“Gravedigger’s Tune,” “Fratricide,” “Ghost Dance,” “To the Cemetery,” “The Song of Burial,” “Cemetery at Dawn,” “Call from the Dead.”
Are these the names of tracks by some evil black metal band?
No, they all are works by an Austrian Romantic-era classical music composer, Franz Peter Schubert.
People may think that classical music is elegant and graceful. Well, some is, but obviously some is not!
Like other art, so-called classical music evolved with Christianity in the early stage. However, in 19th century, the composers gradually started pursuing more personal expressions instead of Biblical timbers and as a result music became something more than a “gift from God.” And, of course, even back then there were many composers who were attracted to the dark side of our lives — such as death.
Probably, Schubert was the most unhappy composer in the history. Today, his works are very well known to people from all over the world, but while h was alive he never achieved any real recognition. He suffered from extreme poverty, contracted syphilis from a whore, then typhoid fever, and died when he was only 31.
Understandably, Schubert seems to have been possessed with a dark side and wrote a lot of music inspired by death. Just listen to his song cycle “Winterreise.” Definitely, they are some of the darkest and the most depressing songs ever written — filled with the atmosphere of death from the beginning
to the end. And the last track, “Der Leiermann” is beyond description.
I don’t know any other music that sounds so bleak Another song cycle by Schubert, “Die Schone Mullerin,” may start with a brighter atmosphere, but it, too, gets darker and darker towards the scary end and the destination, as usual, is death.”
Here’s an excerpt from one of his songs, “Death and the Maiden”:
(death talking to The Maiden)
Give me your hand, you beauty.
I’m your friend and I’ve not come to punish you.
I am not wild.
You’ll softly sleep in my arms.
I also strongly recommend the last three piano sonatas, which are unearthly beautiful, but also incredibly dark. You can’t listen to Schubert’s works when you’re depressed, it’s too heavy… Hey, it’s obvious that he belonged to our side! And in my opinion, Schubert must have been one of the most talented composers in the history of music. From his works you can learn of harmony,
counterpoint techniques, orchestrations. However, you never learn how to write the good melodies by studying. Schubert had a talent to write excellent melodies which nobody else could come up with. Probably he was too talented to live long.
In the Romatic era, there were many “crazy” composers besides Schubert (of course, artists may be more or less crazy at any time.) Franz Liszt was pretty much crazy, too. He really loved women and never ceased to chase them. He became a priest but it was rumored that he did so to make women feel that he was harmless! Definitely, he was like one of today’s rock stars.
His later piano works are like soundtracks to horror movies. They’re really dark and monotonous with
lots of diminished and augmented chords. They were so crazy that Liszt’s pupils even tried to conceal them after his death because they felt he was totally insane when he wrote them.
I strongly recommend the CD played by Maurizio Pollini. It’s got Liszt’s one and only piano sonata masterpiece in Bb, but the real highlight is other late piano pieces such as “Nuages Gris” and “Unstern.” How could people believe that these pieces were written by the same composer who wrote “La Campanella?” And I assume even extreme metal fans will want to ask if these are really music.
Yes, definitely some classical music is as evil as heavy metal can be! Just try Schubert if you think classical music is too sophisticated.
It ain’t classical music, but it sure is evil:
