Happy Halloween!

Inspired by National Public Radio’s article Musical Mayhem: Top 5 Creepy Halloween Classics I have some thoughts of the five pieces I might add to make this list a Top Ten rather than merely a Top Five. To make it more fun, I’m limiting myself to music from the last 107 years and trying to stay on the beaten path, so to speak.

First, here are the five works proposed by NPR’s Mark Perzel:

1. Stravinsky - Firebird Suite: Infernal Dance
2. Saent-Sains - Danse Macabre
3. De Falla - Dance of Terror
4. Liszt - Mephisto Waltz No. 1
5. Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique

And then my additions:

6. George Crumb - Black Angels
Starting with the easy one, this was the first piece I considered when I first conceived of this post.

7. Béla Bartók - Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste: Adagio
Did you listen during the opening credits to The Shining? Terror in additive series!

8. Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire
What list of spooky music would be complete without a little Sprechstimme? Besides, I couldn’t single out a single “spookiest” movement and that must be worth something!

9. Igor Stravinsky - L’Histoire Du Soldat: Triumphal March of the Devil
Maybe not as spooky musically as some of these choices, but still my favorite in the ever popular “Deal with the Devil” category.

10. Silvestre Revueltas - Sensemaya
Persistent and relentless ostinato with a hard edge. Vaguely reminiscent of Bolero, but much less friendly.

What pieces would fill out your top ten list of “spooky” tunes?

Over the course of my life, I have never really been much of a fan of baseball. I’m more of a football (both kinds) and college basketball guy. I have had two major dalliances with baseball fandom: once when I was a child, and once as a young adult.

As a child growing up in Connecticut, in the geographical “gray” area between the fans of the Yankees and the Red Sox, it was Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastrzemski that fired my imagination. (It probably didn’t hurt that most of my relatives were Yankees’ fans… I have always been the contrarian.) The Red Sox were the team of my boyhood and have always held a place in my heart. I was delighted to see them win a few years ago, but am ambivalent about their World Series victory last night.

As a graduate student in Colorado, I had my second fling with baseball. I went through a period where I was obsessed with the game and the Rockies in particular. It was during the early 1990’s and was an exciting period for the new expansion team: They had a new stadium, tremendous support, and a lineup loaded with power hitters like Andres Galarraga, Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, and Vinny Castillo. I also had the opportunity to work as an usher at Coors field during that stadium’s opening season, which also happened to be the last, and only time until this season that the Rockies made the playoffs.

So this World Series left me with torn emotions. It was a win-win scenario, but also a lose-lose and strangely enough, I’m left feeling the latter.

Congratulations to both teams, you piqued my interest for 2 weeks. Now I’ll go back to ignoring the sport…