by Fred Moleck
Halloween Porch Music
If you’ve ever done any serious music history studies with an emphasis on the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in Germany, you would have come across the following terms:Turmmusik—tower music; music played by brass instruments from the towers in villages and towns
Tafelmusik—music played during dining at table; for us, dinner music or cocktail music
Abendmusik—music for the evening; what Bach walked to Leipzig to hear
What is missing is another form of Musik that appears to be indigenous to middle class citizens of the United States—porch music for Halloween.
Last week I received an alarming message from a family not too far from where I live. They are fixated on Halloween.
An example of this obsession is their construction of a Halloween theme park on their front porch every year.
They are not unlike thousands of other United States citizens who find deep meaning in trying to traumatize the trick-or-treaters who dare approach the doorbell.
This particular family begins their project around September 15 as the architect father clears his drawing board and sets new paper in place.
Equipped with photos of gloomy castles in Bavaria and alleged haunted houses in England, he starts to sketch. The Hogwarts location-location-location is always effective.
The playwright mother opens a new journal to record her musings on Halloween—not so much as the eve before All Saints, but more like Dracula’s Revenge or Ghouls I Have Known.
This year, they want to replace the recording of the organ passage from Phantom of the Opera. They have grown weary of it and want something more classy. Could I help?
I asked if they were familiar with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor—which, incidentally, was probably not written by Bach or, if at all written by him, was intended for solo violin.
(Did I hear gasps coming from you?)
They were. The mother and dad remembered Virgil Fox playing it in, maybe, Las Vegas. Their eldest son, a Yale-ee, said he looked forward to hearing it at the annual midnight concert at Yale.
How learned and how hip!
So, here’s the list I gave them.
“In the Hall of the Mountain King” from the Peer Gynt Suite by Grieg
Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky
Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz
Overture to The Flying Dutchman by Wagner
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste—the adagio section—by Bartok
Requiem—“Dies Irae”—the Dies irae and Tuba mirum section—by Verdi
Toccata from Suite Gothique by Boellmann
They bury quadraphonic speakers in four points of the hedges. The fog machine is directly behind the front steps.
I couldn’t begin to estimate how many dollars this demonic praesepium would run. It boggles my mind.
Happily, I will be out of town on the 30th and 31th, which will make it impossible for me to comment on it and answer the inevitable question, “How do (did) you like it?
My all purpose response to their question—like all other questions which beg my artistic and sensitive response to performances of community theater groups and their like—is, “Well, you’ve done it again!”
Happy Halloween . . . Happy All Saints . . . and wishes for a quiet, reflective All Souls Day.
May they all rest in peace.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net