Music from the grave: old time spooks

With Halloween quickly approaching , everyone’s getting their spook on. Whether you’re Googling group costumes or hanging up fake cobwebs in your dorm room, you’re getting hyped for the spooky season. Sick bangers such as “Spooky Scary Skeletons” and “Monster Mash” are bound to put you in the mood, but there’s nothing like some good old classical music to really set the atmosphere. One of Brown’s traditions, of course, is the annual organ concert on midnight of Halloween. Wrapped up in cozy blankets, everyone gathers in Sayles Hall and gets ready for some spooky tunes to chill them to their bones. Here's some brilliantly scary classical music to give you goosebumps like R. L. Stine is telling you horror stories himself:

1. "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns. It’s literally got “macabre” in its name. This spooksterpiece starts off with chimes and flips to energetic and thrilling melodies. Saint-Saëns for sure knows how to conjure up dancing skeletons with a couple instruments.
2. "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you have for sure heard the first couple seconds of this piece. It’s used very often in media for scary movies such as Fantasia, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and A Canterbury Tale. It is also featured in an episode of Tom and Jerry.
3. "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modest Mussorgsky. I personally imagine a huge flock of skeletons chasing after me in the middle of the night with pitchforks and torches. Try not to get too spooked.
4. "Symphony No. 1, Movement 3" by Gustav Mahler. This movement consists of both a play on the melody of the popular children’s song “Brother John” as well as a funeral march. It’s so unsettling to hear this melody turned upside down in a completely different context than the original children’s tune.
5. "Symphonic Poem Op. 29: The Isle of the Dead" by Sergei Rachmaninov. This piece is a solid twenty minutes of both energetic instrumental screaming and gentle but creepy whispering. It was written after Rachmaninov saw Arnold Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead. He essentially recreates a musical version of this island, creating waves as well as death.
6. "Carmina Burana: O Fortuna" by Carl Orff. Orff goes off in the first measure. The piece does not wait for you and hits you full on with a powerful chorus and minor chords, then moves onto short chants that come in waves. It kind of makes me think of a cult gathering or some kind of evil summoning.
7. "The Planets, Op. 32: Uranus, the Magician" by Gustav Holst. Yes, I promise you that’s the title. I also promise you it is indeed quite a magical piece.
8. "The Planets, Op. 32: Neptune, the Mystic" by Gustav Holst. If the woodwind melodies and dissonances don’t get you, then the addition of the chorus will get you for sure, especially when those voices strike that chord oh so perfectly. Not to mention that gorgeous harp.

Don’t dismiss classical music simply because it’s classical music. Classical is honestly a bland term for such a diverse genre. Give these pieces a listen! Turn the lights off, light a couple of jack o’lanterns, and blast some of these songs from your laptop! Images via.