Classics From the Crypt Trivia Quiz

Answer: Witches cackling.

No witches are indicated in this piece, at least not that I'm aware of. The piece opens with a bell (suggested by the plucked string of a harp) tolling the midnight hour, which is followed shortly by the shrieking of Death's violin. The rattling of skeleton bones is suggested by the xylophone, with its hollow, tubular sound (Saint Saens used a similar effect in "Fossils", from "Carnival of the Animals").

The ghastly dance is brought to an end by the breaking of dawn, heralded by a rooster (played on the oboe), which causes the skeleton dancers to shudder with fright and sink into the earth.

Answer: Modest Mussorgsky

"The Hut on Fowl's Legs" recalls the Russian legend of the witch Baba Yaga, who lived in a hut built on a pair of giant hen's feet. The hut also had wings, which enabled the witch to take flight, house and all. Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" was a memorial to his friend, the artist Victor Hartmann, whose untimely death at age 39 in 1874 affected the composer deeply. "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" was inspired by a design for a clock by Hartmann in the shape of Baba Yaga's hut; the piece itself, however, recalls the witch's fantastic ride through the air. "Night on Bald Mountain", which also describes witchly doings, was famously used near the end of Walt Disney's "Fantasia" and is one of the most celebrated sequences from that film.

As for Humperdinck's "Witch's Ride", the composer was heavily influenced by Richard Wagner, whom he assisted in the premiere of "Parsifal". The "Witch's Ride", which serves as the entracte between the first and second scenes of Act I of "Hansel und Gretel" in somewhat reminiscent of Wagner's famous "Ride of the Valkyries", from "Die Walkure".

Answer: Peer Gynt

"Peer Gynt" relates the life and picaresque adventures of the play's title hero, a thorough scoundrel who is, nonetheless, both likable and deeply human. Peer spends much of his life searching for elusive happiness and fulfillment; in the beginning of the play, he abducts and then abandons the bride at a village wedding. He is loved by the virtuous Solveig, but he abandons her to seek his fortune, and further adventures, abroad. At one point, he goes to Arabia to sell religious artifacts, and becomes celebrated as a prophet, but his money is stolen by the dancing girl Anitra. Eventually, he finds his way back home and is welcomed by the forgiving Solveig, now an old woman. Solveig's love saves him from the Button Moulder, who captures those who are not good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell and melts them down into buttons. Towards the middle of this rather bizarre tale, Peer seduces the daughter of the Mountain King, who presides over a court of gnomes, trolls, and witches. When the King tells Peer that he must marry his daughter, Peer refuses and flees from the King's lair. He is hotly pursued by the King's subjects, who threaten to break off his fingers, kill him, and tear him apart; the piece entitled "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (which ends the first "Peer Gynt" suite) vividly describes his flight and his narrow escape.

This melody was used with chilling effect in Fritz Lang's 1931 film "M", which starred Peter Lorre as a child murderer. Lorre's character whistled this tune while stalking his victims.

Answer: Hector Berlioz

The "Symphonie Fantasique", composed in 1830, was the fruit of Berlioz's ill-fated love affair with the Irish actress Henrietta Smithson, to whom he was for a time calamitously married. The piece is in five sections, describing the romantic and, ultimately, macabre fantasies of an artist under the influence of opium.

The first section, "Reveries; Passions" is somewhat of an introduction; the second describes the appearance of the beloved at a ball ("Au Bal"). The third, which recalls Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony (#6), is entitled "Scene aux Champs" ("Scene in the Fields").

In the fourth section, "Marche au Supplice" ("March to the Scaffold"), the artist imagines that he has murdered his beloved and has been sentenced to the guillotine (at the end of the movement, one hears the terrible fall of the guillotine's blade).

The final movement is "Songe d'une Nuit du Sabbat" ("Dream of a Witches Sabbath"), in which the artist's soul is tormented in death by witches. Throughout the piece, the theme of the beloved (which Berlioz called the "idee fixe")reappears again and again in various guises; in the last movement, it takes on a grotesque character as the beloved appears as one of the witches.

The final movement also uses the melody of the "Dies Irae", the Gregorian chant sequence once used in the Catholic Requiem mass, which describes the Day of Judgement. This final movement has been used with chilling effect in a number of films, including "The Shining" (based on a Stephen King novel) and "Sleeping with the Enemy".

Answer: Der Fliegende Hollander

The ghost in question is the Flying Dutchman, who was condemned by Satan to round the Cape of Good Hope until Judgement Day. With his ship staffed, literally, by a skeleton crew (they make an appearance towards the middle of the opera and scare the bejesus out of some live sailors), the Dutchman fulfills his destiny and searches in vain for the woman whose faithful love will redeem him from the curse. Little does he know that a young woman named Senta has been pining to be his true love, ever since she heard his tragic story (she's, frankly, rather morose, but who is he to complain?).

When Senta's mercenary father arranges a match between her and the Dutchman (who is fabulously rich, which apparently more than compensates for his being a phantom), she is overjoyed.

Unfortunately, she is already engaged to a local fellow named Erick; under the circumstances, she has no choice but to break up with him. When the Dutchman hears her giving Erick the air, he decides that she is no different from all the other women who proved untrue and heads back off to sea. Determined to prove herself true unto death, Senta leaps off a cliff into the sea. Simultaneaously, the Dutchman's ship founders on some rocks and sinks like a stone.

The phantom figures of the star-crossed lovers are seen in the distance, united in death (I'm not making this up, you know!).

Answer: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In this classic poem, a father rides through a forest with his young son. The child is frightened by the appearance of the Erl-king, who is visible only to him and who tries to entice him away from his father. The father tries to calm the boy's fears; however, when the Erl-king makes a threat of a rather sexual nature ("I love you, your lithe form pleases me, and if you will not come willingly, I will take you by force!") the boy cries that he has been grievously injured. The father, now greatly frightened himself, rides faster to reach their home, only to find the boy dead upon their arrival.

This is one of Goethe's greatest individual poems (he is best known for "The Sorrows of Young Werther", "Wilhelm Meister's Travels" and the "Faust" poems); its musical setting by Schubert stands tall even among that composer's distinguished output of lieder. Although Schubert's setting is certainly the best-known, it is by no means the only one; the poem was also set by Schubert's contemporaries Carl Loewe and Johann Abraham Peter-Schulz. No other setting, however, so vividly evokes the desperate nighttime ride through the woods, or the enticements of the malignant phantom (Schubert admitted that the wonderful, but notoriously difficult piano accompaniment was all but unplayable). What makes this piece truly terrifying, even (or especially) today, is the strong suggestion of child sexual abuse; there may be no such creature as the Erl-king, but adults who prey upon children are all too real.

Answer: Don Giovanni

In Act I, scene 1 of "Don Giovanni", the opera's eponymous hero (actually an anti-hero; Don Giovanni being the Italian for Don Juan) is fleeing the home of the noblewoman Donna Anna, whom he has tried, unsuccessfully, to seduce. She pursues the masked Giovanni to the courtyard, calling for help; in answer to her cries, her elderly father, the Commendatore, appears and challenges her assailant to a duel.

The old man is killed in the duel and recognizes Giovanni just before he dies. Later in the opera, Don Giovanni and his servant, Leporello, are bantering together in the graveyard where the Commendatore lies buried.

A stern voice issues from the Commendatore's statue, warning Giovanni that his laughter will not last much longer. The arrogant Giovanni invites the statue to dine at his house, an invitation which, to Leporello's horror, is accepted.

In the final scene, the statue appears at the sumptuous banquet which Giovanni has prepared and calls upon him to repent for his sins. Caught in the statue's icy grasp, Giovanni is nevertheless unrepentant and is dragged by demons down to Hell.

The crashing chords which herald the arrival of the statue of the Commendatore in the final scene are first heard in the overture; even after more than two hundred years, they have lost none of their power.

Answer: Cesar Franck

Franck was a religious and, by most accounts, rather saintly man; in addition to his two oratorios, he also wrote a large body of organ music for the Church. As is true of many saintly people, subjects pertaining to Hell and Satan held a certain fascination for him. For me, this is one of his finest works; certainly it is one of the most interesting.

The baneful theme in the cellos, indicating the curse placed on the impious huntsman, is especially effective and chilling.

Answer: Sergei Prokofiev

I am fortunate to have actually participated in a performance of the musical score of the 1939 film, which accompanied a showing of the film itself. The crashing chords with which this piece begins accompany close-up images of the faces of the pitiless invaders, rendered inhuman by their all-covering helmets (which would seem to have been the inspiration for the famous Darth Vader mask in George Lucas' "Star Wars" series).

As the chorus intones the (rather ungrammatical) Latin phrase "Peregrinus expectavit pedes meus in cymbalis" ("A foreigner, I expect my feet to be cymbal-shod"- don't ask me what that means, at any rate it sounds chilling when sung), the crusaders burn the city, throw children into the fires, and conduct mass executions. When one considers that not dissimilar things were actually being done by German armies while this film was being made, it adds to the horror.

Answer: Orphee aux Enfers

"Orphee aux Enfers" ("Orpheus in the Underworld") is a comic retelling of the famous Orpheus legend from Greek mythology. In this version, Orpheus is only to glad to be rid of the nagging Eurydice who, for her part, is quite content to remain in the nether-world (where, among other things, the dancing is incredible).

The "Galop Infernal" is both sung and danced by the denizens of Hades, which is depicted as a far happier place than Mount Olympus, where the gods are sick to death of swilling ambrosia. Offenbach's "Can-can" was parodied by Camille Saint Saens (in an immensely slower tempo) in the movement entitled "Tortoises", from his "Carnival of the Animals". Which brings us full circle!