All The Good Things: Halloween Post 3-Ten Tunes to add to your Halloween Playlist

Everyone needs a good Halloween playlist. Might I suggest these? You will find no Monster Mash here, here are some great Halloween tunes that you may not have heard before:

Classical Tunes
1: Danse Macabre-Camille Saint-Saens
Originally written for voice and piano, with text by poet Henri Cazalis, Saint-Saens later expanded this work into a tone poem for full orchestra and replaced the solo voice with a solo violin. This is one of my all time favorite orchestral pieces. Interesting fact: the chord played at the beginning by the violin soloist, called a tritone or a diminished 5th, is also often called the devil's interval because it's extremely dissonant sound is very uncomfortable to listen to.

This video appeared on PBS in the 80's. The sound quality isn't the greatest, but the illustrations are really pretty.

2: Funeral Mach of a Marionette-Charles Gounod

Those of you Hitchcock fans may recognize this one, it was used as the theme song for his show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

3: Requiem Dies Irae-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

THIS one you may recognize from the movie Amadeus. Requiem Mass in D minor was Mozart's last work before his young and tragic death.

From Movies

4: Gollum's Song-Howard Shore, Fran Walsh, Emiliana Torrini

I'm a massive Lord of the Rings fan. I own all three movies (extended versions, of course) and all three soundtracks. This is one of the most lovely, and creep songs, in the whole trilogy of beautiful music.

5: Ghostbusters-Ray Parker Jr

This movies seriously freaked me out as a young child. Love the hair in this video, though...

6: Theme from Young Frankenstein

I already mentioned how great this movie is a few posts back. Well, guess what!? It has really pretty music too!

7: Sherlock Holmes Soundtrack

I love all things Sherlock Holmes, I really love the Robert Downey Jr movie versions, and I really REALLY love the soundtrack from those movies. The soundtrack was composed my Hans Zimmer (who also wrote the music for such gems as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lion King) and includes a host of unconventional instruments including a hammered dulcimer and a "broken pub piano." The whole soundtrack is great and perfect for Halloween. Not so perfect for driving alone at night, though...

From Video Games

8: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

The Metroid games are some of my brother's favorite games. I'm slowly working on playing my way through them and just started Echoes, which is by far the creepiest of the games. The music is equally creepy.