I’m said before that Mozart wrote the Requiem against which all others are judged. I’ve also mentioned how the intense emotions of that piece foreshadow a big change in musical style between the 18th and 19th centuries. Mozart’s is a masterpiece, classical in balanced form and romantic in dramatic execution. But what if we dump that balance and go straight for the feels – specifically, the OMG-I’m-afraid-to-die day-of-judgment fire-and-brimstone scared-out-of-my-wits feels?

Enter Giuseppe Verdi, the revolutionary composer who helped Italian Opera stay on the map. His Requiem IS an opera; the emotional drama is as chilling as Othello, heart-wrenching as Traviata, dark as Rigoletto. When we hear about the day of judgment, we are scared. We are very very scared. And when Verdi’s angel sounds the trumpet (at 2:25, “Tuba Mirum”), it makes me want to cower under my desk. Mozart’s Tuba? not so much. Makes me want to do a Mr. Bean dance.

Kudos to the performers here for having A LOT of singers in the choir, so the brass could play at full-volume!

The music is scary up until 4:10, at which point it’s the conductor’s face which is scary.

Halloween is coming! Time for some spooky music,

There are so many great works of Art Music that are frightening that I had to schedule some of them throughout the year just to make sure we get them all. So before we begin our countdown to Halloween, you might want to check out some of the other pieces that fit the holiday:

• a song about dead children
• a classic morose song of death
• ride of the valkyries, of course
• more morose death, this time of a maiden
• vampire music
• this spooky dance
• everyone’s favorite funeral march
• an Italian thunderstorm
• the song of the Elf King
• a night on bald mountain, of course
• music for beheading people
• a journey to the underworld
• another journey to the underworld, except this one is a happy, fun underworld
• some more moroseness
• a reminder that you will die someday
• ghost pirates! Need I say more?
• weighty moroseness

Well, now that we have that out of the way, let’s continue with the countdown to Halloween!

Let’s go straight into the Wolf’s Glen. This truly frightening opera scene comes from Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber. Weber is credited with making German Opera a unique genre through this work. Featuring the supernatural, gods and goddesses, mythology, monsters, and magic, this genre was great for the musical imaginations of composers; you can draw a line from their influence all the way from Der Freischütz (1821) to the most recent Star Wars (2015).

To sum up this opera scene: A guy needs to “win” a girl (sorry, I know that’s sexist) by proving himself as an expert marksman. A cursed man convinces him to use magical bullets to prove his shooting abilities (naturally, this means that he would have to sell his soul to the devil, but men will do these things when they want to win a girl). And how does one acquire magic bullets? You go into the Wolf’s Glen at midnight and call upon the demon hunter. Of course.

Note: early German Operas were not unlike broadway plays – there was spoken dialogue between musical pieces. The speaking eventually disappeared in the genre, but you’ll hear it in the recording below.

Today’s episode is brought to you by the International Talk Like a Pirate Day advocacy board.

Arrrg! Avast, ye landlubbers, and harken to me tale. The seas be wild, they be, and only the sturdiest sea-legs be worthy of a ship as fine as the Flying Dutchman. What be the Flying Dutchman, ye ask? Shiver me timbers, I ne’er known a landlubber such as ye, what never heard of the Dutchman. ‘Tis a ghost ship, doomed to sail the seven seas, and her ghost captain is bound to this fate forever, unless – ah, ye guessed it – a fair wench did declare love for him. You see, us pirates be romantic folk – we love the battle between life and death, damnation and salvation, and the redemption that only true love can give ye. Wot? Ye don’t believe me, do ye? Well, a pox on you and your damned landlubbering gollymangers, and may ye be caught in the storm like the one that inspired old Dicky Wagner to compose this overture, and may it bring ye to Davy Jone’s locker, or worse yet, bring ye aboard the accursed Flying Dutchman herself.

If it tickle ye barnacles, I must mention that this recording be the finest I’ve heard – the inner parts do not get obscured in a sea of messy writing. Ye can hear every note clearly. May your sailing skies be as clear and clean as these.