Thursday, October 29, 2009

Listen, If You Dare!

I am not a fan of scary movies. They, well, scare me. Actually, I don't mind watching scary movies as long as I can watch them on mute while reading the closed captions. When I turn the sound on my stomach starts to knot up. It's the mood music that does me in every time. A lot of times we don't really notice the background music in film but it's always there manipulating our emotions. The only film I know of that didn't use any music is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which has it's own very eerie background noise.

I do like to listen to scary music on occasion, though, when I'm not watching a movie, so in preparation for Halloween I thought I'd put together a list of my favorite spooky pieces.

Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, (especially March to the Scaffold.)
Funeral March of a Marionette by Gounod (This was the theme to Hitchcock's television show.)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas
Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach
Psycho: A Suite for Strings by Bernard Herrmann
Black Angels for String Quartet by George Crumb
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bela Bartok (this music was in Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining.)
Requiem in D Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (especially the Dies Irae)
Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi (especially the Dies Irae)

No comments: