10 Avant-Garde Classical Music Suggestions Perfect for Halloween

Unlike that other holiday, which shall remain nameless, Halloween has not been the inspiration for a dumpster load of songs. So trying to come up with a soundtrack to your ghastly festivities, that isn't the same as Joe Six-Pack's, is a little tricky. One good source of music is the horror movie soundtrack. But many composers of those soundtracks found their inspiration from listening to avant-garde composers from the early to late 20th century. Why not go to the source of their inspiration for your inspiration.

This is a list of composers who have shaped the way music is understood and defined. They have created pieces which stretch the boundaries of organized sound, to the point where most people might walk out of a concert hall if they had heard it. So what better way to honor their hard work than to make their music more accessible by attaching it to a commercial holiday! Which, in all honesty, they would probably not like very much. But oh well, here they are in no particular order!

1. Henry Cowell - The Banshee (iTunes or Amazon). The Banshee is a prime example of the type of experimentation Henry Cowell was known for. It is a piece where the pianist reaches inside the piano and runs a coin along the strings to create an eerie scratching tone. Electric guitarists do the same thing on their guitars with their picks to get a cool way to start up a glam-rock, metal song, but that is about 60 years later.

2. Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (iTunes or Amazon). This piece is definitely the grandfather of every horror or suspense movie soundtrack that has any sort of scary pedestrian chase where the bad guy is slow and gimpy and the victim is fast but panic-y but the bad guy always manages to catch up somehow just as the victim trips over a tree root/sidewalk curb/shoelace/air. But then again it was also in Disney's Fantasia. In any case, this piece is rumored to have started riots when it was first performed, so it should still be good to kick up a little ruckus at the Halloween celebrations.

3. Olivier Messiaen - Chronochromie (iTunes or Amazon) Listening to this piece makes me think of a darker, messed up Warner Bros. cartoon. I would bet that all those old cartoon composer guys were influenced by Messiaen's music. In a way, Messiaen tried to capture life, such as the call of birds, and portray it in his own artistic way. This is not too different from the cartoon guys, like Carl Stalling, who captured life from the point of view of the humorous, absurd, cartoon side of things.

4. Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire (iTunes or Amazon) This song cycle by Arnold Schoenberg, reinvents the way the singer should use her voice. Schoenberg has the singer glide the notes from one to another, in a style that is hard to describe but the effect is creepy in a children's, horror house story time kind of way.

5. Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung (iTunes or Amazon) This piece is pretty much based on just one chord throughout, but, just like the other composers, he stretches what the voices do with that one chord. He has them using different vocal effects and sounds such as clicking and whistling and there is a lot of manipulation of harmonics using just the voice. This piece is very meditative on an intellectual level. On the other hand it is also kind of goofy. I could imagine driving people crazy blasting this piece as they wander through a haunted house.

6. John Cage - Metamorphosis (iTunes or Amazon) John Cage is as well known for his philosophies on music and art as he is for his music. He stretched his own mind to be more open to all sorts of influences and he ended up influencing all sorts of artists from painters to dancers as well as musicians. This piano piece makes me think of those scenes in the horror movies where the main character goes through the "Am I going crazy?" phase.

7. George Crumb - Black Angels (iTunes or Amazon) This piece has it all! A little bit of Psycho, a little bit of demon baby lullaby, a little bit of crazy people talking funny, and a lot of bugs that come out of your nightmares and count in Japanese.

8. Gyorgy Ligeti - Atmospheres, Requiem and Lux Aeterna (iTunes or Amazon) These pieces were on the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you're looking for some creepy, yet somehow beautiful music, these pieces fit the bill. They feature a choir which sings in a smearing style which makes the music sound like a choir of ghosts.

9. Luciano Berio - Sequenzas (iTunes or Amazon) These pieces are all for various solo instruments. The different instruments for each sequenza create varying moods, but they all manage to convey a different shade of crazy.

10. Pierre Boulez - Etude 1 and 2 (iTunes) These two pieces by Pierre Boulez are a great example of eclectic, electronic music. Actually the album which these are on has a lot of great experimental, electronic music. Music of this nature seems perfect for playing on the front porch to keep the pumpkins and scarecrows happy and to keep the children up all night from nightmares.

Hopefully this list broadens your mind a bit and gives you some fresh, new ideas to keep the Halloween spirit alive (or undead, if you're into the whole zombie thing.)