Menu
Suspenseful and spooky classical music is a riveting, all-encompassing experience to listen to. It engages with the mind, gives your brain a challenge, and subverts all expectations of what classical music should traditionally sound like!
Below, discover our five favorite albums of scary and suspenseful classical music that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Looking for the perfect soundtracks to enthrall and amaze you or set the vibe for a spooky party you have planned?
Even if you just want to sit back and listen to some top-class classical composers, this list is for you! There’s no reason you can’t make every day like Halloween.
In this list, we have narrowed down 5 incredible thematic masterpieces of modern classical music. The themes range from deathly scary pieces to invigorating pieces. Some are the original soundtracks of classic horror films, while others are simply original published work by genius composers. All of these pieces are in the form of albums on Amazon Music that you can purchase.
Be sure to figure out exactly what kind of hair-raising music you’re looking for before making a decision on which album to purchase.
This 4 hour and 53-minute long album is composed of 50 tracks composed by classical music gurus, all the way from the 1600s to the 1900s. That’s centuries worth of phenomenal, mind-shatteringly good classical music.
One such amazing track in this ensemble is by Carl Orff, a German composer from the late 1800s. His piece of music in this album is a cantata titled “O Fortuna – Carmina Burana.” It is an absolutely breathtaking masterpiece and a great choice if you’re looking for suspenseful classical music to listen to.
This can be played either as background music to your daily activities or just to bask in its ever-dramatic glory. The piece crescendos into a high halfway through as the choir hauntingly begins chanting in Latin. After this, the drama builds again, echoing into a glorious symphony of orchestral magic.
Another fascinating track in the album, “Khovanshchina – Intermezzo”, by Austrian composer Herbert Von Karajan, is a deceptively haunting track. This might remind you of classic horror films from the 80s and 90s.
It tends to only build up to a climax in the middle and then slows down, almost becoming sad and eerie with its tone, but delivers a gut-punch of emotion to the listener. It is a treat for the senses as well.
Finally, two notable tracks in this album are by renowned romantic era French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. These pieces are called Danse Macabre (a tone poem) and The Carnival of the Animals – VII. Aquarium. Both of these are utterly haunting, out-of-body experiences to listen to.
They lead you down dark stairwells and into empty chambers. The work of Saint-Saëns is legendary, and this album on Amazon Music is a direct representation of the magic of chilling and hair-raising music.
With a total of 100 tracks, our second pick contains a total of 10 hours and 7 minutes of pure horror-filled incidental music. That’s double the time of the first album!
A noteworthy piece from this album is “Lemminkäinen Suite, Op. 22: II. The Swan of Tuonela” by Jean Sibelius, a Finnish composer. The album is based on a Finnis mythological tale. It tells an almost hour-long story of loss, passion, grief, sadness, and pain. It’s a moving funeral march that captures and astounds at every turn, a true delight to your ears.
It has the kind of suspenseful air that makes you think and rethink your every move. To paint a clearer picture, it almost sounds like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Another phenomenal and deeply eerie piece in this album comes courtesy of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Serenade Melancolique, Op. 26. This is just as sad and lonely as it is creepy and disconcerting.
Listening to it makes you swell with emotion while simultaneously getting goosebumps and having the hair on the back of your neck stand up. True to expression and truer to its name, this piece exemplifies all of Tchaikovsky’s mastery and genius as a classical composer. This masterclass of a song is fit for both horror and drama genres.
This album concludes with a highly impressive track. Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso of his time, Franz Liszt’s “Mephisto, Waltz No. 1” is truly an empirically worthy experience.
Every single note plays a role as it all hurtles toward a busy and magnificent climax. Said to be a waltz, Liszt made it an emotional, turbulent masterpiece that disconcerts and moves the heart, a great fit for the horror genre.
With this album, we step into the realm of film music and classically-known pop culture and songs. These pieces were composed by equally legendary American Hollywood composers who have greatly influenced the entire genre of horror.
This album comes in at a total of 99 songs at 9 hours and 48 minutes long, which makes it the second-longest album on this list.
This single album has some of the most influential and classically-composed songs in our entire guide. We’ve definitely made it difficult for you to choose which one of these incredible albums you want to purchase. They’re all fantastic!
Right off the bat, this album starts with the theme of the renowned horror movie The Exorcist (1973), with its main score by William Friedkin taking center-stage for a dark, creepy, and twisted theme.
It further leads you into spiral staircases and empty houses that harbor ghosts and haunted stories. The use of instrumentation helps the song to sound jarring and mesmerizing.
This is a fascinating choice to go with for a scary horror movie that deals with themes like the occult, religion, and possession by demons. It’s an exciting theme to listen to and a great kickoff for the entire incredible album.
Another noteworthy, spectacularly composed song in this album is courtesy of Bernard Herrmann. He is an internationally renowned American composer and conductor who was most famous for his work in composing for films like Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, among others.
His song in this album, Psycho Suite, is one of the most influential and contains some of the most recognizable symbols of suspenseful and thrilling music.
The music grips you as the score gradually decreases and increases while the tension builds and lessens. Herrmann’s mastery led to him composing one of the greatest suspense scores of all time. It is even still regularly performed in concert halls around the world.
Much of this unsettling and threatening music creates a jarring effect. All in all, it is a masterful score that shows genius and classical composition at its peak when it comes to suspenseful music.
With this album, we step into the realm of film music and classically-known pop culture and songs. These pieces were composed by equally legendary American Hollywood composers who have greatly influenced the entire genre of horror.
This album comes in at a total of 99 songs at 9 hours and 48 minutes long, which makes it the second-longest album on this list.
This single album has some of the most influential and classically-composed songs in our entire guide. We’ve definitely made it difficult for you to choose which one of these incredible albums you want to purchase. They’re all fantastic!
Right off the bat, this album starts with the theme of the renowned horror movie The Exorcist (1973), with its main score by William Friedkin taking center-stage for a dark, creepy, and twisted theme.
It further leads you into spiral staircases and empty houses that harbor ghosts and haunted stories. The use of instrumentation helps the song to sound jarring and mesmerizing.
This is a fascinating choice to go with for a scary horror movie that deals with themes like the occult, religion, and possession by demons. It’s an exciting theme to listen to and a great kickoff for the entire incredible album.
Another noteworthy, spectacularly composed song in this album is courtesy of Bernard Herrmann. He is an internationally renowned American composer and conductor who was most famous for his work in composing for films like Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, among others.
His song in this album, Psycho Suite, is one of the most influential and contains some of the most recognizable symbols of suspenseful and thrilling music.
The music grips you as the score gradually decreases and increases while the tension builds and lessens. Herrmann’s mastery led to him composing one of the greatest suspense scores of all time. It is even still regularly performed in concert halls around the world.
Much of this unsettling and threatening music creates a jarring effect. All in all, it is a masterful score that shows genius and classical composition at its peak when it comes to suspenseful music.
Finally, our fifth and final pick for this list is a relatively small album with only 20 songs that has a duration of one hour and 27 minutes, making it the shortest on our list.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad composition by any means. In fact, it might be the most fascinating experience of all of the items on our list, since this one is special! It has some of the most iconic themes from the movies that we know and love.
As an example, one of the songs in this album is the theme from the film The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, which as we all know, is a deeply unsettling and terrifyingly creepy theme that gets under your skin and shocks you to your core.
Another incredible soundtrack that this album contains is from Bram Stoker’s 1992 film “Dracula”. This theme is deeply disconcerting and ominous and stays true to the original film’s timeless quality.
The composer, Wojciech Kilar does an impressive job of making this theme menacing, grim, and brooding, how a vampire film should be.
Out of all the picks on our list, this is the one you might like the most if you are into pop culture or want to learn more about contemporary classical music. It also shows how pop culture has evolved from classical horror films to the present day. You may gain a deeper insight in terms of what you perceive as good music by listening to this album. Plus, you’ll be sure to feel invigorated by this collection of scary and suspenseful classical music.
Music has the power to change lives and open up avenues for people to think about the world in new ways. It allows people to recognize perspectives that they were blind to previously.
Music creates excitement, emotions, bonding, and can completely dictate your mood. This is especially true for music in horror movies, where simply a few notes can leave you terrified.
We hope this list could give you some insight into the world of albums composed of suspenseful classical music. If you want to experience the atmosphere of horror and suspense that you usually can only find in a movie theater, then you should definitely look into purchasing one of these albums for a similar experience!
