Fear: https://open.spotify.

com/playlist/5RD7VGsIvjlN7fCp0zs1He
1: Bach—Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Fugue, Early Baroque Era/Learned Style)

Many people associate this piece’s famous theme with feelings of shock or anxiety.
Especially in today’s cinema, this theme is usually tagged as a chilling melody that invokes fear,
and the dark, minor melodies that follow also contribute to the piece’s overall feeling of unease.
From the Baroque Era, this piece features plenty of dissonant chords that are sustained to keep
listeners on edge before they resolve. The fugue also contains overlapping melodies that add to
the dissonance—an illustrative example of learned music in the earlier years of the Baroque Era.
This piece would have typically been performed in a church service, particularly in a more
somber or anxious setting, or in other solemn occasions where the organist can perform and
showcase technical prowess to an audience.

2: Vivaldi—Winter, Mvt. 1 (Late Baroque Era/Galant Style)

Similar to Vivaldi’s other concertos from the Four Seasons, the first movement of Winter
follows a clear ritornello form, in which the solo violinist “trades” virtuosic passages with
orchestral accompaniment. Contrary to learned music, this piece follows a clear melody with
accompaniment, which is an example of galant music in the late Baroque Era. This piece features
stormy, frantic passages that inspire feelings of unrest and take the audience by surprise by
jumping out of calm passages. Dissonance and sudden dynamic changes play key roles in the
music’s unpredictability before finally resolving to the tonic. These aspects of the piece reflect
the winter sonnet that Vivaldi wrote for this work, illustrating ideas like shivering, teeth
chattering, stinging winds, and “running to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet.” The first movement
of Vivaldi’s Winter is an early example of programmatic music that takes the darker elements of
the season to paint a picture that illuminates fearful ideas, such as the fear of freezing in the
biting winds.

3: Mozart—Symphony 40, Mvt. 4 (Symphony, Classical)

Written near the end of Mozart’s life, Symphony No. 40 was only the second (and final)
symphony that Mozart wrote in a minor key and is considered to be much darker and more
anxious than his lighthearted symphonies. In addition to personal struggles and deteriorating
health, Mozart was interested in the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) artistic movement,
which inspired him to explore feelings of angst, unrest, and fear in his 40th Symphony. The 4th
movement, like in most symphonies during the Classical Period, follows a rondo form in which
the main melody is repeated throughout the movement. However, unlike Hadyn’s Joke Quartet,
this piece dives deep into dissonance and unpredictably flips between moments of calm and
agitation. The disjunct leaps and intense conjunct lines that are traded between the instruments
create an atmosphere of fearful confusion.

4: Mozart—Queen of the Night Aria, “Der Hölle Rache” (Aria, Classical)

This piece is an emotional “rage aria” from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. In a fit of
fear-inducing rage, the Queen of the Night orders her daughter Pamina to kill Sarastro while
showing off her virtuosic talent—an important element of opera seria, which was originally
derived from the Baroque Era but is now joined by opera buffa in Mozart’s Classical work. The
disjunct leaps up to F6, despite being in a major key, sound especially terrifying, as if we are
worried that the soprano singer will be unable to reach the high note. In any case, the shrill tone
of the singer, paired with the orchestra’s crashing chord progressions, invoke intense feelings of
anxiety.

5: Schubert—Erlkönig (Lied, Romantic)

As we begin to tread into the 19th Century, we see elements of Romanticism come into
play in terms of listening to music. Schubert’s Erlkönig is a Lied (art song), which is a piece
performed by a solo singer with piano accompaniment and is based on a poem (in this case,
Goethe’s Erlkönig). Additionally, this piece is through-composed, meaning that the music
follows a storyline and does not repeat in large sections. The galloping rhythm of the piano sets a
frantic scene, as the singer switches between different voices to represent the characters of the
story. The son’s piercing cries for help and the Elf King’s seductive major melodies add to the
creepiness throughout the piece, building tension until the son dies—a chilling ending to a scary
work of music.

6: Mussorgsky—Night on Bald Mountain (Tone Poem, Romantic)

This tone poem follows the story of St. John the Russian, who watches a witches’
Sabbath on Bald Mountain. The witches partake in a wild, Satanic party and dance until sunrise,
when the church bell rings and they disappear. This piece is a perfect example of programmatic
music during the Romantic Era, as elements of death and spirituality are in constant play
throughout an interpretation of ancient Russian legend. Ostinato in the strings and thundering
melodies in the low brass invoke feelings of fear and anxiety as the witches’ ritual intensifies.
Although the piece alternates between calm and frantic passages, it does not give any time for
the audience to relax as more haunting melodies are played during the calmer parts. At the end,
the tone poem gradually calms down and ends in a major chord, representing a new day marked
by the disappearance of the witches.

7: Saint-Saëns—Danse Macabre (Tone Poem, Romantic)

 Based on medieval legend, Danse Macabre is another example of a tone poem that
romanticizes death. On Halloween, Death summons the dead by playing a scary, dissonant theme
on his fiddle (represented by the solo violin), alternating between two clashing chords. The piece
becomes waltz-like as Death’s skeletons dance for him and builds towards an intense climax
shortly before the skeletons return to their graves to be resummoned the next year. Major-minor
tonality, chromatic passages, and light melodies paint a lively picture that allows the audience to
embrace the idea of the inevitability of death. Although the opening violin theme invokes
feelings of fear and unease when the skeletons are summoned, the dance-like melodies
encourage the audience to welcome the fear and maybe even have fun with it.

8: Rachmaninoff—Études-Tableaux, Op. 39, No. 6 “Little Red Riding Hood” (Etude, Late
Romantic)

In this piano etude, Rachmaninoff tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood in a gruesome
and frightening manner. The piece begins with ominous chromatic runs and abruptly dives into a
frantic scene that grows more and more hectic to the point of insanity, representing Little Red
Riding Hood being chased by the wolf in the woods. The music spins out of control as the wolf
approaches until it finally reaches the girl and swallows her whole, indicated by the same
chromatic runs that started the piece. This piece is an example of a short, flashy, and extremely
difficult etude in the late Romantic Period that was commonly written by virtuosic composers
and performed to impress audiences. In particular, performing this etude naturally intimidates the
audience with insane technical accuracy and the chilling motifs that make up the events in the
story.

9: Shostakovich—String Quartet No. 8, Mvt. 2 (Modernism)

Much like his other works, Shostakovich’s eighth string quartet was written to make a
statement about the totalitarian regime under socialist Russia. The piece was a direct product of
World War II, dedicated to those who suffered and died during the war (especially under
fascism). Specifically, the second movement illustrates the constant states of fear and anxiety
that people were living in during the war, represented by fast, dissonant figures traded between
the instruments of the quartet. The movement bursts into a Jewish theme, as Shostakovich was
especially empathetic for the Jewish people living under persecution. Another underlying theme
that comes with the piece is Shostakovich’s own fear that he would step too far with his musical
ideas, as he was constantly worried about being taken away by the socialists for being too radical
or anti-Stalin with his music. This fear is marked by the constant appearance of the “DSCH”
motif (representing Dmitri Schostakowitsch, the German spelling) throughout the piece, which
Shostakovich uses to compose a biographical work for himself in case he were to disappear.
10: Penderecki—Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (Postmodernism, Avant-garde)
 Penderecki, a contemporary Polish composer, experimented with aleatoric music and
counterpoint to create unique textures that allow for greater ranges of emotion. This piece was
originally an abstract work of art, but as Penderecki realized how emotionally charged it was, he
decided to dedicate the piece to the Hiroshima victims. The piece is full of atonality, free form,
and tone clusters, which combine to create a terrifying effect that is almost unbearable to listen
to. This was Penderecki’s main idea; he wanted the audience to imagine and empathize with the
Hiroshima victims in their final moments. Penderecki takes fear to the extreme, using screeching
sounds in the violins and low, grumbling figures in the cellos and basses to encapsulate the sheer
chaos that came with the dropping of the atomic bomb.