Phantoms and Pipes: How the Organ Became Halloween’s Instrument

Lon Chaney in the 1925 film "Phantom of the Opera." The organ has long been associated with horror films. MovieStillDb

As a child, I had a cassette tape called “The Sounds of Halloween.” It had all the creepy sound effects one would expect: creaking doors, moaning ghosts, eerie laughs, a Dracula voice, and a few popular songs like “Monster Mash.” It also had something else: The first side began with J.S. Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” Bach’s piece is forever associated in my mind with the holiday.

Bach himself, of course, would have thought this exceedingly strange. BWV 565, written sometime around 1708, was originally intended to accompany worship during a church service.

So how did this piece, and pipe organ music more generally, mutate into a genre that complements trick-or-treating? The answer in one word: movies.

Silent Films

The pipe organ is the largest, most grandiose instrument ever built. Since the Middle Ages, it’s been a standard installation in places of worship. Its wide range of registers, from deep, resonant notes to high, eerie pitches, can create a haunting soundscape as it fills a church’s high ceilings. The association with Gothic cathedrals has, doubtless, contributed to its present status as an instrument of the macabre.

During the silent-film era, the organ became a staple of early horror movies. The film that started this practice was F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (1922), which featured an original Hans Erdmann score written to accompany the film’s dark mood. It’s one of the earliest examples of a score tailored to a specific film, departing from the practice of using pre-existing classical pieces.

The original, full title of the film was “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.” Going in, viewers knew that music would play a prominent role in the story.

Erdmann’s famous score wasn’t specifically designated for the organ. Although the original score was destroyed, it’s been partially reconstructed from old music books, and modern performances fill in the gaps of the missing score with music written in Erdmann’s style. Erdmann’s leitmotifs, dissonances, and menacing harmonies are certainly parallel to the film’s visual style.

In the versions available today, an organ arrangement is almost always the version screened.  Theaters even occasionally show the movie accompanied by live organ performances.

German actor Max Schreck (1879–1936), as the vampire Count Orlok, being destroyed by sunlight, in a still from F.W. Murnau’s expressionist horror film, “Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens,” 1921. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

While the original audiences who saw Nosferatu may not have heard the organ, this instrument did feature in other movies of the period. In “The Terror” (1928), the first feature-length all-talking horror film (and the second all-talking film overall), the organ features prominently both in the score and the plot. A murderer, who turns out to be an organ player, haunts a rented house. He plays his music and kills off the guests. (If this sounds eerily similar to the plot of a much more famous story involving a murderous organist, that’s because it is: “Phantom of the Opera.”) Unfortunately, the film is now considered lost, although its soundtrack survives.

‘Phantom of the Opera’

The most well-known horror character directly associated with the organ is, of course, the Phantom in “Phantom of the Opera.” In the 1925 silent film version, the most famous scene features the legendary actor Lon Chaney bent over his organ’s keyboard as his love interest, Christine, unmasks him from behind.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue isn’t referenced in the original film’s soundtrack, nor in the 1910 Gaston Leroux novel. Leroux. though, does symbolically weave several other pieces into his story, like Gounod’s opera “Faust” and the “Danse Macabre” by Saint-Saëns.

Subsequent re-scorings of this version have used the Toccata. In one version, the score uses chords from Bach’s piece in scenes where the Phantom appears, brilliantly applying the Toccata as a leitmotif for his character. In 1962, a sound remake of the film used the Toccata more directly, as one of the pieces the Phantom plays on the organ in his underground lair.

Most famously of all, of course, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s 1986 musical has several organ-centric pieces. The Overture and title song are recognizable to millions.

Publicity still of the 1943 film "Phantom of the Opera" starring Claude Rains and Susanna Foster. MovieStillsDB

Why Bach?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) was the first horror film that used Bach’s Toccata and Fugue to create a chilling atmosphere. Since then, many have followed suit; but this number is probably still less than the number of spooky sound effects albums, which include the Toccata, that have been marketed to children. It has become the unofficial piece of Halloween.

Why the Toccata and Fugue? What makes Bach’s piece so frightening? Musicologist David Huckvale, author of “Hammer Film Scores and the Musical Avant-Garde,” says in an online video that the Toccata contains a diminished seventh chord in its lower registers, or a chord created from four minor thirds.

“It doesn’t belong in any key,” Huckvale says. “But if you change one of its notes, you can get to any key from it.” Each note is dissonant relative to the others, and the lack of harmonic resolution gives the piece an alarming quality. As Huckville explains, this chord “was often used in silent movies to accompany ladies tied to railway tracks.”

Apart from its use in soundtracks, Bach’s Toccata can be enjoyed in person as well. Organists frequently give live solo performances of it during the Halloween season.

The Toccata is, of course, not the only organ work that has been used to frightening effect. For those looking to create a Halloween-themed classical playlist, Mozart’s “Fantasia in F Minor” (K. 608) and Léon Boëllmann’s concluding Toccata from his “Suite Gothique” (Op. 25) are great for creating a haunting mood. Saint-Saëns’s “Danse Macabre” and Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” two pieces originally scored for orchestra that are commonly associated with the holiday, have also been arranged for organ.

Conductor Leopold Stokowski arranged his own version of “Night on Bald Mountain” for the Walt Disney film "Fantasia." Screenshot of Leopold Stokowski in the film "Carnegie Hall," 1947. Public Domain

With its deep, dramatic tones evoking dread and grandeur, the pipe organ perfectly embodies the Halloween spirit.

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