Horror in the arts: has music evaded it? Can you think of truly nightmarish works?
I don't mean Danse Macabre or the Witches' Sabbath, or Dies Irae settings, stuff like that. Nor do I mean despair and depression, as in Tchaikovsky's Sixth. I mean true nihilistic horror. The only work like this I can think of is Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, and it's obviously recent. Can you think of truly "horrific" works?
I'm wondering, because horror has long appeared in almost every other art. In one of the most famous Shakesperean scenes, Gloucester does the "right thing" and stands up for King Lear; in response, Lear's daughters take out his eyes, onstage. It's *awful,* awful, awful. A Shakespeare scholar famously said that when people can watch this scene, it will mean the death of civilization. The play as a whole could destroy souls. It doesn't have dramatic deaths like in Hamlet, nor is it fantastic madness like Macbeth; I think it's the single darkest piece of literature I've ever read. Even the "good" characters (like Edgar) are still perverse and vindictive, and both the innocent and the wicked are punished, not through justice but through sheer chance, the turning of the wheel.
Goya is one of the greatest painters that ever lived, and he is particularly famous for his late works. He started with elegant and charming paintings of the aristocracy (like this: http://www.abcgallery.com/G/goya/goya107.JPG, during the time of Haydn and Mozart) and ended with these:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.shootings-3-5-1808.jpg (painted with real blood)
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/goya.saturn-son.jpg
http://www.almaleh.com/art/goya2.jpg
And of course film has often dealt with horror, though only a few really capture it well. (I'm not a veteran, obviously, but I have symptoms of PTSD). Lawrence of Arabia practically traumatized me at 13 (and my father at 44), and it's not even a "horrific" movie; The Deer Hunter could give anyone nightmares and is almost unwatchable, and the acknowledged greatest of war films, Apocalypse Now, ends succintly with "The Horror! The Horror!"
Sorry to have rambled. But I didn't want people going on about "dark" works like Mozart's Requiem, I wanted to show you exactly what I meant by "horror in the arts." 
Do you think music is so inherently tied to "beauty" that it can't confront horror? Or can you think of horrific pieces?
And, more specifically, do you think music has only confronted horror in the 20th century? Because this was more or less the case for poetry; it was mostly traditionally beautiful until this:
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
Thanks!
Sorry, the first link isn't working, here's another shot: http://joseabrooks.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/art-history-round-up/. You could never guess it's the same man! Goya's basically the Beethoven of art, but his "late period" is a hell of a lot scarier...
MissLimLam- if nothing compares, it just proves my point 
Music may not have anything equivalent, I don't know!
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July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yJqDTSufBE this is truly horrific
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=41&threadid=653
^^creepyness in rock
but if you ask me, Mr. Bungle has some really unsettling music
and so does Merzbow and some other Noise bands.
(noise actually is a genre of music that has managed to attract lots of fans and subgenres)
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
I am always disturbed when listening to the finale scene of Salome… but that is not horrific, it just disturbs me.
The aria "Gelido in ogni vena" is very sad, and when you think that the king is singing about regreting having killed his son, it kind of creepy..
Goya is really creepy. (I dont think anything musical compares)
Sorry I didnt really help
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Penderecki’s ‘Threnody’ is a good example. Another very nightmarish work is ‘Three Screaming Popes’ by Mark Anthony Turnage, based on the famous painting by Francis Bacon. I think Edgar Varèse’s ‘Amériques’ is pretty nightmarish too (link below) and has one of the most terrifying endings of any piece of music I know and always makes my hair stand on end (link to the final section below). Written in 1921, it makes ‘The Rite of Spring’ seem like a walk in the park.
The piece ‘Ostacoli’ (obstacles) by woefully-neglected Swedish composer Anders Eliasson is another work which presents a nightmarish landscape to my ears. Another Swede, Allan Pettersson’s works are pretty much all nightmarish. A gloomy and pessimistic character racked by intense pain through illness, Pettersson’s music demands a lot of listening. The second link below is the the end of the 7th Symphony - one of his least alienating works and arguably one of the greatest symphonies of the 20th century.
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Have you heard Bartok’s 4th.string quartet? Is that the type of piece you’re thnking of? I donno.
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Several operas come to mind:
The Medium by Menotti is truly one of the creepiest one act operas I know. There isn’t a You Tube video worth watching, unfortunately.
So is Salome by Richard Strauss, especially the Dance of the Seven Veils and its’ music.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdIzV5_nTNU
What about Wozzeck? Ewwww! Nothing creepier than Marie’s death, the Intermezzo and the ending.
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Being a piano person, I couldn’t help but add several of Scriabin’s piano sonatas, including:
The 5th: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lfk2QgPhc
The 6th (reportedly the sonata Scriabin himself never played in public because he felt it was too dark): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9cnyfET1lE
The 9th (Black Mass): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp0yVCh5OKM&feature=related
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
The most horrifying piece of music I know of is a Baroque work by Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644 - 1704) with the unbelievable (but true) title, "Operation for the Removal of a Stone" (which is presumably a gallstone.)
This intensely graphic work for narrator and small string ensemble is something you’d never expect from this era. The narrator is accompanied by bone-chilling instrumental sound effects, reaching a climax with the narrator screaming, "HERE COMES THE KNIFE!" And knowing that there were no general anaesthetics back then makes it all the more horrifying.
Anyway, if you’re ever brave (or mad) enough to hear this singularly bizarre piece, there’s a wonderful 1970s recording by Concentus Musicus Wien, directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, it’s definitely worth experiencing!
Hafwen x
July 28th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is pretty creepy (I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the board a week or so ago it being used as a background to a horror story on a music appreciation programme) His opera, Bluebeard’s Castle is, in the end, a horror story - Judith disappearing into ‘the endless darkness’ as the English translation of the libretto has it.
In fact, a lot of operas are pretty horrific - if you analyze them. Tosca stabbing Scarpia, then throwing herself off the castle walls as she realises her lover has not, in fact, been spared the firing squad, Radames and Aida being entombed and left to die, Jenufa’s mother killing her daughter’s illegitimate child. Benjamin Britten turned Henry James horror story into his opera The Turn of the Screw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbEB5iuFwNQ). Then we have the hanging of the eponymous hero in Billy Budd
I must watch del_icio’s link to the Pettersson symphony. I have always avoided his works, having often read of their despairing nature. Of course, Mahler’s 6 is pretty nihilistic with the hammer blows of fate finally triumphing.
I once read that there is a section in Sibelius 5 written to portray the composer’s dread. He was writing the work in an isolated cottage in the Finnish woods surrounded by snow when he heard a noise outside. he went to investigate and found footprints in the snow beginning and ending nowhere…
Elgar’s Piano Quintet is partly programmatic in that it has ‘reminiscence of sinister trees’ (Alice Elgar). These sinister trees had been struck by lightening on ground above Elgar’s cottage ‘Brinkwells’ and were said to represent the dead forms of a settlement of Spanish Monks punished for their ‘impious rites’