With trick or treating perhaps off the menu, a lot of folks are planning on celebrating at home this year. That's why we've compiled some of our favorite Halloween Music—to give any home a hauntingly good time! Most people creating a Halloween playlist will know Michael Jackson's "Thriller" or Rockwell's "Who's Watching Me" but if you REALLY want to knock the socks off your listeners...nothing does it better than these crazy classical compositions from our collection that will haunt you with vivid memories and spooky speculations. Counting down to the most terrifying, terrific tone poems you may ever hear...if you are in the spirit.

All of these titles can be borrowed from the library as CDs and many of these compositions can be streamed in the Naxos Music Library 
 

15.) John Williams' "Harry Potter" Theme Song (and pretty much all of the "Harry Potter" soundtrack)

Magical, mystical and marvelous music. This is a favorite for all things spooky. It provides a perfect party accompaniment for all ages. Williams has also created other frightening film hits including theme songs forJaws, Superman, Star Wars and Dracula...to name a few.

14.) Edvard Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King"

Written to follow the spookiest of journeys through a tunnel of trolls, gnomes and goblins...this piece is best known for making Disney's magnificient magical film, The Magician's Apprentice famous. Kids always love this and most adults will find they know it by heart.

13.) Camille Saint Saens "Dance Macabre"

 This dark dance will give even the littlest listeners a little case of the spooks as "Death" or the violinist as we know him, evokes the dead to rise from their graves and dance in this sinister scene.

12.) Aaron Copland's "Grohg: A Ballet in One Act"

 Frightfully inspired by a viewing of the film Nosferatu in 1925, Copland wrote this bewitching ballet as a retelling of the Dracula story. Although it is almost mysteriously rarely performed, the music alone is enough to make anyone jump out of his seat to turn on the nearest light switch!

11.) Paul Dukas "Sorcerer's Apprentice"

Children still love this Mickey Mouse mystery movie...and the music will haunt you, once you've seen it. A notable close second in the Disney dances is "Spook Dance" or the "Skeleton Dance" which some of you may remember was composed by Walt Disney's friend, Carl Stalling (who was aptly also an organist—could there be a more haunted instrument?) for his silly symphonies series.

 

10.) Modest Mussorgsky's "A Night on Bare Mountain"

Originally a tone poem called "St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain", this frightfully famous work was made even more famous when it was revised by Rimsky-Korsakov. Modern audiences still know it as part of the soundtrack from Disney's Fantasia.

 

 

9.) Hector Berlioz "Dream of a Witch's Sabbath" from Symphony Fantastique

Berlioz was incredibly creative in using unusual orchestral effects to create the scene of a gathering of witches—violins use the backs of their bows to create bubbling cauldron sounds, the sound of a funeral bell and outbursts of lugubrious laughter.

 

 

8.) J. S. Bach - Toccata & Fugue in D Minor

Bach, whose major repertoire is for the organ, certainly knew how to use music to mystify and occasionally terrify. Listeners may immediately recognize this particular piece, since it's been used in many classic horror films including The Black Cat, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and even in Doctor Who.

 

7.) Sergei Rachmaninov "The Isle of the Dead"

A isolated oboe and creepy clarinets suggest the sounds of Charon's rudders as he crosses the river Styx in the solemn opening phrases of Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem. With hints of light and suggestive spirits sounding in the background, listeners should prepare to be transcendentally transported to the underworld in this prescient piece.

 

6.) Béla Bartók "Transylvanian Dances"

Bartók based this Sonatina on the folk tunes he had collected from all over Romania, the homeland of vampiric legend, Transylvania.

 

 

5.) Franz Liszt "Totentanz" (Death Dance)

Fascinated by all things involving death and the afterlife, Liszt wrote his most famous "Mephisto Walz", the lesser known "Pensées des Morts" and even less played the " La Lugubre Gondola" all as flirtations with death and the spirit world...but it is "Totentanz" with it's menacing fascade and lyrically haunted thrill of the doomfilled game which has never left the psyche of audiences everywhere.

4.) Gustav Mahler, "Symphony Number 2, the Resurrection"

Often called just the "Resurrection", this symphony is best known for the "Death Shriek". Mahler spent more than a few years fixated on death and in this case, focusing on sharing his feelings of pure terror and  pain of death with his captured audience. Not for the light of heart and maybe not for during the kids costume party...but not to include this as a spooky spectre would be a sin.
 

3.) Stravinsky, "The Rite of Spring: Sacrificial Dance"

Although this was not originally written as a horror piece but a more disconcerting performance regarding early Russian tribal life..no listener can go undistrubed by the ritual sacrifice and the hunt for blood.

2.) Giuseppe Verdi "Dies Irae from his Requiem"​

If you think you don't know this piece, you will remember that you do... the minute you hear it. Dies Irae translated from latin, literally means "the Last Judgement" and listeners will feel the pull of the call to death, the turmoil, the cries, the rath and ire of the end of days...as a mystical challenge circles all shades into this all hallow's eve requiem.

1.) Carl Orff "O Fortuna, Carmina Burana"

Carmina Burana never fails to frighten all ages, even without meaning to... From the start at "O Fortuna" all of "Carmina Burana" is passionately full of intense, pulsing choral work, which erupts into a full-on orchestral blaze. At points the chorale may appear to be singing as an angry mob or a hypnotized hoarde driving the audience to a very determined destination of doom. Tried not to get too scared...there's always a ghost of a chance it's all in the music.