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Most everyone who celebrates Halloween will recognize the ominous opening chords. But far fewer probably know that the spooky organ piece is called Toccata and Fugue in D minor – and that heavyweight composer Johann Sebastian Bach penned the tune.
Megan Sarno, a music professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, explains how Bach’s Toccata and Fugue is an example of what scholars call “sticky music” – songs not written with a specific meaning or use in mind, but which, over time, come to represent a specific holiday, ceremony or tradition.
“Bach,” she writes, “could not have thought that his nearly 9-minute organ piece would become so strongly associated with haunted houses and sinister machinations.”
Of course, the sound of an organ – always a bit creepy to today’s ears – certainly doesn’t hurt the cause.
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In Bach’s era, the pipe organ was one of the world’s most technologically advanced instruments.
Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images
Megan Sarno, University of Texas at Arlington
The famous composer certainly didn’t have haunted houses in mind when he wrote the piece.
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