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.

The Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, begins tonight at sunset.

Please read my previous blog post to learn about the brave life of Jacob Weinberg, whose work I recently discovered while seeking art music related to the Jewish High Holidays.

This piece comes from the same string quartet as my previous post; this time, we hear the second movement. Like the first movement, this one uses a traditional Jewish melody, this time based on the Kol Nidre – a declaration on the day of atonement, Yom Kippur. There is something magical about this melody and it’s short, pleading phrases, so much so that Protestant Christian composer Max Bruch wrote a concert piece for cello and orchestra based on it. But whereas Bruch simply uses a Jewish melody as the basis for a piece, Weinberg weaves the holy mysteries of the holiday into his music.

I graduated from college before Wikipedia became big, so I’ve never had a professor scold me for using it as a source. I have heard about people submitting papers which completely incorrect information, due to faulty articles and non-expert sources. I remain on the fence in this battle, because either one expert or a collective group of people are equally capable of getting things wrong, not to mention that zeitgeists seem to have way too much influence on what is considered fact. I was happy being blissfully ignorant of what was real and what was fake on Wikipedia.

Until today.

Now, there are untruths that hurt people directly, like the supposed link between vaccines and autism. And then there are untruths that may not directly hurt people, but waste human effort and create a distrust of expertise – perhaps like the modern Flat Earth Society. And then there are untruths that don’t cause any real damage, but really piss me off. Like the Wikipedia article on Johannes Brahms‘ Piano Quartet in G minor.

Traditional sonata form begins with an exposition, which typically has two contrasting themes (occasionally there may be a third theme). The article claims that there are five – FIVE – themes in the first movement. If this were true, the first theme returns in developed version before the third theme is heard. What the author thinks is two themes is simply a short introduction, followed by a single primary theme. Like nearly every sonata, there is a transitional section which brings us to the secondary theme (or, the author’s proposed third theme). The proposed fourth theme is simply the end of the real secondary theme, and theme five is a coda. The only correct thing the author said is: Although the exposition is not repeated, Brahms creates the illusion of its repetition by starting the development section with the identical ten measures that begins the exposition.

And then the ultimate lie: Very atypically, the recapitulation begins not with the first theme, but with the second theme in G major. Sorry, but actually the recapitulation did begin with the primary theme, it just happened way later than you thought. There is no “imitative development” (whatever that is) in the recapitulation. Lastly, in what way is the exposition’s final cadence “reluctant”, and the recapitulation’s final cadence “incomplete”?

LIES!