It’s Halloween tomorrow! What does music have to do with this, you may ask? More than you may think. Actually, music really deserves top billing in scary movies. You don’t think so? OK, try this: just for a moment, picture a close-up of a doll with big blue eyes, nestled against a soft pillow in a room. Now add some cheerful music—perhaps a little waltz. This cozy scene sets the stage, and creates an atmosphere in which it is easy to imagine that a child will come into the room and settle down to a happy game of make-believe with her doll. Now, change the mood by dreaming up a more sinister-sounding music. Imagine, say, a choir of muffled children’s voices (as though they were being held prisoner in the basement), against a background of rasping, dissonant violins. In an instant, you can picture that wide-eyed doll as an evil toy, waiting only for night to descend to come to life and terrorize the occupants of the house! And yet, the only thing that changed was the music.

How do composers go about writing music that evoke mystery and fear? Why do some melodies make us feel nervous before we’ve noticed any danger whatsoever on the screen? Arguably one of the most successful musical scores ever written for a thriller was the soundtrack to the movie Jaws. The instant we hear this music, we realize that the main character is in grave danger.

One method of creating a feeling of mystery is through the use of repeated rhythms or notes. Then, unexpectedly, the orchestra plays a chord, builds to a spectacular crescendo, executes a dramatic diminuendo, and, suddenly, fear takes hold. Listen to the beginning of Night on Bald Mountain for example.

The scariest music isn’t necessarily the loudest. Complete silence or music so soft that we can barely hear it can create an eerie feeling of suspense. It makes our ears prick up, listening for the slightest noise, the softest whisper, the breath of a monster… In these moments, the composer might use staccatos to suggest faint sounds, and pianissimos by the violins in the high register to add to the mysterious atmosphere.

Can’t stand hearing Thriller once more this Halloween? Try Infernal Violins instead, with Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà. Shivers garanteed…

It’s not everyday that you can get inside the head of a living composer. John Adams, the composer of Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic, has recently started up a blog on his home site and Hell Mouth (yes, that is the name of his blog) certainly doesn’t intend to be politically correct. How refreshing! Definitely worth the read is a post on how the composer can learn to survive a first rehearsal of a new work of his or the one in which he talks about the Hammerklavier. To read, it’s here…

We were keeping our fingers crossed really hard but hadn’t planned any celebration beforehand but analekta.com, “classics on the go”, won a Félix yesterday at the Industry Gala, held yesterday afternoon at the Club Soda! Entirely redesigned and programmed by the dynamic team at Motion in Design, the Website aims to become the meeting ground for music lovers and this blog is only a small antenna of it. New developments will be announced very soon, sure to maintain analekta.com at the avant-garde of the Canadian musical industry.

Three recordings also won Félix at the Other Gala, held last night at the Métropolis: Philip Glass : Portrait, an Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà album (in the category “Classical album of the year – orchestra and big ensemble”), the first collaboration on disc of brothers Alain and David Lefèvre (”Album of the Year – Solist and small ensemble”) and Lorraine Desmarais – Big Band (”Album of the Year – jazz creation”).

Analekta was nominated 11 times, in 7 different categories.

It is Saturday night at the Salle Olivier-Messiaen in Paris that was held the gala concert of the prizewinners of the latest edition of the prestigious Long-Thibaud Piano Competition. No first prize was awarded this year. The 26-year-old Russian pianist Maria Masycheva went home with the second prize (15,200 euros) and the SAS Prince Albert II of Monaco Prize, for best recital. Twenty finalists from eight countries were heard. The mythical piano competition was founded in 1943 by pianist Marguerite Long and violinist Jacques Thibaud.

If one tries to prod him, he immediately gets excited when talking about tomorrow’s music fans: “We have an uphill battle to fight, which will get tougher and tougher. We haven’t done our duty toward the young public and have not given them good lessons.  People know a little bit about my campaigns. I’ve been going to schools for over 20 years now, and I keep meeting with people all over the world. This battle must be fought with enormous perspicacity. Just look at the TV programs, the Quebecois tradition of a certain era, what the broadcast Les beaux dimanches used to provide Quebec. At the time, we had an hour of classical music every week. Now, we have less than seven minutes a month. We must ask ourselves why and admit that it’s part of our culture. Very dispassionately, I continue the struggle and tell my classical music colleagues: “If you don’t go out into the streets, if you don’t go to TV and radio broadcasts, if you don’t do the work, music will be for a small group of people and it is destined for extinction.”

As a pianist I realize that often we place ourselves ahead of music, we serve it less well than we ought to. The role of an artist is not merely to go on the stage and say, “ I’m beautiful, I’m great. Rather, it is to go into the streets and roll up one’s sleeves. Pollini started his career by playing in the Fiat factories. This isn’t demagoguery but a real job. A society that creates good citizens, people who know how to vote, is a society where a large place is granted to the arts because art gives one the hindsight necessary for thought. To have hindsight requires the maximum amount of cultural information so as to be able to judge a situation.”

Without batting an eyelid, he quotes a number of serious studies on the impact of classical music on children’s brains: “The life of a child who regularly listens to classical music will necessarily be different. The richness music brings into one’s life is extraordinary. How can the young choose classical music if we don’t offer them even one minute of classical music? Once they’ve heard it, they’ll come back to it. What makes me proudest of all is when I receive letters from small children who say, ‘Now I love classical music.’ ”

To listen to Alain Lefèvre’s latest recording, featuring works by Mathieu, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, it’s here…