Five pieces of classical music inspired by true horror

30 October 2024, 16:31 | Updated: 30 October 2024, 22:59

Mozart never completed his Requiem. Picture: Alamy

By Will Padfield

These five composers had trouble sleeping at night...

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Throughout the history of classical music there have been numerous legends, myths and spooky stories. Paganini was said to be sponsored by the devil, Schumann was plagued by thoughts of death and Mahler was obsessed with his own impending mortality.

We examine five pieces which had their origins in truly macabre scenarios. *shivers*

Mozart: Requiem in D minor

A Requiem Mass is already pretty scary, with its themes of death and damnation, but the origins of Mozart’s last composition – incomplete at the time of his death – are truly terrifying. Legend has it that Mozart, bedridden and suffering from a fever, was approached by a shadowy figure to compose the work and Mozart began to believe he was writing his own requiem. This myth was immortalised in the 80s classic, Amadeus. In Peter Shaffer’s play and subsequent film adaptation, it is a jealous Salieri that approaches Mozart, disguised as the Commendatore from Don Giovanni (who himself has a habit of dragging people down into hell) to commission the work. You can see why poor Mozart was alarmed!
Rather than a figure from the depths of hell, it was arguably a character much worse who commissioned the work: a German count and fraudster named Franz von Walsegg, who frequently ripped off other composers’ works as his own. Even so, the fact that Mozart died whilst composing the Requiem and it was left incomplete at the time of his death, adds to the supernatural aura present in the Requiem, which contains some of the most dramatic and haunting music he ever wrote.

Amadeus (1984) - Tom Hulce - Order of Requiem
Rosemary Brown: Jesus Walking on the Water

Perhaps the most bizarre and spooky of all compositional inspirations comes from a little-known English composer names Rosemary Isabel Brown, a pianist and spirit medium who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her…
Brown, who died in 2001, claimed that each composer had his own way of dictating to her: Liszt controlled her hands for a few bars at a time, and then she wrote down the notes; Chopin told her the notes and pushed her hands on to the right keys; Schubert tried to sing his compositions; and Beethoven and Bach simply dictated the notes. She claimed the composers spoke to her in English.
Remarkably, there has been some doubt as to the veracity of Brown’s claims. Psychologist Robert Kastenbaum analysed Brown‘s compositions and concluded that it was highly unlikely that they were dictated to her by spirits, remarking that “there are no striking themes, complex structures, depths of feelings, or harmonic, tonal, or rhythmic innovations.”
Whatever the truth is, it seems fair to say that no matter how much you like a composer, it would be better if they didn’t contact you from beyond the grave...

Rosemary Brown - Jesus Walking On The Water (Inspired by Liszt)
Mahler: Movement 3 from Symphony No. 1

The Austrian composer Gustav Mahler maintained a grim fascination with death throughout his life. Born into a large family in an era where infant mortality was shockingly high, he witnessed the deaths of several of his siblings. In the third movement of his Symphony No. 1, Mahler adapts the popular nursery rhyme ‘Frère Jacques’ into a minor key, which completely flips the effect of the music.
Mahler recalled how he was inspired by witnessing the coffins of his siblings being carted away. The use of a nursery rhyme is a typically ironic Mahlerian gesture and the dark story behind the piece still haunts listeners to this day.

Mahler symphony No.1-3M (3/4) G.Dudamel Los Angles Philharmonic
Liszt: Totentanz

If you like your macabre, then Liszt has you covered. Subtitled ‘Paraphrase on Dies irae’ (day of wrath), this piece is deeply menacing right from the off, with blaring lower brass punctuated by a deathly marching theme in the timpani and piano. The story behind this piece is just as scary as the music itself. Liszt – the quintessential romantic figure – was obsessed with death. In addition to Totentanz, he also composed Funérailles, La lugubre gondola and Pensée des morts, which all show a fascination with the subject. It is perhaps unsurprising, given the young Liszt was living in a Paris that was reeling from terrors of the French Revolution, the guillotine still being used for public executions.
Death was everywhere, but clearly that wasn’t enough for Liszt, who was a regular at Parisian hospitals and asylums in the early 1830s and was known to pay visits to prisoners held in dungeons who were condemned to die. He perhaps needed some more friends… That said, it was this truly gruesome backdrop that gave the rise to these morbid, scary but fun pieces of music, which inspired composers of horror film scores more than a century later.

Denis Matsuev: Franz Liszt - Totentanz, S. 126 (with Zoltan Kocsis)
Schumann: Nachtstuck

Romantic composer Robert Schumann had an extremely turbulent life, with several episodes of overwhelming depression that quite literally haunted him. Despite this, or rather because of this, he was able to write some of the most beautiful pieces of classical music ever written.
His Nachtstück was composed in truly gruesome circumstances. He had premonitions of his brother’s death and had planned to call his new composition Corpse Fantasia.
“I always saw funeral processions, coffins, unhappy and despairing people. Often, I was so distraught that tears flowed, and I didn’t know why – then (Eduard’s wife) Therese’s letter arrived, and I knew why.”
Despite these horrible circumstances, the four miniature pieces that comprise Nachtstück are very expressive, lyrical and delicate. But it is hard to shake of the feeling of the grim.

Schumann: 4 Nachtstücke, Op.23 (Jean Louis Steuerman)