tritones (the “devil’s interval”) and builds to a great, ghastly height.
7. Modest Mussorgsky – “Baba Yaga – The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” from Pictures at an Exhibition: The penultimate section of this epic work, “Baba Yaga”, is a witch from Russian fairy tales, living in a hut with hen’s legs which permit it to rotate in place. Each new victim (a lost child) is lured inside and crushed to death, to be later eaten by the witch. Yum.
8. David Lynch – “Ghost of Love” (from Inland Empire): The king of surrealistic thriller film, David Lynch, is also a composer. Did you know? This song begins with sounds of a train starting to move on the tracks and erupts into a beautiful sonic landscape that sounds like it’s being sung through a tin can. It gives the song a very far-away hauntedness.
9. György Ligeti – The Alphabet: To me this is what Edward Gorey’s music would sound like had Gorey been a composer. It’s your basic ABCs – turned inside-out and hammered to a pulp. Oh, and made microtonal (that’s using the “grey” notes – if you can imagine a piano keyboard – think about notes in-between the white and black keys).
10. Charles Gounod – Funeral March of a Marionette: This music was used as the theme for the show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” – the anthology television series that aired in the 1950s and 60s hosted by, yes, Alfred Hitchcock. Not only is the work sort-of the equivalent of someone jumping out at you from under your bed at night, but its link to Hitchcock – one of the ultimate masters of suspense – makes it even more appropriate for this time of year. And marionettes are usually kind-of freaky, aren’t they?
11. H.K. Gruber – Frankenstein: Gruber, a German composer born in 1943, wrote this “pan-demonium” for “chansonnier and orchestra or ensemble” based on children’s rhymes by H.C. Artmann. Apparently Artmann described the songs as being, among other things, “covert political statements” (bonus! Frankenstein music and political statements in one.)
12. Aaron Jay Kernis – Phantom Polka: This solo accordion piece from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis builds a visual image through the music (accordion is a great instrument to create images – it’s so diverse). It’s a theatrical piece, alternatingly eerie, chaotic and fun-house. It even ends with a loud yell from the accordion player and voice and instrument die out together.
13. Michael Jackson – Thriller: Though it’s probably the most obvious choice of all, since the pseudo-documentary This Is It just came out (I haven’t seen it yet but my roommate tells me it’s amazing to see Jackson’s performances), I have to include it. The video to Thriller actually gave me nightmares when I saw it at age 7 or however old I was when it was released. But now it never gets old.
Enjoy and happy Halloweenie-Harvestini. Go scare yourself silly.
1 comment
What an awesome and timely article! I've linked to it from my blog and added some of my own picks for my readers. Here's the link: http://fairytalenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/fairy-tale-music-for-halloween.html
Happy Samhain!