The Dies Irae Connection
Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or
Flash plugin.
Jack Nicholson in The Shining, which uses the "Dies Irae" theme as underscoring
The music is foreboding and unsettling—perfect for the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, The Shining. So perfect, in fact, that most people assume it was written for the film.
But in fact, the melody is from a 13th thirteenth-century Latin hymn that describes God’s “Day of Wrath,” the Judgment Day when the faithful will be saved, and the others cast into eternal flames.
Sung originally in the Christian Mass for the Dead, by the 19th century, the tune symbolized not only human mortality, but the forces of evil—sometimes in serious fashion, sometimes not.
In this hour, the “Dies Irae” melody in works by Liszt, Berlioz, Saint-Saens, Rachmaninoff, and many more.
FEATURED RECORDINGS
Title
|
Group/Artist
|
Catalog #
|
UPC
|
The Shining
|
Wendy Carlos
|
BSX Records
|
Amazon download: ASIN: B002IGRQUQ
|
1000 Years of Gregorian Chant
|
Deller Consort
|
Harmonia Mundi HMX2908165
|
HMX2908165
|
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique
|
London Symphony, Colin Davis
|
LSO Live LSO0007
|
822231100720
|
Liszt: Piano Concertos 1 & 2, etc. [for Totendantz]
|
Krystian Zimerman
|
Deutsche Grammophon D 105620
|
028942357129
|
Pictures at an Exhibition, etc [for Night on Bald Mountain]
|
Chicago Symphony, Fritz Reiner
|
RCA 09026 61958 2
|
090266195824
|
L'Apprenti Sorcier [for Danse Macabre]
|
Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson
|
EMI France 5 55385 2
|
724355538520
|
Dmitri Bashkirov : Brahms [for Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 6]
|
Dmitri Bashkirov
|
Harmonia Mundi HMC 5167
|
[no UPC]
ASIN: B001DIFGD4
|
Rhapsody on A Theme Of Paganini, etc.
|
Artur Rubenstein, Chicago Symphony, Fritz Reiner
|
RCA Victor 09026-68886-2
|
090266888627
|
Castelnuovo-Tedesco: 24 Caprichos de Goya,
|
24 Caprichos de Goya, track 24
|
Naxos 8.572252-53
|
0747313225279
|
Khachaturian: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor
|
USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Aram Khachaturian
|
Melodya CD 10 01706
|
4600317117062
|
Daugherty: Metropolis Symphony
|
Nashville Symphony, Giancarlo Guerrero
|
Naxos 8.559635
|
636943963524
|