The Noon Witch

You're probably familiar with Danse Macabre. Even if you've never heard of it, odds are you've actually heard it before. I'd be willing to bet good money, however, that you've got no idea what The Noon Witch is all about.

I never knew such a thing existed until I was sitting in my car listening to Molto Monday which is the Monday edition of Tempo, a classical music program on CBC Radio 2. I don't usually listen to the CBC, so it was just my good fortune that I happened to tune in--no doubt fed up with my antiquated CDs and playlists. Anyway, much like Danse Macabre, The Noon Witch is a symphonic poem inspired by a narrative poem, "The Noon Witch" by Karel Jaromir Erben.

The story:

A woman's young son is misbehaving. She scolds him saying, "If you don't stop that, the Noon Witch will come and take you away." Her son calms down but only for a short while and the Witch arrives. Frightened, the woman scoops up her son and flees but she stumbles and falls, smothering the boy. As the noon bell tolls, the father comes home for lunch and the Witch disappears. He finds his family on the floor, his wife in a faint, his son dead.

The music:

Classical Scares

In a dank corner of my parents' basement untold horrors lurk.  And I'm not talking about my dad's country music collection.

While I was sorting through my own piles of stuff, my mother enlisted me to help her move the vinyl from one corner of the basement to another.  Two hours later I was covered in dust, clutching a record I'd not seen in years.

"I remember this," I said to the empty room--my mom had long since gone upstairs.  "I always thought it was creepy."

"What?" Came a distant voice.  "Are you done yet?  Don't forget to shuffle those vacuum cleaners about."

I turned back to the records.  I found three in total--three album covers that rival any metal band for nightmare-inducing visions of hell. Most of the vinyl in the basement is classical music, and while some classical music lends itself well to horror, classical album covers are generally pretty sedate, featuring images of conductors and opera singers, and the odd Van Gogh.  But every once in a while, a music publisher releases a record with a picture that comes straight from the id, a seething mass of nightmarish colour and form.

Okay, this might not be the most terrifying image ever put out by the music industry, but the man's got a chamber orchestra for eyeballs.

Here two gentleman are pictured holding candles while topless women, angels, and a skeleton cavort in the background.  The monks' faces are vaguely skull-like, further lending a deathly quality to the picture

But that's all just a prelude to the ultimate find:

This album is older than I am.  I grew up with this thing in my house.

Music to Excite the Savage Beast

So I was driving around the other day, listening to the radio, when Beethoven's 4th came on.  Rarely do I listen to the radio when I'm in the car, but on those rare occasions when I grow bored with my CDs, I listen to one station and one station only: the local classical channel (everything else is Christian or worse, country).  The DJ paraphrased a description of Beethoven's fourth symphony as a Greek goddess sandwiched between two Norse gods, and as the music played, I thought on what she said.  Beethoven wrote a lot of powerful and evocative music; when John McTiernan was making Die Hard, he'd heard the Ode to Joy, and insisted the music act as a kind of leitmotif for Hans Grueber.  The music spoke to McTiernan (who didn't actually know what he was hearing) and he turned around and used it to speak to his audience, communicating Grueber's desire.

The Ode to Joy is, as it's name suggests, a joyful and triumphant piece of music.  The first movement of Beethoven's fifth, on the other hand, is both light and dark and its first four notes might be the most well known in history.  And then there are compositions that are just dark.  Horror is not, nor has it ever been, confined to words and pictures, and music can evoke moods and feelings that are sometimes out of reach of other artists.  I've here listed four musical numbers that conjure the darkness:

Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique, Dream of a Witch's Sabbath



This is the fifth movement for a symphony written at a time when most symphonies had only four parts.  The music tells the story of an artist who's riding high on opium.  In the fourth movement the artist dreams he kills his beloved and this last movement, he sees her come for him at night.  The recognizable tune, that repeats a number of times, is the witch come to the artist's funeral.  This music was featured in Sleeping With The Enemy, and Julia Roberts' character hates it because it reminds her of her abusive ex-husband.  Wrote Berlioz about the emotional power of music, "Emotional (imitation) is designed to arouse in us by means of sound the notion of the several passions of the heart, and to awaken solely through the sense of hearing the impressions that human beings experience only through the other senses." 

Grieg - In the Hall of the Mountain King



This iconic piece of music was written for the play, Peer Gynt, and is played when Peer, the eponymous hero, sneaks in to the Mountain King's castle and then as to escape the King and his trolls.  Originally, words accompanied the music but the "song" has gained popularity as a strictly orchestral piece.  The music has appeared in a number of movie trailers, including Corpse Bride and Funny Games, but, sadly, in few movies themselves.  It's loud, it's fast, and it's ominous.

Orff - Carmina Burana, O Fortuna



O Fortuna is a medieval Latin poem written in the 13th century and set to music by Carl Orff in the mid-1930s.  The music was introduced to the mainstream in Excalibur (1981), and, like In the Hall of the Mountain King, O Fortuna has worked its way into popular culture and has been featured in the movies and on TV.  In the Kickass Classical forum, an introductory message reads: "If you're new here, and looking for 'that one cool classical choir song that they always play when something evil or scary or badass is happening,' the answer is O Fortuna."

Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre



One of my favourites, this piece of music is a symphonic poem, inspired by an actual poem by Henri Cazalis.  The music tells the story  of the Devil who, each year on Halloween, plays the violin at midnight while skeletons dance.  The piece is credited for introducing the xylophone to western culture and the music was featured in "Hush", a mostly dialogue-free episode of Buffy (Season 4, Episode 10).