This music lunges at us from the outset, and accosts us with largess. This scary classical music has three of the things we humans are most afraid of: power other than our own, excesses, and unpredictability. This is Mussorgsky’s original version, not the more often heard revision by Rimsky Korsakov. First, listen to “A Night On Bare Mountain” by Mussorgsky. What are these devilish devices composers of concert and film music serve up to us? Let’s take three examples of scary classical music and see if we can discover what they are. Though our rational minds know that there is no danger posed by a home sound system or a symphony orchestra on a stage before us, still certain sounds elicit fright reflexes in spite of what we might think our rational selves would tell us.Ĭomposers sometimes take advantage of our skittishness, building scary sounds into music in order to give us a good musical scare. Given our tendency to be frightened above all by sound, it should come as no surprise that music at times can sound frightening. ![]() The night time creaks, the windblown branch of a tree scraping against a window pain these things unnerve us because we cannot see them. ![]() Anyone who has been alone in an old house immediately knows what I’m talking about. When we cannot see the source of our discomfort, the dread within us intensifies. We are comforted by being able to see what has just frightened us. Sounds can be among the scariest stimuli that we humans face.
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