Ghosts & Monsters… Music of the Supernatural

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you. And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And for today it is… Ghosts & Monsters… Music of the Supernatural.

There are composers who revel in depictions of the unseen… manifestations of the darker aspects of our imaginations… creatures from realms that four centuries of science just can’t seem to eradicate from our vulnerable psyches. Then there are the composers who just can’t help but enjoy mucking about with an old fairytale or making fun of our collective gullibility. And some do both at the same time. This week it is spooky music from Edvard Grieg, Modet Mussorgsky, Franz Schubert, Camille Saint-Saens, Franz Liszt, Dmitri Shostakovich, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart & Frederic Chopin.

The first bit of music I am going to play is wonderful… and wonderfully brief so I will try to keep my Introduction succinct. In 1867 the Norwegian Playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote a verse drama called Peer Gynt. The composer Edvard Grieg was asked to provide incidental music. Later Grieg took that music and made a version for orchestra from the best material. That included music for a scene where Peer Gynt is confronted by a terrifying Troll King who believes Gynt has taken his daughter’s virginity. Here is the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oivin Fjeldstat with Edvard Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’. It starts very quietly and gets very loud.

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That was the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oivin Fjeldstat with Edvard Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ from his Peer Gynt Suite.

Ok. In an appropriately spooky coincidence the original version of the next piece I am going to play was written in the same year as the Greig I just played. It is Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Night On Bald Mountain’. In a letter written after he had completed it Mussorgsky describes folktale he used for inspiration…

So far as my memory doesn't deceive me, the witches used to gather on this mountain, ... gossip, play tricks and await their chief—Satan. On his arrival they, i.e. the witches, formed a circle round the throne on which he sat, in the form of a goat, and sang his praise. When Satan was worked up into a sufficient passion by the witches' praises, he gave the command for the sabbath, in which he chose for himself the witches who caught his fancy.

The version known today is in fact almost a re-composition by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from 1886. And it was apparently Rimsky-Korsakov who added the concluding lyrical section after the tolling of a village church bell as dawn approaches scatters the witches and their master from the top of the mountain. Here is Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Night On Bald Mountain’… It is about 11 minutes long and this is Georg Solti conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

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That was Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Night On Bald Mountain’… with Georg Solti conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. In Germanic folklore there is a sinister elf who lurks in deep, dark forests at night who can kill a child with a single touch. He is the Erlkönig or ,in English, the ‘Erlking’ spelt E R L K I N G.

In 1782 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a simple but deeply disturbing poem about a father carrying his son on horseback through a wood. The son believes that the Erlking is following him and that he can hear the Erlking’s promises of a better life if he will go with him. The father reassures the son he is hearing the wind, seeing whisps of fog and moonlight on old willow trees. But when they arrive at their farmhouse the child is dead.

In 1815 Franz Schubert set Goethe’s poem to music for piano and voice. It is in German but I think even without quite understanding the text you’ll be able to get an idea of the incredible job Schubert does in giving the singer four quite distinct ‘voices’ to create… the Narrator, the Father, the Son… and the Erlking. And all the time whilst colouring these voices the piano is keeping is slowly building the tension. And it all takes just four and a half minutes. Here is the pianist Gerald Moore and the singer Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau. Franz Schubert’s ‘The Erlking’.

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That was the pianist Gerald Moore and the singer Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau. Franz Schubert’s ‘The Erlking’.

I hope you are enjoying this ‘Ghosts and Monsters’ episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. I am starting to think that I should perhaps have saved this episode up for Halloween but October seems a very long way away. But speaking of Halloween… some traditions have it that at midnight on Halloween the devil uses his violin to call the dead from their graves to dance with him until dawn. In 1874 the French composer Camille Saint-Saens took this story as inspiration for his work for orchestra ‘Danse Macabre’ or ‘Dance of Death’. Compared with the rather dark Schubert song I just played you there is a glimmer of humour here as Saint-Saens uses a xylophone to indicate the rattling of skeletons’ bones as they dance.

Here is the Orchestra of Paris conducted by Pierre Dervaux with the solo violin played by Luben Yordanoff. The piece is 7 minutes long. The Dance of Death by Camille Saint-Saens.

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That was the Orchestra of Paris conducted by Pierre Dervaux with the solo violin played by Luben Yordanoff performing The Dance of Death by Camille Saint-Saens.

Ok. At some point in the 1500’s stories started circulating in northern Europe about a scholar who rather than stay focused in matters theological switched his attentions to the humanities. And to make matters worse… he made a deal with the Devil for success and honours in this world in return for the sacrifice of his soul in the next. The scholar’s name was Faust and as a companion and servant the Devil gave him the demon Mephistofeles… whose name wass frequently abbreviated to ‘Mephisto’. Now the best known literary retellings of this story are in English Christopher Marlowe’s play ‘Dr Faustus’ and in German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s two part verse drama ‘Faust’… the same Goethe whose poem ‘The Erlking’ was immortalised by Franz Schubert and which I just played. But when the composer Franz Liszt wrote his Mephisto Waltzes starting in 1852 he was inspired by a dramatic poem by the now largely forgotten Nikolaus Lenau. And Liszt wrote out the scene from Lenau’s work that he set for his first Mephisto Waltz…

There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad, abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer.

There really does seem to be something both Liszt and Saint-Saens are saying about devils and violins. Now Liszt wrote a version of his waltz for orchestra and for solo piano. For me the piano one is oddly the more evocative. And here is Leif Ove Andsnes to play it. It is about 11 minutes long. The Mephisto Waltz No. 1 by Franz Liszt.

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That was Leif Ove Andsnes performing The Mephisto Waltz No. 1 by Franz Liszt.

Alright in the title of this episode I promised ghosts and in the next two pieces I am going to play… you are going to get two of the very best. First. The ghost of Hamlet’s father. In Shakespeare’s play this spectral figureappears on the battlements of the Danish castle of Elsinore to tell his son, the Prince Hamlet of the play’s title, that he has been murdered. When the Soviet era Russian director Grigori Kozintsev turned the play into an incredible film in 1964 he asked composer Dmitri Shostakovich to write the score. And from that score, arranged into a suite by Shostakovich’s friend and colleague Lev Atovmyan, here is the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonid Grin performing the section called ‘The Ghost’. It is about 5 minutes long.

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That was the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonid Grin performing the section called ‘The Ghost’ from the score by Dmitri Shostakovich for Grigori Kozintsev’s film ‘Hamlet’.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have a couple more pieces coming up but before I get to them I want to give you sixty seconds of information that I hope you find useful… If you would like to listen to past episodes, of which there are more than a dozen, or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net. And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes.

I hope you have enjoyed this ‘Ghosts & Monsters’ episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

Alright, to finish this episode I have 12 minutes of opera. An opera with a Ghost… and, depending on your viewpoint, an opera with a monster… a monster by the name of Don Giovanni. At the end of the opera the ghost of a character Don Giovanni has murdered at the beginning of the opera, the Commandatore, visits Don Giovanni demanding he repent or be dragged to Hell. Don Giovanni refuses. Devils appear and he is taken to his eternal punishment.

This is the climax of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera ‘Don Giovanni’ with words by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The section I’ve chosen starts with Don Giovanni (sung by Ruggiero Raimondi) dining whilst his servant Leporello (Jose van Dam) goes hungry. They are interrupted by the arrival of the Don’s jilted lover Donna Elvira (Kiri Te Kanawa) who has come to entreat him to mend his ways. Coldly, he dismisses her and as she leaves she encounters the ghost of the Commandatore (John Macurdy) in the guise of the statue from his funeral monument… the man of stone arriving for his final confrontation with Don Giovanni. Lorin Maazel conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Paris Opera…

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That was Lorin Maazel conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Paris Opera with a section from the opera Don Giovanni with music by Mozart and words by Da Ponte. The singers were Ruggiero Raimondi, Jose van Dam, Kiri Te Kanawa and John Macurdy.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’. This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… In an episode called ‘Ghosts and Monsters’ a nocturne by Frederic Chopin is not quite an exact fit. But if you accept that the night is an almost essential part of these stories of the unseen and unexpected and that a nocturne is a piece written to evoke the night then we are in the ballpark. And then add that the opening and closing of this particular nocturne by Chopin does, for me anyway, have a certain melancholic, haunted quality… then I think it sort of belongs. Here is Maria Joāo Pires playing Frederic Chopin’s Nocturne No. 13 in C minor.

Thanks again for listening.