GMG Classical Music Forum

I voted for Night on Bald Mountain. Still sends chills down my spine after all these years!

Please let me know what pieces I have left out! I have doubtlessly left out quite a few as there is no source except my feeble memory I could use to create this poll. :)

Berlioz: 10/10 amazing and perfect
Mussorgsky ORIGINAL: 9/10 wild and crazy and awesome
Dukas: 9/10 so much fun
Saint-Saens: 7/10 don't like it as much as the other
Mussorgsky ARR. RIMSKY OR STOKOWSKI: 6/10 way inferior to the original

My favorite title for a supernatural piece is Josef Suk's "In the Power of Phantoms."

Berlioz Symphony Fantastique, closely followed by Night on Bald Mountain (The original, or the one taken out of the Sorochintsky Fair)

Berlioz, easy pick.

But a big shout out to Saint-Saens, I played Dance Macabre in high school and have always loved that piece.

Quote from: TheGSMoeller on September 06, 2013, 05:44:29 PM
Berlioz, easy pick.

But a big shout out to Saint-Saens, I played Dance Macabre in high school and have always loved that piece.

Same here, it's in 3rd place for me :)

Please remember that you are only voting for the fifth movement of the Symphonie Fantastique! The first four movements don't really have supernatural connections.

On the topic of that fifth movement, I remember the first time I heard it when I was just a lad, playing the cello in the local youth orchestra. When the conductor told us this piece was written in 1830, I was like "WTF?" :D It still amazes me to this day how forward looking this piece (the fifth movement in particular) is. It almost seems to me that some sections in the last movement (especially that creepy sul ponticello fugal passage in the strings) completely look past the rest of the romantic era and ahead to the modern.

Dukas, though the Bald Mountain and Macabre Dance are like 1a and 1b and almost neck and neck (the three of them).

I'd add:

Dvorak: Garland Tone Poems (The Wild Dove; The Noon Witch; The Golden Spinning-Wheel; The Water Goblin); The Spectre's Bride (cheating a bit as this is a sort of cantata.)
Raff: Symphony 5, "Lenore" (same story as the The Spectre's Bride)
Schubert: Der Erlkoenig

There are lots of opera's with supernatural themes.

Quote from: Daverz on September 07, 2013, 04:46:09 PM
I'd add:

Dvorak: Garland Tone Poems (The Wild Dove; The Noon Witch; The Golden Spinning-Wheel; The Water Goblin); The Spectre's Bride (cheating a bit as this is a sort of cantata.)
Raff: Symphony 5, "Lenore" (same story as the The Spectre's Bride)
Schubert: Der Erlkoenig

There are lots of opera's with supernatural themes.

Thanks, Dave. I'm not too familiar with opera, so if someone wouldn't mind telling me which operas have supernatural themes, that'd be great. :)

Could Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen count?

Quote from: Lisztianwagner on September 07, 2013, 04:50:23 PM
Could Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen count?

I suppose...I'll add it to the poll. :)

Quote from: kyjo on September 07, 2013, 04:49:11 PM
Thanks, Dave. I'm not too familiar with opera, so if someone wouldn't mind telling me which operas have supernatural themes, that'd be great. :)

Well, most Wagner of course.  All those Rimsky-Korsakov fairy-tale operas.  Dvorak's Rusalka and The Devil and Kate.  Weber's Die Freischutz.  Mozart, The Magic Flute!

Quote from: Daverz on September 07, 2013, 04:55:07 PM
Weber's Die Freischutz!

This is the one that comes to mind first, because of the Wolf Glen's scene.

These should be in the poll: Mahler's Das Klagende Lied and Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder.

I don't think you should add operas. The list would become unwieldy and...well, there is just no comparing works like Night on Bald Mountain and the Ring. How do you choose between such disparate compositions?

Sarge

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on September 08, 2013, 04:10:14 AM
These should be in the poll: Mahler's Das Klagende Lied and Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder.

I don't think you should add operas. The list would become unwieldy and...well, there is just no comparing works like Night on Bald Mountain and the Ring. How do you choose between such disparate compositions?

Sarge

Well, if brevity is a criterion,  there's no question which one would be the winner hands-down.  Although of course Night on Bald Mountain was originally part of an opera.  And actually,  Wagner wrote more operas with supernatural elements than he wrote operas without them: Feen, Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Parsifal, plus the Ring.  Against Liebesverbot, Rienzi, Tristan, Meistersinger

Gurre Lieder brings to mind hunters cursed to perdition,  which brings to mind The Accursed Huntsman.  Although at the moment I can't remember the actual French title, nor the composer.  Franck, wasn't it?

I am usually not into this kind of things. So I voted for Mickey Mouse.

Quote from: Sergeant Rock on September 08, 2013, 04:10:14 AM
These should be in the poll: Mahler's Das Klagende Lied and Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder.

I don't think you should add operas. The list would become unwieldy and...well, there is just no comparing works like Night on Bald Mountain and the Ring. How do you choose between such disparate compositions?

Sarge

Good point, Sarge. I'll add the Mahler and Schoenberg pieces to the list.

Quote from: kyjo on September 08, 2013, 08:31:15 AM
Good point, Sarge. I'll add the Mahler and Schoenberg pieces to the list.

I am changing my vote to Mahler then.

Wait, those aren't just regular folks in Gurre-Lieder?

Quote from: Daverz on September 08, 2013, 10:21:25 AM
Wait, those aren't just regular folks in Gurre-Lieder?

Define "regular". If you live in California then they are regular folks.

Quote from: Daverz on September 08, 2013, 10:21:25 AM
Wait, those aren't just regular folks in Gurre-Lieder?

Here's a plot summary from Wikipedia:

In the first part of the work, the love of Waldemar for Tove and the theme of misfortune and impending death are recounted in nine songs for soprano and tenor with orchestral accompaniment. A long orchestral interlude leads to the Wood Dove's Song which tells of Tove's death and Waldemar's grief.

The brief second part consists of just one song in which the bereft and distraught Waldemar accuses God of cruelty.

In the third part, Waldemar calls his dead vassals from their graves. The undead's restless roaming and savage hunt around the castle at night is thunderously depicted by the male chorus, until the horde, driven by the radiance of the sunrise, recedes back into death's sleep. During this, a peasant sings of his fear of the eerie army and there is a humorous interlude in the grotesque song of the fool Klaus who is forced to ride with the macabre host when he would rather rest in his grave. A gentle orchestral interlude depicting the light of dawn leads into the melodrama The Summer Wind's Wild Hunt, a narration about the morning wind, which flows into the mixed-choral conclusion Seht die Sonne! ("See the Sun!").


Sounds like there's some supernatural elements in there!

Night on the Bare Mountain.  That was what made Fantasia so metal. 8)

Quote from: kyjo on September 08, 2013, 10:24:42 AM
Sounds like there's some supernatural elements in there!

Exactly. Zombies!  8)


Sarge

Quote from: Brian on September 06, 2013, 04:54:03 PM
Saint-Saens: 7/10 don't like it as much as the other

Is it the Dutoit recording you listen to?

Rachmaninoff - The Isle of the Dead. Love that piece. I too have fond memories of Danse Macabre from middle school, though thankfully we did not play it, just listened to it.

Quote from: Sef on September 09, 2013, 10:48:16 AM
Rachmaninoff - The Isle of the Dead. Love that piece. I too have fond memories of Danse Macabre from middle school, though thankfully we did not play it, just listened to it.

I'll add the Rachmaninov. 8)

BTW if I have left out anyone's favorite, please don't feel like you have to vote for something else! I shall add the piece in question to the poll as soon as I can. :)

Well, most exquisite works are probably works of Dukas and Saint-Saens, but the only real supernatural thrill shakes me always while I'm listening to the still out of the list the Spectre's Bride cantata of Dvorak, when they (the girl and  the spectre) are wandering along the marsh with frogs.

On the other hand without any doubts you should add to the list three tone poems of oLyadov: Baba Yaga, The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora, and Ravel piano cycle Gaspard de la Nuit.

I'm pretty sure L'Oiseau de feu ought to be on the list, and Sibelius wrote a good number of tone poems that could be included: Luonnotar, Oceanides, Tapiola, Wood Nymph.
And on the opera side, Berlioz's Faust, Prokofiev's Fiery Angel, and Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges

OK, I'll add all those to the poll. :)

Quote from: Daverz on September 07, 2013, 04:46:09 PM
Dvorak: Garland Tone Poems (The Wild Dove; The Noon Witch; The Golden Spinning-Wheel; The Water Goblin); The Spectre's Bride (cheating a bit as this is a sort of cantata.)

These are freaking outstanding pieces. Big part of how I started figuring out 20th century music, in fact.

Quote from: Brian on September 10, 2013, 11:12:57 AM
These are freaking outstanding pieces. Big part of how I started figuring out 20th century music, in fact.

They are outstanding pieces, but I wouldn't consider them "20th century". Dvorak was definitely a Romantic Era composer.

P.S. Couldn't The Water Goblin (my favorite Dvorak tone poem BTW) be included?

And now one is supposed to choose just one?! :P