Spooky Music!

Send us Fan MailNow in a nutshell, the history of Halloween and how it developed can be described in a few sentences.  You see, Halloween originated from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of summer and the harvest, and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. The Celts believed that on the night of October 31st, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred, allowing spirits to return to Earth. They would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Later, the Roman Empire combined Samhain with their own festivals, and as Christianity spread, the church established All Saints' Day on November 1st, making October 31st "All Hallows' Eve," or Halloween.  In this episode,I would like to describe what I believe are the five best pieces of classical music associated with Halloween - in other words the scariest music.I would like to start - in each case after an introduction and description -  with a beautiful piece of music by the great French composer Camille Saint-Saëns.  This music is from a CD I did called FallingWater Dreams where I used basic midi files to start with, and do some arrangements of classical music.  You know this was many years ago ago, because this was back in a time when basic midi files were not copyright. This selection is called Aquarium and is from the Carnival of Animals. In the spirit of this podcast episode, I think Aquarium has a beautiful, but extremely eerie quality about it - not the kind of hard-core horror that is associated with some upcoming pieces in this podcast episode.  You could almost call aquarium to be creepy creepy.  Again, first before playing each specific piece of music - and there should be five - I am going to make some comments about that piece of music, it's history, and in some cases = it's influences.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.