History NightmareFuel / Classical

* Music/JohannSebastianBach's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcB-6L_b9Hk Toccata and Fugue in D minor]] is iconic for its use in gothic settings, particularly popular in old horror movies due to its minor [[{{Scales}} key]] and startling changes from soft to thundering.

* Music/SergeiRachmaninoff’s [[https://youtu.be/sCtixpIWBto?si=zjCof3YwJF6cXRHq Prelude in C-sharp minor]] is often accompanied by the [[https://philadelphiapianoinstitute.com/blog/rachmaninoff-prelude-c-sharp-minor likely-apocryphal, yet no less eerie story that it was based on a nightmare he once had]]. As the piece begins, he imagines himself walking towards a church. As the tension begins to rise, he finds a funeral cortège walking to the church, and follows them there. As his anxiety grows ever stronger, represented through the piece, he makes his way towards the coffin, which sits open, and to his horror, finds himself inside, just as the performance hits its crescendo. A sequence of sustained chords represents [[ForDoomTheBellTolls the church bells ringing out, sealing his fate.]]

* Music/JohannSebastianBach's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcB-6L_b9Hk Toccata and Fugue in D minor]] is particularly popular in old horror movies due to its minor [[{{Scales}} key]] and startling changes from soft to thundering.

* Arnold Schoenberg's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6LyYdSQQAQ "Pierrot Lunaire"]]. There had been lots of scary music made before Schoenberg, but he was the first person to make music creepy. In fact, he's been so imitated by modern composers (including on numerous horror film scores) that it can sound a bit [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny Dated]].

** Speaking of Alfred Schnittke, [[https://youtu.be/4RrLWema4tU?si=aznfdUVcsHV3dE7v his first Concerto Grosso is certainly a work laden with nightmare fuel.]] A broken music box-esque prepared piano clanging out some sort of dark nursery rhyme horror movie style; the orchestra and two violins creating a Frankensteined collage of pieces from different eras like a musical seance bringing together the ghosts of Vivaldi; Mozart, Beethoven and Webern, a recitative that creates a slow crescendo to a scream like a siren in slow motion; a seemingly aimless cadenza; a rondo that seems like it's barreling toward destruction, and a postlude that zooms out to a smoldering aftermath, all of these are contributing factors of a piece chock-full of NightmareFuel.

* Music/JohannSebastianBach's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcB-6L_b9Hk Toccata and Fugue in D minor]] is particularly popular in old horror movies due to its minor key and startling changes from soft to thundering.

** The final frantic ride to hell in ''La damnation de Faust'' is appropriately terrifying -- the music evokes the gallop of demonic horses, the shrieking of hideous birds, dancing skeletons and a rain of blood. Both the chorus and the singer playing Faust are required to just straight up scream at different points, which is deeply freaky and not something you usually hear in Romantic music.

* Kentucky State University's rendition of the already unsettling [[https://youtu.be/LROc3L6D6R "They Hung Their Harps in the Willows"]]. Based off of a quote from Psalm 137 of Literature/TheBible, this piece is haunting and unsettling, from the chimes to the low pianos to the loud trumpets and drumbeats that sound exactly a tempest of God's fury and the Israelites' tortured weeping.

** 1988's "[[https://youtu.be/ajJYZKDhHfo Different Trains]]" is about Reich's experience of travelling across the contiguous United States from New York to Los Angeles to see his parents, who lived at opposite sides of the country, in the 1930s and 1940s, and his contemplation of the fact that had he been living in Europe at the time, the chances were that he, being Jewish, would have been riding "different trains" - the Holocaust trains that took Jewish people to death camps. The work is split into three movements, with the first, titled "Before the War", being a light, upbeat nostalgic piece featuring Reich's governess and a former porter reminiscing about the trains, featuring an American steam whistle that is very deliberately pitched to [[SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound sound bright and happy]]. The next, titled "During the War", is a [[MoodWhiplash darker, more stark piece]] about the suffering of Jewish people in Europe under the Nazis. The second movement uses the sound of European steam whistles, which double as air-raid sirens, and [[HellIsThatNoise they sound absolutely terrifying]]. The third, "After the War" is a somber reflection on Reich's own nostalgia and on the people who fled Europe during and after the war, riding the same trains Reich rode. The piece utilises snippets of interviews Reich conducted to develop melodies, which are played in time with the music. This makes the music both an ear worm and places it in the UncannyValley, giving it a very eerie feeling.

** 2011's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ZsSv75UME WTC 9/11]]" is about, you guessed it, September 11th, and it is incredibly disturbing and also an enormous TearJerker. It uses the aforementioned speech-to-melody technique from ''Different Trains'', this time using actual NORAD recordings, 911 calls and interviews to describe and give an account of the attack on the World Trade Center and its immediate aftermath. The speech here tends to be distorted, slowed down and pitched, only increasing the UncannyValley effect from ''Different Trains''. The piece [[BookEnds opens and closes]] with the sound of a phone ringing off the hook, to emphasise the confusion and bewilderment of the atrocity and the inability to comprehend it in the minds of many people. Of particular note is the first movement, simply titled "I. 9/11", which uses PsychoStrings to create a feeling of unease and anxiety in the listener.

* Mili's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyx8DMlUAQ4 From a Place of Love]] seems like a pretty soothing love song...until you realize the lyrics were '''taken literally'''. It's actually for a boss encounter in ''VideoGame/LibraryOfRuina'' that was a young couple trapped in a (supposedly) malfunctioning train where the trapped passengers start eating and killing each other, finally accumulating to the couple consenting a nurse and a doctor to turn them into a combined flesh monstrosity.
-->We stick together, Family is forever\\
'''A few lines later:''' Now I regret, Wish we were dead, Before we started feeding on each other\\
Blood is thicker, But the drink I prefer is water

* Music/JohannSebastianBach: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcB-6L_b9Hk "Toccata and Fugue in D minor"]] is particularly popular in old horror movies due to its minor key and startling changes from soft to thundering.
* Music/BelaBartok: He used traditional folk and peasants' music in his work, but kept the primitiveness intact. This of course lead to many haunting moments.
** "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste", famously used in Kubrick's ''Literature/TheShining''.
** "Concerto For Orchestra": The first four sections all have disturbing and haunting moments, comparable to a dark night in nature.
* Luciano Berio: The ''Sequenza'' series. A list of serialist pieces which wouldn't sound out-of-place if the ''Franchise/SilentHill'' games made greater use of music. It even makes the sound of an accordion seem unnerving. The worst? "Sequenza II"I for female voice. That muttering...

* Daniel Bukvich: ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXeb-lrvsVo Symphony #1: In Memoriam Dresden]]'', written in remembrance of the Allied bombing of Dresden during WWII. Creepiness incarnate at the beginning... and then screaming flutes, weird wavy timpani, and then a movement where the band starts whispering... then talking... then shouting, and then screaming as if they're being burned alive. Which, coincidentally, is what the last movement is supposed to be about.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q865x7K_QP4 ''In the Name of the Holocaust'']] manages to be more terrifying than most NightmareFuel by (prepared) piano alone. No lyrics, no [[ForDoomTheBellTolls ominous bells]].

* George Crumb: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV6BeeoX474 "Black Angels"]]. It will make you feel like insects are crawling up your skin.
* Paul Dukas: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-3MJ0yib70 The Sorcerer's Apprentice]]" also has a very eerie atmosphere. Thanks to Disney's "Fantasia" the music actually became more unnerving.
* Edvard Grieg: "In the Hall of the Mountain King," from ''Theatre/PeerGynt Suite'', is pretty creepy even if you haven't seen the movie version of Creator/StephenKing's ''Needful Things''.
* Music/BernardHerrmann's score to the [[Creator/AlfredHitchcock Hitchcock]] film ''Film/{{Psycho}}'' would have been scary enough even without the imagery of the film.

* Jacques Ibert: "Pièce pour flute seule" sounds so mysterious that it actually becomes frightening.
* Music/CharlesIves' "The Gong On The Hook & Ladder"
* György Ligeti: Many of his works, for example [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QSuXpzNDs8 "Atmospheres"]] and ''especially'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1lcZM0MNek "Requiem"]], both famously featured in ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''.
* Mediaeval Baebes: "How Death Comes." A sort of spoken, sort of sung description of the process of death. Goes from scary whispering to shockingly loud.
* Most of Music/OlivierMessiaen 's piano suite ''Vingt regards''. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLf98HyHqtg Some]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fab8EiTkNc examples]].

** "Music/NightOnBaldMountain" really sounds as if all demons from Hell are brought together.
** "Music/PicturesAtAnExhibition" has a few haunting moments: "The Gnome", "Chickens In Their Eggs" and "The Hut On Fowl's Legs/Baba Yaga". If you hear the scary music that Mussorgsky wrote for these passages you're actually glad that the original paintings that inspired him are lost.
* Music/RandyNewman: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-34xJCI7MY "In Germany Before the War"]] is about a murderer, from the POV of one of his dead victims (and the melody is creepy enough on its own).

** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMLxF93u5Yw Utrenja]]'', which seems to exist solely to make people scream. The chanting from the chorus is unnerving, and the rhythmic knocking sound sounds like a pair of skulls being smashed together. And then come the ear-splitting clanging and ''sirens''.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOMXgfflRI "Montagues and Capulets"]]. Its intro is frightening enough, then at 1:34, it goes into overdrive.

** "Carnival Of The Animals", particularly "The Chickens", "The Kangaroo", "The Aquarium", "The Donkey" (eerily described as "People with Long Ears") and "The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods", the last of which sounds so mysterious and minimalist to the point of being eerie.
** The haunting atmosphere of "The Aquarium" was used in Disney's ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'', when Belle first enters The Beasts' castle.
** Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" isn't exactly balmy, particularly the opening. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LupmmElMoI You are forgiven in advance for jumping out of your seat 19 seconds in]].
* Arnold Schoenberg: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6LyYdSQQAQ "Pierrot Lunaire"]]. There had been lots of scary music made before Schoenberg, but he was the first person to make music creepy. In fact, he's been so imitated by modern composers (including on numerous horror film scores) that it can sound a bit [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny Dated]].

* Rezső Seress: "Gloomy Sunday", composed in 1933, also known as the Hungarian Suicide Song, is a song made famous by the English translation recorded by Music/BillieHoliday in 1941. The song got its nickname thanks to urban legends which are now thought to have been spawned by Holiday's record label, as the original Hungarian version was said to have inspired the suicides of anyone who heard it, and indeed Seress took his own life in 1968. The lyrics describe the narrator's morbid desire to commit suicide in order to join his/her dead lover. However, Holiday's version added a third verse which modulates to a major feel and suggests that the previous verses were merely a fleeting dream. Still, the final lines - "Darling, I hope that my dream never haunted you | My heart is telling you how much I wanted you" - leave many disturbingly unanswered questions.

** "String Quartet, No. 8".
** For real nightmare trips, plays his last two string quartets - especially No. 15, his last.
** Symphony No. 11, movement 2: The movement's first half alternates between moments of dramatic bombast and uneasy calm. But it kicks into full Nightmare gear in the second half, starting with the agitated strings and percussion. That builds up until it gives way to a relentless percussion cadence, which in turns alternates with violent outbursts from the rest of the orchestra. The music gives the impression of an unfeeling, unstoppable juggernaut destroying everything in its path.

** The opening to "L' Oiseau Du Feu" (''Theatre/TheFirebird'') starts very quietly, but already very disturbing. Back in 1910 audiences weren't used to such threatening sounding introduction to a ballet.
** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aoAKKZ1UNk Le Sacre Du Printemps]]" (''Theatre/TheRiteOfSpring'') also has a very threatening and spooky introduction. Of course, "The Rite Of Spring" has no happy subject to begin with: a ritual sacrifice of a young virgin in prehistoric pagan Russia! The entire piece sounds brutal, primitive, loud and has a scary feeling to it. Especially first time listeners will almost certainly be unnerved. No wonder that a riot broke loose during its premiere in 1913!

*** You think that's a nightmare? You can hardly stay calm during the final movement, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKY36VV42pM La danse sacrale]]'', whether it's accompanied by the composer, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6d8wacBjPQ an actual ballet performance]], or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZtWAqc3qyk any kind of musical score]].

* Music/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky: The third movement of the ''Nutcracker Suite'', better known as the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" starts rather creepy.
** YMMV on that, as it was meant to sound delicately sweet and heavenly, but it does so in a peculiarly Russian way. There is [[http://www.wimp.com/glassharp/ a version on glass harmonica]] (Tchaikovsky's original choice) that might be even more unnerving.
** ''"Pas de Caractère: Puss in Boots and the White Cat"'' from Tchaikovsky's ballet ''"Sleeping Beauty"''. So hauntingly creepy that Creator/WaltDisney used it for his movie ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' in the scene where Princess Aurora is hypnotized by the Witch to go and prick her finger on the spinning wheel.
* Music/ScottWalker: Many of his later releases, with the most horrific being 2006's ''The Drift'', which is less about music than it is the aural equivalent of a train ride through Hell.

* Kentucky State University's rendition of the already unsettling [[https://youtu.be/LROc3L6D6R "They Hung Their Harps in the Willows"]]. Based off of a quote from Psalm 137 of {{Literature/The Bible}}, this piece is haunting and unsettling, from the chimes to the low pianos to the loud trumpets and drumbeats that sound exactly a tempest of God's fury and the Israelites' tortured weeping.

---> ''1940'' \\
''on my birthday'' \\
''[[OhCrap the Germans walked]]'' \\
''[[OhCrap walked into Holland]]''

--->''go ahead\\

plane just crashed into the World Trade''
** 1983's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVexT6itPA&list=PLs2o_po-FzbF0Z_P-l4bQUDAllxLlFdry The Desert Music]]" is grandiose and majestic, encapsulating the sheer scale and awe of vast deserts, but also feels extremely uneasy and intimidating, showing how these environments are [[ThirstyDesert harsh and dangerous wastelands]]. It was partly inspired by various deserts like the Sinai desert in the Middle-East, and the White Sands desert in New Mexico. Another part of the inspiration was the ''UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki'' and the development of the nuclear bomb in the aforementioned New Mexican desert.
* John Coolidge Adams' music is not particularly scary, and he is renowned as a master of [[{{Minimalism}} minimalist]] music, but [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuYp8PG0jJo Grand Pianola Music]] contains a particularly epic ScareChord at 17:26, though the rest of the track is both SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic and SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel.

-->''We stick together, Family is forever''\\
'''A few lines later:''' ''Now I regret, Wish we were dead, Before we started feeding on each other''\\
''Blood is thicker, But the drink I prefer is water''
* The aforementioned John Coolidge Adams made a piece called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNTBzkpnKfk "On The Transmigration Of Souls"]] in memoriam to the lives that were lost in 9/11. It manages to be a mix of NightmareFuel AND TearJerker. It starts off with pre-recorded tapes of city ambience, footsteps, and sirens. There are multiple pre-recorded voices saying the names of people who died, and the choir loudly drones out quotes from family members speaking about the loved ones they lost.

** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aoAKKZ1UNk Le Sacre Du Printemps]]" (''Theatre/TheRiteOfSpring'') also has a very threatening and spooky introduction. Of course, "The Rite Of Spring" has no happy subject to begin with: a ritual sacrifice of a young virgin in prehistoric Russia! The entire piece sounds brutal, primitive, loud and has a scary feeling to it. Especially first time listeners will almost certainly be unnerved. No wonder that a riot broke loose during its premiere in 1913!

----

* Music/IgorStravinsky

** 1983's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVexT6itPA&list=PLs2o_po-FzbF0Z_P-l4bQUDAllxLlFdry The Desert Music]] is grandiose and majestic, encapsulating the sheer scale and awe of vast deserts, but also feels extremely uneasy and intimidating, showing how these environments are [[ThirstyDesert harsh and dangerous wastelands]]. It was partly inspired by various deserts like the Sinai desert in the Middle-East, and the White Sands desert in New Mexico. Another part of the inspiration was the ''UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki'' and the development of the nuclear bomb in the aforementioned New Mexican desert.