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Most foreboding music

^ The problem with Toccata and Fugue is that it's cliched foreboding music now. It brings to mind parodies of horror just as easily as it does actual horror, you know?
 
Henryk Gorecki's Third Symphony always gives me the chills. It's the classical piece I play most often.
 
Niorah said:
Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna (Requiem for a Dream OST)

In my mind it is tied to scenes of nuclear apocalypse. Awful. :(
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In my mind it is tied to scenes from Sky Sports News. The humanity... :wah:

DonIago said:
No love for Bach's Toccata and Fugue in G-minor? Wow. :)
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Much love for it here. All of it.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzR9bhei_o[/yt]

I also find very foreboding Henry Purcell's "Funeral March of Queen Mary II" (especially Wendy Carlos's version for A Clockwork Orange).

In general, Baroque music rocks. :bolian:
 
Shaw said:
Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, specifically Andante tranquillo and Adagio, though parts of Allegro molto might also qualify.

Samual Barbar's Adagio for Strings, Krzystof Penderecki's Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima For 52 Stringed Instruments and De Natura Sonoris II For Orchestra (which sound very much like the music from Altered States by John Corigliano), Space Requiem by Stomu Yamash'ta, and Title music for the movie The Bounty by Vangelis Papathanassiou are honorable mentions.
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I have a feeling I'd have a lot of fun going through your music library. The Barber Adagio and the Penderecki Threnody would definitely make my list for this thread.

Deckerd said:
It's a good flesh-creepy one but I'm sure it can be topped. The use of Ligeti (apparently without his permission) in Space 2001 is fairly hair-raising in parts.
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What happened with 2001 was that the "scratch track"--an assemblage of already-recorded pieces of music used to work out timings and feel for the scenes to be filmed--ended up being deemed preferable to what hired composer Alex North produced; the permissions may have been worked out after the fact - I'm not sure about that. If you listen to the music North composed for the film, it's clearly imitative and derivative of what was actually used, but fails to have equal impact. The Ligeti music is what I like most about the soundtrack, though I'll admit also to often hearing Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz in my head while watching many spaceship and docking sequences, both fictional and actual.

For foreboding, one thing I can recall was from Dead Poets Society - the music which plays as Robert Sean Leonard's character has decided he's going to off himself and pulls the gun out of his father's desk. I haven't seen the movie in years but I definitely remember getting a serious "uh-oh, something very bad is about to happen" sense from the music.
 
Mike Farley said:
Okay...challenge accepted:

Ave Satani by Jerry Goldsmith.
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This! OMG, THIS! I practically have to breathe into a paper bag whenever I hear it.

When I was a kid in maybe the 4th grade, our music teacher played us "Pictures at an Exhibition," by Musorgsky. Part of the piece was the legend of Baba Yaga, a witch who lives in the forest in a house on giant chicken legs. The house chases a girl through the forest until the girl reaches the Great Gate of Kiev. I swore I saw that damned house chasing our station wagon whenever I sat in the rear-facing seat. WTF was that woman thinking?! Years later, as a college senior, I took a course in western music. The professor put on this piece. I started having a panic attack and had to leave the room. Even now, thirty years later, when I make myself listen to the piece, I can feel the effect on my pulse and BP. Foreboding? Hell, yeah.
 
Which one? The original piano piece or Ravel's orchestral adaptation?

Speaking of French composers, of late I've felt the very opening of Faure's Requiem is particularly grim and foreboding in a way only Faure could make it.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U3W1fIUyJs[/yt]

Oh, and I'm disappointed that no-one's mentioned this number yet:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ0Z6kD06Us[/yt]
 
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Fauré's Requiem is just melancholy. It's such a strange, sad piece. I think he wrote it when a beloved family member had died if I remember correctly. It doesn't follow the usual requiem formula since it ends with In Paradisum, which has more redemptive atmosphere.
 
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