Halloween Candy Encore

In the color photo on the left are choristers George Marriner Maull and his older brother, Frederick Howard Maull, on a June Sunday morning in 1960. They’re standing in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (also pictured separately) at 3^rd and Pine Streets in Philadelphia, which opened its doors for services in 1761.

Among the four individuals in the black-and-white photo on the right is a 9-year-old … me. I attended St. Peter’s Episcopal Choir School for Boys from 1956 through 1960. The photo was taken at the school’s 1956 Annual Halloween Party. On the far left in that picture, we have someone in a voodoo mask of sorts, playing a very small drum. Next to him is “Mr. Clean” in his traditional arms-folded pose. The third choirboy has covered his entire countenance with a wig. And finally, on the far right, we have a stereotypical pipe-smoking “hip” guy of the 1950’s.

The first person to correctly identify which one of these costumed kids is me will win two tickets to our Discover Jazz for the Holidays concert on Friday, December 13, 2024 at the historic Beacon Unitarian Universalist Congregation building in Summit, NJ. It’s a $100 value! Just email your answer to us at info@discoveryorchestra.org. (Hint: think “music.”)

Halloween parties are customary at many schools. At St. Peter’s, it included the obligatory grand parade around the school gymnasium by all forty-five choirboys, so that we could be adjudicated by the faculty members who awarded prizes for the top three costumes. I never even won a third prize designation during my four years at the Choir School. Oh well. But … I’ll never forget the music that was played as we skipped and danced around the gym. It was the same music every year – Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre – andI’ve loved that orchestral workever since.Trick or treat yourself now to a YouTube performance of this work, and listen for the dissonant diminished 5^th interval, known as “the devil’s interval,” played by the solo violin near the opening. https://youtu.be/ZDWMoJz8OYU?si=_xs8lPRMTxDxRKm0

If you’re in the mood for more Halloween musicalcandy, may I recommend César Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit, or The Accursed Hunter. It musically depicts a French nobleman who, in violation of the sabbath, decides to go hunting instead of going to mass on a beautiful Sunday morning, and ends up hearing demons in his head for the remainder of his life! Nice, huh? Listen and watch for the church bells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWROGkueZmM

Always a winner for your Halloween listening pleasure is Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, made into a musical “household name” composition when Walt Disney released his original animated cartoon Fantasia in 1940.With Mickey Mouse in the title role, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was the third and most famous segment of this film. Here’s a wonderful YouTube performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_bdguZEI8Q

And finally, should you desire to beyour own headless horseman, may I recommend Hector Berlioz’s March to the Scaffold from his Symphonie Fantastique. Can you detect in the music when the guillotine blade falls? If you listen carefully, after the clarinet solo near the very end, you will not only find Berlioz’s musical take on the blade falling, but also of the head tumbling into the basket. That second musical gesture is soft and subtle, so you may need to listen to it several times. Hey, what is it with these four French composers and their macabre, disturbing musical subjects?!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=598i8b3HGrw