Scary music

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... o, for me - the theme tune presaging The Archers

Try and think of it as the theme tune that also postsages the soap.

And b r e e e a th ...

[pastoralguy]

As a player, Mozart. Too easy for children, too difficult for artists. And let's not get started on Bach...

[Lat-Literal]

Solid scary is all a bit hammer horror but fluid scary has a habit of drifting into other places. The horrific - that would be the Penderecki for example - or the disturbingly eerie, eg Delia Derbyshire's "Falling" from The Dreams. But I would like to nominate Derbyshire and Stansfield's "Circle of Light" which was based on the not often seen photography of Pamela Bone, described as "baffling". I think that "baffling" is a key component in the eerily scary. A "what happened?" or a "what is happening here"? Place an individual or two in the heather close to Sizewell just after a terrible accident. One that we all would hope will never happen. They have no real knowledge of the accident. Just a sense of something being terribly awry. That is one take on "Circle of Light" without reference to Bone's photos. Another would not involve an accident but it would be set in the same location. Its elements suggesting the baffling haphazardness of being here - or there. Through this lens there is a shimmering, unsettling, beauty in which time seems tidal and yet oddly also fixed in its own other worldly space.

[cloughie]

.

... o, for me - the theme tune presaging The Archers



/

You're letting Lynda Snell get to you...

[Serial_Apologist]

Solid scary is all a bit hammer horror but fluid scary has a habit of drifting into other places. The horrific - that would be the Penderecki for example - or the disturbingly eerie, eg Delia Derbyshire's "Falling" from The Dreams. But I would like to nominate Derbyshire and Stansfield's "Circle of Light" which was based on the not often seen photography of Pamela Bone, described as "baffling". I think that "baffling" is a key component in the eerily scary. A "what happened?" or a "what is happening here"? Place an individual or two in the heather close to Sizewell just after a terrible accident. One that we all would hope will never happen. They have no real knowledge of the accident. Just a sense of something being terribly awry. That is one take on "Circle of Light" without reference to Bone's photos. Another would not involve an accident but it would be set in the same location. Its elements suggesting the baffling haphazardness of being here - or there. Through this lens there is a shimmering, unsettling, beauty in which time seems tidal and yet oddly also fixed in its own other worldly space.

That's reminded me of Tristram Cary's setting for chamber ensemble and pre-recorded tape of Mervyn Peake's The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb - unavailable in any recording, it remains in all senses, not just literal, shattering in impact, at any rate on this listener, lucky as I am to have rescued a 1967 reel-to-reel of a Radio 3 documentary on the composer with Alan Rawsthorne interviewing him! Cary was around the BBC at the time of Delia Derbyshire. and had done the synth setting of Ron Grainer's Dr Who theme with its remarkable anticipation of the early 70s Krautrock soundworld, for which I think Cary arguably deserves greater renown than as the versatile composer of the score of The Ladykillers, some eight years earlier. Cary was another pioneer of musique concrète in this country; various sources from the increasingly dim and distant past suggest he composed enough varied material in various cross-genres as we call them to make him the subject for renewed interest and maybe another composer portrait?

[EdgeleyRob]

The 'Warsaw Dogs' movement from Weinberg's 8th Symphony

[MrGongGong]

That's reminded me of Tristram Cary's setting for chamber ensemble and pre-recorded tape of Mervyn Peake's The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb - unavailable in any recording, it remains in all senses, not just literal, shattering in impact, at any rate on this listener, lucky as I am to have rescued a 1967 reel-to-reel of a Radio 3 documentary on the composer with Alan Rawsthorne interviewing him! Cary was around the BBC at the time of Delia Derbyshire. and had done the synth setting of Ron Grainer's Dr Who theme with its remarkable anticipation of the early 70s Krautrock soundworld, for which I think Cary arguably deserves greater renown than as the versatile composer of the score of The Ladykillers, some eight years earlier. Cary was another pioneer of musique concrète in this country; various sources from the increasingly dim and distant past suggest he composed enough varied material in various cross-genres as we call them to make him the subject for renewed interest and maybe another composer portrait?

This is worth having

http://www.trunkrecords.com/turntable/tristram_cary.shtml

[kea]

A lot of music scares me, principally the kind of empty capitalist-realist drivel that apparently passes for "contemporary music" these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_cuyjXHB7Q

TEN MILLION views. That is scary.

Yes same lol.

As far as the actual "sounds" I think scary lyrics or scary recordings (e.g. audio of someone being murdered, or whatever) are necessary, and abstract sound can't do very much on its own. But maybe that's just me.

[LMcD]

If I may be allowed to indulge in a second choice of my own....I always get a touch of the shivers while listening to the final scene from Poulenc's 'Dialogue Des Carmelites'

[ahinton]

A lot of music scares me, principally the kind of empty capitalist-realist drivel that apparently passes for "contemporary music" these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_cuyjXHB7Q

TEN MILLION views. That is scary.

When trying to visit this I get
"This video contains content from UMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds".

Why "my" country" in particular I do not know (should I pop down the road to Wales and try again there?) but, since it is still possible to determine the identity of the perpetrator, I can only put this stricture down to decency and consideration, however inadvertent and unwitting, on the part of UMG. But, as you say, it's the sheer number of views that's scary rather than the "music" itself.

That said, however, I must confess to limited understanding of what's "capitalist-realist" about it; yes, of course it's "drivel" and, OK, as it makes loadsamoney from people who presumably wouldn't recognise a real piece of music if it came and bit them on the ears, the "capitalist" bit arguably makes a cartin kind of sense (especially if the generation of loadsmoney was said perpetrator's principal avowed intent), but the "realist" bit escapes me; years ago, Alan Bush railed against those who listened to Beethoven as some form of perceived "escapism" by pointing out (I paraphrase here) that Beethoven represented the true "reality" whereas what they were seeking to escape from was the falsehood. But does anyone possessed of at least average intelligence and sensitivity see the Einaudis of the world as representing any kind of core "contemporary music"? If so, that scares me, too. As I've said before, "ein Audi" is a German car...

[ahinton]

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!

I can go along with that - and with the same composer's Miraculous Mandarin perhaps even more so.

Pettersson's Ninth (and/or Tenth) Symphony, anyone?

[gurnemanz]

'Erlkoenig.'

... and "Der Doppelgänger" ....... meine eigne Gestalt!

[Pulcinella]

If I may be allowed to indulge in a second choice of my own....I always get a touch of the shivers while listening to the final scene from Poulenc's 'Dialogue Des Carmelites'

Me too, but I would describe that as 'chilling' rather than 'scary', perhaps.

[BBMmk2]

Berlioz's Witches Sabbath springs to mind, straight away, and as Pet said earlier, yes, Duke Bluebeard's Castle is another!

[Beef Oven!]

Many Pettersson symphonies, especially #9.