Music for the Midnight Hour

October 9, 2012 7:48 PM

I'm trying to build my Halloween YouTube playlist, and I'd love recommendations for some haunting and eerie, yet beautiful music. This piece is exactly the kind of thing I have in mind, yet I haven't been able to find much that really measures up to it. I'd prefer instrumental and choral pieces, and they must be on YouTube. Classical recommendations are welcome. Mozart's Requiem Mass is on the playlist already.
posted by orange swan to media & arts (15 answers total)

Manége is creepy in a blood-soaked merry-go-round sort of a way.
posted by scruss at 7:55 PM on October 9, 2012

I like this one.

And you can't go wrong with Dead Can Dance.
posted by empath at 7:57 PM on October 9, 2012

Perhaps Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie.
posted by usonian at 8:02 PM on October 9, 2012

John Foxx: Cathedral Oceans
posted by davebush at 8:03 PM on October 9, 2012

Your example immediately made me think of the Interview with a Vampire soundtrack. E.g. this. Many of those tracks may fit the bill.
posted by bessel functions seem unnecessarily complicated at 8:11 PM on October 9, 2012

A few songs by Fever Ray might fit.

You can't forget Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach.

Would Mozart's "Dies Irae" work?
posted by erst at 9:31 PM on October 9, 2012

erst, the Dies Irae is one movement of the Requiem the OP says is already on the list. OP, may I suggest the Dies Irae from the Verdi requiem as well?

In a less raging, more haunting vein, Try the Ligeti Lux Aeterna, the Penderecki Stabat Mater, the Part Magnificat. All of those meet my definition of beautiful and eerie. There's also the Penderecki Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, which is definitely eerie but not so much the beautiful.
posted by KathrynT at 10:46 PM on October 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Funeral March of a Marionette
posted by brujita at 10:55 PM on October 9, 2012

von Weber's Der Freischütz is kind of a classical "Monster Mash" for Halloween playlists. You can't miss.
posted by Currer Belfry at 5:05 AM on October 10, 2012

Definitely should toss some Gesualdo on that playlist.
posted by saladin at 5:09 AM on October 10, 2012

You know about Danny Elfman, yes? This is pretty much what he does. Maybe shaded a bit more towards creepy and weird than haunting and eerie, but still in the right ballpark, I think.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:00 AM on October 10, 2012

Stravinski's Symphony of Psalms. The third movement in particular alternates between haunting beauty and some sorta proto-Elfman-ish creeping skittering weirdness.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:06 AM on October 10, 2012

Gorecki's Symphony #3 (that's an excerpt). Extremely haunting.
posted by altopower at 9:08 AM on October 10, 2012

Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead.
posted by dr. boludo at 1:01 PM on October 10, 2012

Oh man, I could go on for days.

Eric Whitacre's Cloudburst
the soundtrack to The Shining, top to bottom (lots of Penderecki, Ligeti and Bartok)

beyond just the Dies Irae, Verdi's full Requiem (I prefer it to Mozart's)

This thread has a lot of good recommendations, particularly Kutsuwamushi's.

Any Bernard Hermann
or Pino Donaggio (especially his score for Carrie)--he manages to portray romance and fear simultaneously.

Philip Glass's score for The Hours
posted by therewolf at 1:10 PM on October 10, 2012