Halloween is almost upon us and we here at TheClassicalStation already have our costumes planned and pantries stocked with candy. As the weather cools and the nights get longer, classical music is the perfect companion to ring in the fall and add an eerie edge to your Halloween gathering. As such we’ve gone into the archive to find five songs for listeners to add to their Halloween playlists that are sure to send a chill down your spine. Everyone’s familiar with the haunting baritones of Night on Bald Mountain and the ghostly violins of Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead, so we made an effort to dig up some of the lesser-known gems in our collection to surprise and spook your Halloween guests.

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8, II. Allegro Molto (1960)

The second movement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 is among the most harried and terrifying pieces in all of classical music. Somewhere between a chase and a wild dance Shostakovich wrote it in dedication to the “victims of facism and the war”¹ but the repeated DSCH (D-E-flat-C-B) theme throughout suggests that the composer also felt that the piece was deeply autobiographical. This repeated theme, in conjunction with the claim from a friend of the composer that Shostakovich was considering suicide at the time the piece was composed² go some ways toward explaining the hopeless, penned in, feeling of the violins which seem to harass the listener on every side.

Charles-Valentin Alkan: Prelude Op. 31: La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer or The Song of the Madwoman on the Seashore (~1850)

From the first chords of this piece by French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan you can tell that all is not well. Alkan uses the full range of the piano; sending dark waves crashing on the shore in the lower register while the eponymous woman dances in the treble. As the piece develops the haunting song falls in and out of tempo, occasionally prolonging the melody and at other times moving so quickly that dissonant chords come out in clumps. Although Alkan is rarely considered among the elite piano composers of his time, his ability to craft a chilling scene with a relatively sparse score is on full display in this piece.

Béla Bartók: Out of Doors, IV The Night’s Music (1926)

There’s evidence that Béla Bartók didn’t intend this fourth piece from his Out of Doors suite to be as haunting as it is: The composer had a great interest in the Hungarian countryside and folk music³ and the score calls for the pianist to imitate various sounds common to the Hungarian nighttime soundscape including birds, cicadas and local frogs⁴. Perhaps, to Hungarians, this piece is relaxing and homey? Regardless, for those of us not familiar with Hungarian nights the piece’s creeping melody in conjunction with the haphazard interruptions that seem to appear in the listener’s periphery make The Night’s Music a perfect addition to this list.

Frederic Rzewski: Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1979)

The most modern piece on our list, Frederic Rzewski’s protest piece evokes a historical incident from the 1930s when textile workers began singing to alleviate the hardship of work in the factory and promote camaraderie⁵. Sure enough the piece gives way to a more calming melody as it goes on, but the thrumming of the opening piano chords, in imitation of the endlessly turning wheels of the factory, stay with us and form the terrifying engine from which the music attempts to distract. We defy anyone to play this at a party and not feel the energy of the room gradually become more panicked.

Giacinto Scelsi: Uaxuctum I (1966)

Giacinto Scelsi, in addition to being a prolific composer, was a writer of surrealist poetry⁶ and his penchant for the surreal is on full display with this piece. The hellish vocals and sense of something immense rolling towards the listener showcases his amazing ability to create a sense of space and emotionality using relatively little in the way of orchestration. The entire piece, which tells the story of a civilization destroyed in an apocalypse⁷, is horrifying but nothing beats the revelation of these opening moments. The most disturbing piece on this list for our money, astute listeners may recognize it from the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s similarly unnerving film Shutter Island⁸.

So there you have it, we hope that these pieces can flesh out your playlist for the coming Halloween weekend, or just provide a spooky backdrop for the next time you want to settle in with a horror novel on a cold fall evening.

-Matthew Young

Many of the composers referenced above, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Béla Bartók, and Charles-Valentin Alkan, are featured this fall on TheClassicalStation.org. Please take a look at our Fall 2024 Highlights to see when to tune in, or request a piece directly via one of our Request Programs!

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._8_(Shostakovich)↩ Back
2. https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/3734/string-quartet-no-8-in-c-minor-op-110↩ Back
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Doors_(Bart%C3%B3k)↩ Back
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Doors_(Bart%C3%B3k) ↩ Back
5. https://www.frankhuangpiano.com/single-post/2018/03/06/protest-music-rzewski-winnsboro-cotton-mill-blues ↩ Back
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacinto_Scelsi#Works ↩ Back
7. http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/works/scelsi/uaxuctum.php ↩ Back
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacinto_Scelsi ↩ Back