Perhaps other Forum members would like to nominate pieces which they find genuinely scary? I propose to start the proverbial ball rolling by citing the 'Dirge' from Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. The combination of the text and the scoring for the strings creates a genuinely terrifying experience, especially as sung by Robert Tear.
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The combination of William Cornyshe's music and John Skelton's words in Woefully arraide:
Remembir my tendir hart rote for thee brake,
With panys my vaynys constreyned to crake;
Thus toggid to and fro,
Thus wrappid all in woo,
Whereas neuer man was so,
Entretid thus in most cruell wyse,
Was like a lombe offerd in sacrifice,
Wofully araide.
It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. -
Probably the first truly terrifying musical experience I had, listening to a recording, was hearing Penderecki's 1966 Dies Irae, written for a commemorative service on the site of a Nazi concentration camp in Poland, in which the combined instrumental and choral sounds, using "extended techniques", clearlly represent sounds of gas release and mass hysteria. I guess the brilliant expressionistic shock effects in Schoenberg's Erwartung were important in musically expressing an area of feeling rarely attempted previously with sheer comparable viscerality, though some will doubtless point to Salome's famous secene with John the Baptist's severed head in Strauss's opera as predating and having influenced Schoenberg, not to mention the many horror film scores indebted to it.
Around that time I also recall fleeing from the room in terror from Region IV of Stockhausen's Hymnen. But having said that, I've always been physiologically as well as psychologically susceptible to very loud music of any kind, especially amplified, eg heavy rock or hip hop using strong dub subtone beats, but not only these genres. Scary needn't necessarily involve volume, I guess, though perhaps I'm diverging into "creepy" here, of which there are numerous examples, again mostly found in 20th century music the third movement climax using tremolo strongs and huge harp washes of energy of Bartok's Music for Strings, Celesta and Percussion, and the pizzicato fourth movement of the same composer's fourth string quartet being examples immediately coming to mind.Comment
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The middle movement of the Ligeti Requiem definitely qualifies, departing so dramatically as it does from the gradual transformational processes which were so much the main part of what this composer was about, at that particular time.Originally posted by Joseph K View PostComment
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'Erlkoenig.'Barbatus sed non barbarusComment
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Raphael Cendo - Introduction aux ténèbres. So dark. Probably more so in surround sound.
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Perhaps useful to this discussion is this broadcast from the end of October:
I listened to it in the same way that I have read the answers on this Thread: with incredulity - Music doesn't scare me (nor do ghost stories or forests). I find "scary" Music great fun.[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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I find Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle a genuinely frightening piece if not, perhaps, scary in the way meant by the OP. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect is to leave me feeling profoundly disturbed, scary indeed!"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard HaitinkComment
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A lot of music scares me, principally the kind of empty capitalist-realist drivel that apparently passes for "contemporary music" these days.Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
TEN MILLION views. That is scary.Comment
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Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostA lot of music scares me, principally the kind of empty capitalist-realist drivel that apparently passes for "contemporary music" these days.
TEN MILLION views. That is scary.
- well, yes; the cultural indicators that the Arts reveal can be terrifying (and I did consider suggesting "Andrew Lloyds-Banker", but thought that a little too mischievous this early in the Thread). But the actual sound of Music (as opposed to ... ) itself doesn't scare me.
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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The moments of collapse in the 1st movement of Mahler 9.
The 'outburst' in the middle of Schubert's Piano Sonata D.959
The end of 'A Day in the Life' by Lennon and McCartney.
Certainly the Britten mentioned, and 'Erlkonig'.Comment
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Now stuck at 10 million? This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostA lot of music scares me, principally the kind of empty capitalist-realist drivel that apparently passes for "contemporary music" these days.
TEN MILLION views. That is scary.
I'm devastated!
I keep hitting the Escape key, but I'm still here!Comment
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Originally posted by LeMartinPecheur View PostNow stuck at 10 million? This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
I'm devastated!
Great news
I've been to a couple of things that "scared" me
one was a performance by a well known Japanese noise musician in a festival where the sound levels were such (it wasn't in the UK where it wouldn't be allowed) that had I taken the earplugs out I probably would have lost most of the high-frequency range of my hearing
The other one was a performance involving 3 superbikes on stands which were close-miked and the engines run flat out. Slip the clutch and probable devastation.
Not sure whether these count?Comment
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... o, for me - the theme tune presaging The Archers
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