So I'm really choosy about classic stuff. I need help finding more that I would like. The darker the better.

Here's the scanty list of stuff I've found that I like:
Tchaikovsky - March Slave and Swan Lake
Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre
Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata
Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody

I also like some symphonic pieces from movie underscore, like John Williams heavier stuff.


And while we're on the topic, it always seems to me that recordings of classical pieces are overly dynamic; that is, the quiet parts are too quiet, and the loud parts are too loud causing me to adjust the volume often. Anyone else notice this? My only guess is that classical musicians are so purist that they do little or no post-production after recording; so basically they're not "mixing" the recording.

12/7/2006 2:35:52 PM

The wide dynamic range of classical music comes from the fact that, in a live setting, you can have just one soloist playing or you can have the whole orchestra playing, and it doesn't sound too loud or too quiet.

12/7/2006 2:46:06 PM

This thread lacks opera

12/7/2006 2:58:15 PM

How can you have modern classical? I guess if its based on the classical style, but then wha'ts the point? Why not just have contemporary symphonic music? in that case you're stuck with movie soundtracks. I dunno. You gotta have a classical sauce.

12/7/2006 3:22:43 PM

in the hall of the mountain king - Grieg

12/7/2006 3:25:16 PM

He probably means contemporary symphonic music.

But modern ftw.

12/7/2006 3:25:19 PM

I think when they're making the cd they should set the levels so I don't have to turn it up on the quiet parts and down on the loud ones.

12/7/2006 8:37:45 PM

Quote :

"in that case you're stuck with movie soundtracks"

I would say that movie soundtracks are the evolution of opera. I was watching one of the batman
movies the other night (loud) and the music score reminded me of a Wagner piece. big, loud, dark.

For those of you unfamiliar, he composed the opera Die Walküre ("The Valkyrie"). One of the passeges was used in the famouse helicopter attack scene in Apocalypse Now.

12/8/2006 8:44:10 AM

hmmm, nothing "dark" really comes to mind

12/8/2006 8:52:12 AM

i assume you are talking about the broad style loosely called classical music? ..not not the classical period? ...im assuming that since tchaikovsky is a romantic composer, not a classical composer.

so if thats the case.....i would recommend the following:

"O Fortuna" - Carl Orff (from Carmina Burana)
"Picture at an Exhibition Mov No. 9 (The Hut on Hen’s Legs (Baba Yaga))" - Modest Mussorgsky
"Eine kleine Nachtmusik" - Mozart
"Sabre Dance" - Aram Khachaturian
"In The Hall Of The Mountain King" - Edvard Grieg

12/8/2006 9:08:20 AM

Quote :

"I think when they're making the cd they should set the levels so I don't have to turn it up on the quiet parts and down on the loud ones."

So what you're saying is, you want to take the carefully orchestrated dynamics out of the music.

AWESOME.

12/8/2006 9:25:33 AM

Mozart's Requiem is pretty heavy.

12/8/2006 9:28:22 AM

There was a lot of dark, exotic music in the 19th century...just search in that era

Schubert "Erl King" (i don't remember the German title)
Beethoven "Pathetique" Sonata
the list is rather long

and make sure to check Johannes Brahms, his chord structures were huge, and I've got a hunch you might like that type of sound

12/8/2006 10:19:17 AM

you ever heard of this dude brahms? he's underground yo. i think you'd like him.

hehe. j/k

my list would go something like:

shostakovich
rachmaninoff
dvorak
beethoven
steve reich
smetana
corigliano (sp?)

12/8/2006 10:47:44 AM

Hey Eulogist, you might want to try out some post rock, especially A Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra, Explosions in the Sky, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Or Clint Mansell, who isn't a classical composer, but he's a badass modern composer whose work is pretty dark (he did the scores to all of Darren Aronofsky's movies). And, yeah, I concur with sarijoul, Steive Reich ftmfw, even though he doesn't really fit what you're looking for.

^ It's John Corigliano.

[Edited on December 8, 2006 at 10:53 AM. Reason : ]

12/8/2006 10:53:07 AM

Igor Stravinksy - The Rite of Spring

I'd say its pretty dark. Its first performance caused an uproar.

12/8/2006 11:42:35 AM

heh. i didn't really reply to the first post so well. as for dark music. . .

john corigliano's altered states score will fuck your shit up. i'm not sure what the status is on a recording, i've only played with an orchestra.

shostakovich's fifth symphony is one of my all-time favorite pieces and it's about stalinist russia. so yeah pretty dark. and if you do like it, i would suggest reading up on it. it's a very interesting work thematically and historically. (basically he was living in fear that one day the government would come to his door and take him away never to be seen again because his music was too subversive. so he ended up making a piece that had multiple layers. one to satisfy the government censors and others beneath the surface that reveal the pain of living under an oppressive dictator. people are said to have left its premiere in droves sobbing because it touched them so deeply.)

all of beethovens symphonies are great.

for really simple and fairly sad music, erik satie has some good stuff (the gymnopedies are amazing and a popular choice)

Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte (English: Pavane for a Dead Princess) is good and sad.

OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT charles ives "the unanswered question" is pretty awesome. but this is certainly one where the dynamics are very different throughout the song. one downside of listening to this on a stereo is that when performed live, the players are scatterered about the entire auditorium (offstage, onstage, on balconies, in the lobby) for effect. iirc: woodwinds in the lobby, brass offstage in various places, strings on stage.


from wikipedia:

Quote :

"Ives had composed two symphonies, but it is with The Unanswered Question (1908), written for the highly unusual combination of trumpet, four flutes, and string quartet, that he established the mature sonic world which would be his signature style. The strings (located offstage) play very slow, chorale-like music throughout the piece while on several occasions the trumpet (positioned behind the audience) plays a short motif that Ives described as "the eternal question of existence". Each time the trumpet is answered with increasingly shrill outbursts from the flutes (onstage) — apart from the last: The Unanswered Question. The piece is typical Ives — it juxtaposes various disparate elements, it appears to be driven by a narrative that we are never made fully aware of, and it is tremendously mysterious. He later made an orchestral version that became one of his more popular works."

i have played the orchestral version twice and the small ensemble version once and seen it performed from the audience once. it was amazing every time.

[Edited on December 8, 2006 at 1:11 PM. Reason : .]

12/8/2006 1:05:35 PM

For more modern pieces, two come to mind. Both are dark in their own way...

Ravel's Bolero is an interesting piece worth sitting down and listening to. There's some crazy stuff going on in this piece, enough so that some people think Ravel was half insane when he composed it. Still, it's one of my personal favorites. Has the record of the world's longest crescendo.

Perhaps one of the more famous from the 20th Century was Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. The piece is a very dark and somber piece, according to Wikipedia, some UN office said that no other musical score captured the brutal orgy of murder and rape of the Rwandan Genocide better. Some would say Adagio for Strings has probably been overplayed at funerals and in musical scores, but it's definitely one to listen to if by some chance you still haven't heard it yet.

12/8/2006 2:54:02 PM

Quote :

"Has the record of the world's longest crescendo."

i'm sorry you must have forgotten about godspeed.

12/8/2006 3:17:05 PM

Can't say I've heard Godspeed, but Bolero certainly has one of the longest crescendos, at very least in the classical arena (technically, the entire piece is nothing but one continuous crescendo from the beginning to the very end).

12/8/2006 6:10:40 PM

Quote :

"Igor Stravinksy - The Rite of Spring"

good stuff

and yeah, it is dark and it was written for a ballet. the audience rioted on its opening night

[Edited on December 8, 2006 at 6:24 PM. Reason : .]

12/8/2006 6:23:31 PM

I've always been a fan of Bedrich Smetana. The Moldau is his famous one.

12/8/2006 6:25:36 PM

Ralph Vaughan Williams

And not that dark, but amazing:

Frank Zappa - The Perfect Stranger
Frank Zappa - The Yellow Shark

12/8/2006 8:23:52 PM

Quote :

"I would say that movie soundtracks are the evolution of opera. I was watching one of the batman movies the other night (loud) and the music score reminded me of a Wagner piece. big, loud, dark."

That seems like a huge oversimplification.

There's far, far more to a Wagner opera than just the orchestral music...

12/8/2006 8:35:43 PM

for some darker, or more melancholy classical, try Henryk Górecki or Arvo Part. Their a bit more contemporary.

12/9/2006 3:19:42 AM

The darker the better?

Chopin.

[Edited on December 9, 2006 at 3:56 AM. Reason : And whatever these other folks are in to. I'm a n00b.]

12/9/2006 3:55:53 AM

Okay, I've made an effort over the last few days to get selections from all the composers/artists mentioned here.

I'll let you know how it goes.


I'd say thanks but I bet most of it is crap

12/11/2006 6:44:45 PM

^^and when I say dark I mean like satin black, not gloss black

Chopin is overly fancy and underly stated

12/11/2006 11:33:16 PM

OK

So I liked the Mussorgsky stuff, ONE of the Chopin Preludes was pretty cool on classic guitar, Ravel - Pavane for a Dead Princess (also preferred on guitar), and a Beethoven thing with filename Ghost Piano Trio.

Thanks for the input
I'm still looking
and I have discriminating taste

1/19/2007 12:49:05 AM