Grey Tones

A grey pall cloth shrouds the landscape. The dark sky grows heavy with the weight of clouds, as one young boy attends his first funeral.

He shouldn’t be here, but he is! He's with family and with all those people who shed copious, grieving tears.

Women shake their heads in sadness, wiping their eyes with lace-edged handkerchieves. Strong men let their shoulders droop and look at the ground to not to betray their tears.

Why, oh why does he have to be here? Wretchedness stretches its long, crooked, bony fingers, and they seem to come together just to turn the young man's chin around.

He sees the young lady sobbing. He watches her, fascinated by her tears leaving rivulets of black on an alabaster face. The skin so white, makes the rouge stand out like twin blotchy, red circles on her cheeks.

He tries to make sense of this. A weight presses on his young shoulders, and it is not something he can reason with. Why is he here?

The place is filled with family and friends. He knows almost all of them. They mourn something, and try as he might, he cannot piece it together. He feels the sorrow all around, but how should he feel? Even his brother has the right societal behavior. His voice at the speech sounds like a drone bee, and the message goes right over his head. His father's eyes fill with tears, and it is hard for him to comfort the mother. Yet, his father stands there like a rock, offering his shoulder to scaffold her drooping head. He wishes he could comfort her, but she seems inconsolable. The young man yearns to know whose loss caused this much pain to his dear mother.

The coffin is open for everyone to witness the body. People begin lining up to show their respects. As the family gets closer, the young man feels a strange fear. Something pounds in him, while his skin feels clammy.

The music plays in the back, and it sounds terrifying with its bold opening. It’s filled with chords, and each one plays with his nervous tension stretching it like a rubber band. He’s filled with anxiety, and the whole ambience becomes increasingly gloomy. He feels as though he is drowning in a sea of melancholia.

Faster and faster the music goes, and then it transitions to a gentler pace as they get very close to the coffin. Why is he focusing this much on the music? He looks at the pianist who is sweating with fingers running up and down the entire length of the keys. Their steps take interminable time to get a peek at who lies in the coffin. He feels his father open the coffin wider, and heads peek in. Tears flow from their eyes to land on him. His eyes are closed. Yet, he is there and looking at himself.

As he watches himself in the coffin, he wants to get out. However, he is powerless. Rooted, tethered, bound, and anchored, he finds himself breaking down. The music grows louder and quicker, and he feels like clawing, scratching his way out of the box. It echoes the desperation he feels, but then it slows down to feel as if the fight is going out of him. The tempo changes to one of resignation as it slows down further. At about the same moment, he witnesses his skin erasing itself like pencil marks disappearing on paper. He sees his innards and skeleton, and then they all crumble to dust. Although everyone carries agony and grief, they do not see the terror he feels at the slowing music representing his helpless acceptance.

He does not wait to analyze which could stop first. The music continues to play, and the last chords feel like last breaths.

"I am at MY funeral, and I am not ready to go," screams young Sergey, and he wakes up drenched in sweat.

He jumps out of his bed, lights the candle, and grabs his writing implement to get busy.

With the music etched in his memory, he composes his classic Prelude in C Sharp Minor.

Piano teachers often tell their students this story, and this kind of music sets a tone. There are different versions of such stories, but the common theme in this particular piece of music is the haunting almost macabre tone.

Rachmaninoff’s pieces are difficult to play, and this Prelude is also complicated. This piece feels like a symphonic/tone poem which feels like a marriage of music with drama.

The genre of the tone poem was popularized during the Romantic era in the West. It can embrace all kinds of moods ranging from happy to sad, gloomy to light to name a few in the emotional spectrum. It can capture the feeling of a short story, a painting, a landscape, or even the content of a poem without using sung text. A tone poem inspires listeners to imagine moods, scenes, or entire stories when they hear the music.

The sense of dread, horror, and the macabre is not restricted to pop culture musical tracks. Why not create a smashing Halloween by waking up the past?

Here are a few pieces if you wished for a Western Classical Music Halloween.

1."Danse Macabre" by Saint Säens

2."Night on Bald Mountain," Mussorgsky

3."Requiem No.7 Confutatis Maledictus," Mozart

4," Masonic Funeral Music in C Minor,"Mozart

5."Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini," Rachmaninoff

6. "Mephisto Waltz", Franz Liszt

7. "The Day Witch", Antonin Dvorak

8. "Swan of Tuonela," Jean Sibelius

9."The Sorcerer's Apprentice," P.Dukas

10."Totentanz" for Piano and Orchestra, Franz Liszt

11."Dance of the Marionettes," by Gounod

12.."Valse Triste", Jean Sibelius

These are my choices for a Classic Halloween sound track. They convey the somber, scary tones in perfect harmony.

Imagine this scenario. On a cold winter night, the composer dreams of his next piece in a room with a warm, crackling fire. The mattress is comfortable, the goose down blanket cocoons his body in a comforting way. Would the tone of the musical creation be any different?