Classical Music For A Dark Night
 

These are some of my favorite classical pieces with a dark theme to them:
Requiem: Dies Irae - Verdi
Firebird: Danse Infernale - Stravinsky
Pictures At An Exhibition: The Gnome, and Hut On Fowls' Legs - Mussorgsky
Carmina Burana: O Fortuna, and Veris leta facies - Orff
Ritual Fire Dance - Manuel De Falla
Dresden In Ruins - Shostakovich
Romeo And Juliet: Dance Of The Knights - Prokofiev
The Rite Of Spring - Stravinsky
Toccata And Fugue - Bach
Danse Macabre - Saint-Saens
Mephisto Waltz - Liszt
Night On Bald Mountain - Mussorgsky
Peer Gynt: In The Hall Of The Mountain King - Grieg
Caprice 24 - Paganini
Music For Strings, Percussion, And Celesta - Bartok
Lontano - Gyorgy Ligeti
Any of the 7 pieces by Krysztof Penderecki used in The Shining

Any more dark classical music out there?

Guonod's Funeral March of a Marionette.

Worth checking out Chopin's Nocturnes & his waltz's too. Lots of dark/ tragic piano. Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead is pretty dark too.

Thank you for recommending Rachmaninov; I hadn't heard that one before. Should have mentioned Funeral March Of A Marionette. Some other pieces I forgot to mention:
Death And The Maiden - Schubert
Also Sprach Zarathustra - Richard Strauss
Peter And The Wolf: The Wolf - Prokofiev
Funeral March - Chopin
The Flying Dutchman - Wagner
Mars, The Bringer Of War - Holst
Symphonie Fantastique, Dream Of A Witches' Sabbath - Berlioz

Does anyone happen to know the classical piece playing in the background of this trailer? I'd love to add it to my collection.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnljnpDBpo

Halloween - Charles Ives
March to the Scaffold (Symphonie Fantastique) - Hector Berlioz

March To The Scaffold is a great piece. I'd never heard Charles Ives' Halloween before. Intense; I love it!

Pachabell's Cannon
and the obvious- Night on the Bare Mountain:)

I know its not classical, but have fond memories of a night listening to Dark Side of the Moon with the lights off and curtains open- moonlight only ;)

Night On Bald Mountain made my list too. I thought about including Sorcerer's Apprentice by Dukas, but all I can think about when I hear it is Mickey Mouse and the brooms and it makes me laugh.

Haha- yep, you gotta love Mickey!
Glad Carmina Burana is on here (on a different thread!)
Also love 'The Montagues and Capuletes' from Romeo and Juliette
And Elgar's Cello Concerto makes me ponderous- especially when you considder it was written as a requiem for those who were killed in the trenches of WWI.

Oh and excuse the awful spelling- am multi-tasking here:)

I have that Romeo and Juliet piece on my list too; sometimes it's called Montagues and Capulets sometimes it's called Dance Of The Knights kind of like Night On Bald (or Bare) Mountain. As if finding certain classical pieces wasn't hard enough they have to use different names. My daughter asked for Offenbach's Infernal Gallop and it took some time for me to figure out she wanted the Can-Can.

I'm still going mad trying to figure out the name of that music used in the trailer for the movie Cronos.

Symphonie Fantastique is a very spooky piece. xx -Think 'Sleeping With The Enemy'.

Someone with an educated daughter- am impressed. Mine will listen to and loves going to the ballet, but its all light breezy stuff.

Oh the Whole of Mozart's Don Giovani- Opera goes horror. Studdied this at Uni and its a good take on faust. And all Wagner is sinister x;)

The ballet is wonderful. It's great you have a daughter who's interested in the classics and not just Top 40 hits.

I'll have to put more dark, gothic classical music on the scary music thread.

That would be wonderful- give me some more music to chase up. Thanks