A Little Fright Music
by Lynn Hutchinson
October 28, 2019
Do the words “Ave Santani” haunt you in your sleep? Have your major seconds and perfect fifths felt a little…diminished…lately? Are you experiencing an odd attraction tubular bells?
You might be experiencing side effects of Trito(ne)ber.
Do you like this season? Six weeks full of mystery and shock and just a hint of darkness? As one who answers a resounding yes, each October I can be found pursuing rituals and entertainments that scratch the itch. I unearth the skeleton of our tattered Halloween box, taking out treasures of mummified cloth, life-size skulls and green holographic lights. We also happen to own a set of macabre curtains, 32 ghost masks and two fog machines. Yes, two. Because one simply isn’t enough.
And of course, autumn itself is a player in the tale. Los Angeles is a little short on seasonal change; if I could I would import an overwhelming host of dead leaves to our streets - those fantastic ones that disintegrate underfoot, coloring streets and yards with tattered yellows, oranges, and reds. I’d also send the nip in the air that begs a sweater. And the sight of cold miniature goblins scurrying from door to door, suspending traces of warm breath in the cold dark air. But what we lack in natural effects, we make for in stunning yard haunts designed by pro designers and film makers.
As for music, depending on the mood, it’s Herrmann, Elfman, Saint-Saëns, Grieg, Orff or Michael Jackson. I recently added Poulenc’s Organ Concerto in G Minor to the list. And if I’m really motivated, I’ll cue up my childhood favorite - Winchell’s Donut Halloween record.
But truthfully, even more than music, movies or fog machines (I mentioned we have two, right?), Poe and Bradbury and Irving define the holiday for me. It’s the stories. The potentially creepy horrible things that could happen at arm’s length.
What makes a great ghost story?
It has always been interesting to me the psychological “tricks” in psychologically disarming music. Minor keys, dissonance, the Devil’s Interval, disjunct rhythms, extended instrumental techniques, eerie quotations (particularly the skewing of lullabies and childrens’ songs), bombastic choral assaults, subtle vocal whisperings, and atypical range choices are all obvious targets. But no matter how hard it tries, instrumental music cannot tell a story on its own. Parallels can be made, but without the assistance of story or program, music can only be suggestive.
So where do all the harrowing and suspenseful triggers come from? What makes a ghost story so impacting?
Halloween, horror and history…oh my!
Imagine being so steeped in Halloween cheer that sources like The Guardian, Washington Post and Mental Floss come knocking at your door every October. I recently had the tremendously good fortunate to meet Halloween and horror literature expert Lisa Morton. A celebrated author, screenwriter and editor in the ghost and horror genres, she indulged me insight into the heart of ghost stories plus a few insights into the interaction between ghost stories and music, from a historic perspective.
Other blog posts:
LH: Okay, Lisa…this is a real treat to have an expert on the line. I gotta get to the important questions first…Vampire versus Mummy? Who wins?
LM: I gotta go Vampire.
LH: Candy Corn vs. Smarties?
LM: I’m one of the few people on the earth who actually like candy corn, so I gotta go with Candy Corn.
LH: Thank you for your authoritative answers. Now that those issues have been resolved by an expert, let’s talk about Halloween and spooky stuff. How did you come to be so passionate and involved in horror literature and Halloween studies?
LM: I was that weird little girl who always wanted to be a monster - not a princess - at Halloween. My parents tolerated it and encouraged me.
LH: What stories did you read as a kid that impacted your journey with ghost stories?
LM: I was a big reader from early on. The first two horror stories I read that really impacted me were Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” which I think we read in school and it just kind of blew me away. The other one was a story by Lovecraft called “The Outsider” and no one believes me that this was in one of my school textbooks. And of course Poe. We all grew up reading Poe. Those were the ones that really ended up influencing me.
LH: So what makes a really impacting long-lasting ghost story? What are the elements?
LM: Well I think you have to have the ghost that is trapped here by either some terrible circumstance surrounding its death - a violent death, or an emotional situation - that the spirit left something unresolved that it now has to work through. That dates all the way back to classic ghost stories and hauntings and so forth. And you can look at something like Dickens’ Christmas Carol, which is arguably the greatest ghost story ever written. We get the whole situation with the Ghost of Marley coming back to try and resolve both the way he lived his life and to try and tell Scrooge “don’t live your life that way.”
So I think unresolved issue is really at the heart of the ghost story.
LH: Have you encountered any significant ghosts stories around which music plays a central part? Have you found that music comes in the middle of stories in effective ways?
LM: Oh, it so does. In fact, I was just re-reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” (1852). It’s one of the first really big classic ghost stories and it centers around music. It’s about a young woman who has been assigned to serve as a governess to a child who has been moved to an old house out in the middle of nowhere and of course the house is haunted. The main spirit haunting the house is the old baron or count who was obsessed with music. He had a gigantic organ installed into the walls of the house. The young governess keeps hearing this organ playing but can’t figure out who’s playing it. It turns out that the staff at the house is so used to this happening they’re very nonchalant that a ghost is now playing this organ every night. It gets into other weird stuff with music too. The old aristocrat who is now the ghost playing the organ had two daughters who were vying for the affection of their music teacher in the distant past. So that one is really interesting because it’s one of the first really great famous ghost stories and it’s all focused around music. And these dead family members have to work through a terrible situation left unresolved.
And then of course you can get into some later things like Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann.” So yeah, it’s interesting to see music things pop up in these early works.
LH: How is music a part of Halloween traditions?
LM: It’s almost a recent development that Halloween has been linked with music. “Monster Mash” is really the first gigantic Halloween Theme song, and we didn’t get that until the ‘60s. Before that, there’s not a lot of music in use for Halloween. There were a few things in the ‘20s…a few piano rags and so forth…that popped up here and there. And certainly there were classical pieces like “Night of Bald Mountain” that were linked to the holiday. But it’s not until Monster Mash that we really see a connection between music and Halloween.
There’s an interesting phenomena that has happened in music in the last twenty years. As haunted attractions have exploded in popularity - both the big professional things where you pay to go through a maze, but also people’s elaborate yard displays, or “soft yard haunts.” There are now groups that specialize in writing music just for these haunted attractions. Everyone’s favorite is a group called Midnight Syndicate. Their music is really good and worth checking out. You can hear them riffing on some of these familiar themes.
LH: The music that accompanies movies is a huge part of the expression of horror. What soundtracks have stuck out to you over the years?
LM: I can talk soundtracks all day long. I’m a lifelong soundtrack fanatic. To me, the greatest score ever written to a horror movie is Jerry Goldsmith’s The Omen. Which is a case of the score being far better than the movie. It’s one of those things where people may not know what it is but when they hear it and not know it. That, and of course, we always associate the tubular bells with the holiday. John Carpenter’s score for Halloween is certainly iconic…and Bernard Hermann’s Psycho score, that’s certainly one of the big ones.
Putting blood-ink to staff paper
What is the greatest inspiration to you when writing terror-related music? As composers and musicians, we are likely to call upon the Russians, classic film scores and modern sound designers. But what about literature? What can classic ghost story structure do to inform music today? Give a character who is unfairly defeated, misunderstood, feared and grotesque a horrifying theme…but don’t forget to turn on the lights and hang the garlic first.
photo by Ellen Datlow
More about Lisa
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, Bram Stoker Award®-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She has published four novels, 150 short stories, and three books on the history of Halloween. Her most recent releases include the anthologies Haunted Nights (co-edited with Ellen Datlow) and Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense (co-edited with Leslie Klinger), both of which received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly. She lives in the San Fernando Valley, and can be found online at www.lisamorton.com .