With all this talk of scary and creepy music in the GORR, I wonder to what extent music can evoke feelings of fear, revulsion, disguist, or whatever, in people here, and if they would consider any pieces to be particularly successful (intentionally or otherwise) in this regards.

'Scary' for me is often closer to 'awesome' than to 'terrifying', although I do find the two things to feel very similar. The last 8 minutes of the Rite of Spring, in a top-notch performance, terrify me - the sheer power unleashed by the rhythmic trickery is very uncomfortable - in a good way, of course.

The whole of the second Act of Gotterdammerung is deeply, deeply scary/awesome/terrifying too: the sense of the net closing in, political manouvering, deception and rank evil - all backed up by the most extraordinarily sustained and concentrated music Wagner ever wrote, I think. It scares the hell out of me.

I remember in a small CSE music class when the teacher played the opening of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. One boy in particular gave an occasional nervous laugh and shuffled uneasily in his seat. The teacher had to tell him to calm down but we all agreed that it was scary. And we didn't even get to the third movement.

I can't speak for the others so long after the event but for my own part I put it down to the fact that I was young (about 15) and I had never heard music like that before.

The Bartok gives me feelings of isolation these days which can be scary, I suppose.

I don't know about music but I think it takes a lot more to scare people these days. I can remember that whenever a horror film was shown on television, viewers of a nervous disposition were advised not to watch it.

Someone's bound to mention the wolf glen scene from Der Freischutz so it might as well be me. But is that just unintentionally funny now?

But for more scares, how about the macia funebre - the fourth item from Webern's Six Orchestral Pieces? That one seems to come straight from the crypt.

I still find that scene scary. Weber's music is so evocative of a time, place and worldview that I find myself being drawn back to 1821 when the "dark forces" portrayed in it seemed much closer than they do now. I'm not sure whether a modern production can present the Wolf's Glen as a representation of the fears, superstitions and morbid fascinations of our own time, but maybe it is possible to give an impression of the impact it must have had at the time it was written.

The only bit of music which genuinely gives me nightmares if I listen to it too soon before bed is Otello's entrance in Act 4 of Verdi's opera.  The high playout from the Ave Maria followed by that creepy entry in the low strings <shudder>.

Bluebeard's sixth door gives me the creeps, too.

I know it's supposed to be scary but I find "Erlkonig" terrifying (having said that, Liszt's transcription is scary for an entirely different reason). 

Was that the OAE birthday concert last summer, George?  Yes I was indeed playing in (most of) it.  That was my first exposure to Der Freischutz.  Once I managed to let go of my generation's unfortunate tendency towards sardonic post-modern ironic posturing, not to mention embarrassment at having to hiss out numbers in German, I found it quite thrilling.  Not sure about terrifying, but definitely thrilling.

Music that terrifies me, hmm - I suppose pieces that include audition excerpts are terrifying for the wrong reasons.  When done well, the basses/cellos doing their chromatic circling at the end of Beethoven's 9th, first movement, is pretty sinister.  Oh, more Beethoven - those big, unexpected, clashing screaming chords in the first movement of the Eroica are pretty terrifying too.  Or at least they should be.